November, 2018
This November saw Dr Amita Sehgal running a two-day workshop in New York City, training psychotherapists and social workers on Fundamental Concepts in Couple Psychotherapy – Working with Impasse and the Stuck Couple. She returns next Spring to train the same group on how to work with couples where blame, or shaming the other, is the currency of exchange in the relationship.
In October, Dr Amita Sehgal delivered the Annual Henry Brown Lecture at Resolution’s annual Dispute Resolution conference held in Nottingham (12 October 2018). Resolution comprises of 6,500 family lawyers and other professionals in England and Wales who believe in constructive, non-confrontational approach to family law matters. Amita Sehgal’s talk entitled Feelings and Family Law: Help or Hindrance? highlighted the importance of good mental health for all professionals working within the family justice system.
In September Tavistock Relationships hosted the launch of the book that Amita Sehgal edited, Sadism: Psychoanalytic Developmental Perspectives published by Karnac/Routledge in 2018. This book is founded on the premise that paying close attention to what is happening in our internal world can help us understand the rise of sadism in the world of popular culture. It acts as a forum in which psychotherapists present psychoanalytic perspectives on the phenomenon of sadomasochism at different stages of the human lifecycle: in childhood, adolescence, adulthood and in later life, and consider its developmental roots.
In May, Amita Sehgal was invited by Tavistock Relationships to discuss her new book, which she edited, Sadism: Psychoanalytic Developmental Perspectives. During the evening, she and Susan Irving (an author of one of the chapters in the book) talked about sadism and sexual phantasy in couple relationships. Also in May, Amita Sehgal travelled to Brighton to give a talk to 20 psychotherapists there on ‘Working psychotherapeutically in the Digital Age’. The talk highlighted some of the issues that needed to be attended to when therapists offer online therapy. This was followed by a vigorous and animated discussion that included a recognition of the lack of professional training about these matters, and ways that these may be addressed to redress this situation.
In April, Amita Sehgal was invited by Resolution to speak at their National Conference in Bristol (21 April 2018). During her sold-out talk, Amita Sehgal offered family law professionals an understanding of the psychological aspects of separation and divorce, and how these can affect family lawyers in the work they do.