Events

Group Analysis India will be offering online lectures over the coming years to raise funds. All monies raised through ticket sales will be used to help finance the training.

The lectures will take place on Saturdays

19:30 to 21:45 India I 14:00 to 16:15 UK

All lectures are costed at £20

February 12

Psychotherapy: A Kind of Clinical Philosophy?

Farhad Dalal

I will speak up for philosophy as a deep questioning attitude as well as a form of critical thinking. I will argue that the development of this kind of attitude is not only necessary and intrinsic to the therapeutic endeavour, it is identical to it. The work is not easy because it requires great courage to work one’s way towards inhabiting this kind of attitude; courage that is required not only from the ones-who-come-for-help (patient/client), but also the one-who-tries-to-help (therapist).

Amongst other things, I will speak against ideas of psychotherapy as ‘treatment that seeks to ‘cure’ ‘mental illnesses’; I will say something about my understanding of ‘Eastern’ philosophies, and contrast them with my evolving philosophy of psychotherapy. In this task I will call on a range of philosophers from Wittgenstein to Hume, Mead, Gaita, Keats, Weil, and de Beauvoir.

Gwen is a forensic psychiatrist and psychotherapist. She has worked in forensic psychiatry for over 25 years, mainly providing psychodynamic psychotherapy to violent offenders in secure psychiatric hospitals and prisons. She qualified as a member of the Institute of Group Analysis in 2000, and is also trained in mentalisation based therapy and mindfulness based cognitive therapy. Gwen is the editor and/or author of a number of academic papers, book chapters and textbooks; including the Oxford Handbook of medical psychotherapy and the Oxford handbook of forensic psychiatry. Also, Clinical Topics in Personality Disorder; Personality Disorder: The Definitive Reader; A Matter of Security; The Application of Attachment Theory to Forensic Psychiatry and Psychotherapy and The Approved Mental Health Professional’s Guide to Psychiatry and Medication.

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