Everywhere, Nowhere
Social Class and Psychotherapy
NOW CLOSED
Saturday 12 March 2022
A live webinar or in-person event with Anne Aiyegbusi, Sally Bild, Dick Blackwell, Bob Harris, Malcolm Peterson, Martin Weegmann, and Bridgette Rickett
CPD Credits: 4 hours
- Attend live webinar OR in person at Confer’s premises (Please see our FAQ)
- This event will not be recorded
- Bookings close at 9:00am GMT Wednesday 9 March
Although social class is studied in so many disciplines and has been amply addressed in the theoretical literature of psychotherapy, it continues to be an avoided and conflictual issue for many within our professional community in the UK.
READ MORE...This unique conference has been curated to provide space for expression of the lived experience of working-class practitioners in the world of psychotherapy. Our panel will ask difficult questions about why this experience so often involves a struggle for inclusion and acceptance within our professional community; why people from disadvantaged economic backgrounds on both sides of the consulting room experience a lack of sophisticated discourse to account for the emotional impact of coming from less privileged backgrounds.
How are we to understand the neglect of such powerful subjective experiences given the premium in therapy that is placed on insight? Why does the profession seem to find it so difficult to recognise the effects of the real, external world in which we are formed? Is psychotherapy, perhaps, a politically naïve profession that needs to add the ‘social’ to ‘psycho’?
SPEAKERS
Anne Aiyegbusi, Sally Bild, Dick Blackwell, Bob Harris, Malcolm Peterson, Martin Weegmann, Bridgette Rickett, ,FULL PROGRAMME
09:30 GMT
Registration & Coffee (attending in person only)
10.00
Introductions
10.05
Dick Blackwell ‘A Working-Class Hero is Something to Be’ – Especially in the World of Analytic Psychotherapy
The profession of psychoanalysis, group analysis, and psychoanalytic psychotherapy generally is intensely white and middle-class in both its culture and its discourse. To attempt to enter it from proletarian origins is an ordeal. Doubly so if one is also black. It is an ordeal that remains clandestine while one’s identity is covertly reshaped through encounters with a wall of incomprehension, condescension and paternalism along with encouragement and a warm welcome for one’s emerging white, middle-class professional persona. Psychoanalysis thrives on the idea of conflict as long as it remains within the individual psyche. But as soon as it emerges in psychoanalytic/group-analytic trainings or societies, then ‘interpretation’ becomes the heavy artillery of the frightened and violent middle-class defenders of the status quo. Dick Blackwell is a group analyst, family therapist and organisational consultant in private practice. He has worked extensively with refugees and victims of torture, amongst other groups. He is a former Chair of the Institute of Group Analysis
10.45
Q&A
11.00
Break
11.30
Bridgette Rickett
Psychology and Social Class: The Working-Class as ‘Other’
This talk will take a critical psychology approach to scrutinise the interrelationship between contemporary and historical research and theory within the ‘Psy’ disciplines on social class. I will argue that ways in which social class has historically been researched, theorised and practised fall broadly in three main themes which collectively construct the working-class mind as deficient. In addition, a singular preoccupation on deficient psychologies of the working-class Other has ensured that class-based oppression, poverty and inequality are largely absent in contemporary research.
Finally, I will review a few examples of very recent psychological work on social class that have identified social conditions and practices as means of explaining classed psychologies. It is this research that shows the promising ability to, first, shift and trouble the inherently deficient working-class self approach and, second, to enable psychology to work to both explain and reduce class-based inequalities at the societal level.
12.15
Q&A
12.30
Break
13.30
Martin Weegmann
.…And Then There’s Harrogate. An Example of Middle-class Advantage & Anxiety
I grew up in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, in a ‘detached house’ as my parents liked to advertise. Being ‘well-spoken’, ‘thrifty’, going to a ‘good school’, and being ‘aspiring’ had enormous premium in the era. Many advantages followed, and yet the anxiety that travelled alongside the status was considerable… Martin Weegman is a clinical psychologist, group analyst and author. He works in the NHS – his abiding ‘higher power’- and has delivered training throughout the UK
13.50
Malcolm Peterson
The Pits? Tales from the Coalface of Psychotherapy
Malcolm will speak about his own personal experiences as a Yorkshire man who broke the mould and trained as a psychotherapist. His talk will focus on his Yorkshire dialect, working class background and how he feels this has been received by other psychotherapists during his initial training and beyond. Malcolm Peterson is a Group Analytic Psychotherapist and supervisor. He works in secondary care NHS settings as well as a small private practice, providing psychotherapy & supervision.
14.10
Anne Aiyegbusi
Out-Classed! Working Class Racism in the Post-War North
Anne will describe the surprising depth with which she found racism to be embedded in working class culture during 1960s. She will refer to her childhood as a racialised minority within this environment and how many decades later, the long-buried dynamics emerged during her training as a group analyst. Dr Anne Aiyegbusi is a group analyst, forensic psychotherapist and registered mental health nurse. She works part time in the NHS and as Director of an independent training and consultancy service.
14.30
Break
15.00
Sally Bild
Class Consciousness, Culture, and Complexity: A Search for Belonging
Sally grew up in London in a secular, working class Jewish family with intellectually aspirant, communist parents. She will be talking about how this has shaped her world view, her identity, and her sense of belonging. Sally Bild has worked in health and social care settings for nearly 30 years, firstly as a social worker and probation officer, then as an individual psychotherapist and group analyst. She currently works for the NHS in Enfield and in private practice.
15.20
Bob Harris
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Group Analyst
Bob’s talk will describe the strenuous and frequently self-defeating efforts of a working-class boy to avoid the dangers of becoming middle class. The presentation will be in colour, even though the original was made in black and white. Bob Harris is a Group Analyst (London) and currently works as a consultant, clinical supervisor and trainer with individuals and psychotherapy organisations in the UK and abroad. Currently Director of Training of Group Analysis Albania, he has taught and directed group analytic training in Russia and Kazakhstan and is formerly Director of Programmes at the IGA London.
15.40
Discussion chaired by Martin Weegmann
16.15
End