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Keynote speakers Babette Rothschild
In the helping professions, especially psychotherapy, empathy is a double-edged sword. It is our most tried and true therapeutic tool and, at the same time, it can be the vehicle for some of the professional hazards we face. When used consciously, empathy gives us important insight into the emotional, cognitive, and sometimes physical states of our clients. However, when activated habitually or unconsciously, empathy can put the therapist at risk for serious psychological and emotional impact. This keynote presentation will illuminate the psychology and cutting-edge neurophysiology of empathy, including the mechanisms of transmission of empathy from one person to another. Attendees will be able to:
Babette Rothschild, MSW, LCSW, is the author of The Body Remembers: The Psychophysiology of Trauma and Trauma Treatment and The Body Remembers CASEBOOK: Unifying Methods and Models in the Treatment of Trauma and PTSD. After studying and working for nine years in Copenhagen, Denmark, Babette returned to her native Los Angeles where she maintains a small private practice, works on her third book, and juggles a demanding international lecture and training schedule. Her newest book, Help for the Helper: The Psychophysiology of Compassion Fatigue and Vicarious Trauma will be published by WW Norton this coming winter.
As communities are forced to dismantle there is greater pressure on the individual to maintain a sense of personal cohesion. There is a terror about being fragmented which can act as a defence and a deceit. In the perverse security of fragmentation, institutions survive their emotional rot, as do individuals. Is fragmentation the 21st century’s way of living or is it the human spirit in crisis? Is there a need for a holistic sense of self, is cohesion an illusion? Do we need some kind of psychological glue and if yes, what is it? Camila Batmanghelidjh trained in fine and performing arts and as a psychotherapist. She describes her work as a vocation for which she has to raise £2 million a year. In her early twenties Camila set up The Place To Be, a national programme offering therapy in schools. In her early thirties Camila set up Kids Company, which delivers practical and therapeutic interventions to exceptionally vulnerable inner-city children. Now in her early forties, Camila guarantees she will not run a camel sanctuary but anything else is possible! |
Changes in modern society have often been linked to the emergence of a fragmented self. Not only clinical practice but also art and literature depict a basic lack of unity in today’s individual. But is it this lack of unity that is new or the ways in which society responds to it? In the first part of my talk I will discuss this question and refer to different ideas of human development and growth. The second part of my talk will look at the clinical question. If we accept that the self is fragmented, should therapy aim at undoing fragmentation? This can be a dangerous aspiration. If we are alert to the way in which experience is registered and processed psychically, trying to integrate all aspects of psychic material may not always be possible. Aiming to do so may lead to self-destructive behaviour and real risks to the individual. Rather than trying to undo fragmentation, we should aim at a detailed exploration of its context and history. This will allow us to give a voice to fragmentation rather than to reverse it. Darian Leader is a psychoanalyst practising in London and a founder member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research. His books include Introducing Lacan, Why Do Women Write More Letters than they Post?, Freud’s Footnotes and Stealing the Mona Lisa, What Art Stops Us From Seeing. His new book, Why Do People Get Ill? explores the relations between mind and body in the study of organic illness.
Recent developments in neurobiology have thrown light on the relationship between mind and body. Sue will describe how early relationships shape a baby’s brain, and what happens when early care is inadequate or abusive. She will consider some of the social and mental health consequences of our current child-rearing practices. Sue Gerhardt is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice in Oxford. She co-founded the Oxford Parent Infant Project (OXPIP) and practises parent-infant psychotherapy part time. Formerly a documentary film-maker, she is interested in communicating mental health issues to a wider public, and is the author of Why love matters: How affection shapes a baby’s brain.
For the last quarter of a century, I have been working with children, adolescents and their families in the old mining valleys of south Wales. Many of those valleys are now struggling with unemployment, sickness, family breakdown, violence, drug and alcohol addiction, abuse and neglect. On windswept housing estates, people may not know who is living next door let alone develop a sense of community. Boys drop out of education at an early age; teenage girls become pregnant; young people harm themselves and commit suicide. This talk examines how children and adolescents reflect such deprivation in the way they react to the outside world and the way the outside world, in turn, affects how they see themselves. Can the therapist fully understand, work with and repair that deprivation within the therapeutic relationship? Or are we all there, as the poet says, ‘in our hundred thousand pieces’? Dr Mike Shooter came late to medicine, via a history and law degree, journalism, teaching and a host of other jobs. For the last 20 years, he has practised as a child and adolescent psychiatrist, working with deprived families in the old mining valleys of south Wales. He is the current President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, having previously been its Director of Public Education. |
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