The Pleasures and Perils of a Psychotherapeutic Career: How to flourish in the impossible profession
Saturday 2 November 2019
A One-Day Workshop with Professor Brett Kahr
The psychotherapist can help restore broken marriages and mend shattered families. The psychotherapist also has the potential to save people from killing themselves. Yet the burdens of working psychotherapeutically can be immense, not only emotionally, but, also, medically across the life cycle. In this specially constructed one-day workshop, Professor Brett Kahr will share his extensive forty years of experience, investigating both the pitfalls and the pleasures of this unusual but vital profession. Providing a first-hand glimpse into the entire life cycle of the psychotherapist from the early years of training to preparation for retirement and death, the workshop will offer participants a privileged glimpse into his thinking about the factors which either facilitate or inhibit our creative growth across our working lives.
FULL PROGRAMME
09.30
Registration and coffee
10.00
Burnout, Breakdown, Bankruptcy: The Perils of the Impossible Profession
The average British psychotherapist earns fewer than £20,000 per annum, and in view of the increasing growth of trainings, many will struggle to earn a living. Those who do work extensively with patients and clients immerse themselves in long days of listening to traumatic narratives which can prove quite exhausting. Many ageing psychotherapists suffer from severe orthopaedic injuries and neurological symptoms as a result of sitting for decades in a chair. In this introduction section of the workshop, we shall consider the pitfalls of a career in psychotherapy and begin to explore the ways in which these can be understood and navigated or, even, avoided entirely.
11.15
Coffee
11.45
Mark Linington in Conversation with Brett Kahr
From Surviving to Flourishing: How to Lecture, Publish, Research, Administrate, and Broadcast
No one knows how to remain silent for longer periods of time than a jobbing psychotherapist. And yet, one wonders whether our attachment to silence and to yielding most of the space to the patient actually inhibits or even castrates the potency of our own voice outside the consulting room. Consequently, many psychological practitioners never manage to express themselves as teachers, writers, lecturers, supervisors, administrators, or broadcasters, let alone as blue-sky thinkers who might have the potentiality to make major changes to our profession and to our culture at large. In this section of the workshop, we shall consider how one can develop one’s internal vocal authorisation and one’s “scriptive” muscles, allowing practitioners to speak and write more fully and more effectively.
13.00
Lunch break
14.00
The Unconscious Roots of Professional Inhibitionism: The Fear of Envy and the Terror of Success
In 1911, Sigmund Freud first hypothesised that becoming successful creates an unconscious burden and that many of us will attack ourselves and prevent ourselves from achieving our full potentiality in order to stave off envy. We shall explore not only Freud’s pioneering contribution to the psychology of “success studies” but, also, we shall consider Melanie Klein’s fundamental insights about envy and consider how these unconscious factors will prevent us from maximising our potentialities.
15:00
Tea
15.30
Brainstorming and Networking: Live “Supervision” of Participants’ Careers
In the final section of this one-day workshop, braver participants will have a unique opportunity to discuss their own career struggles and ambitions and will be able to receive live “supervision” and practical advice about what concrete steps might be taken to realise one’s projects and goals.
16.30
Group Discussion
17.00
End