The Association for Psychosocial Studies

Psychosocial Studies: Reading Group: Navigating sameness and difference in research
2022-10-28 16:00 - 18:00 (Europe/London)
Association for Psychosocial Studies Online Reading Group
Navigating sameness and difference in research; a critical discussion on reflexivity
Michelle Elliot and Lindsey Nicholls
Friday 28 October 2022, 4 – 6pm
We are incredibly happy to invite you to join us for the first APS online reading group of the year! We are starting this academic year with Lindsey Nicholls and Michelle Elliot’s incredibly important work on reflexivity when researching sensitive topics and/or marginalised communities.
The articles are available to download for free here and here
Abstract:
In researching sensitive topics and marginalised communities there has been an increasing pressure for researchers to be the ‘same as’ the participants. This may protect vulnerable communities from objectification and external scrutiny encoded in ‘normative’ views of a society. A researcher who is the ‘same as’ the researched community is considered to have sufficient authenticity and legitimacy to do the research.
Critical, feminist and reflexive approaches to social science research demand consideration of research objectives, intentions and implications. The tension between advancing understanding of diverse communities and the interpersonal and intrapersonal transitions and the dynamics of the researcher – participant relationship requires an exploration of similarity and difference to ensure an ethically sound research approach.
The presenters will invite discussions on the complexity of establishing authentic and reflexive relationships with the participant communities. The challenges may include exploring/acknowledging unconscious bias and being aware of interpersonal insights and errors that occur in the development, implementation and learning from the research.
The presenters consider if a critical reflexive inquiry can promote a real and reciprocal exchange between researcher and participants. The presenters suggest that overly simplistic ‘identification with’ participants can avoid the painful realities of difference that are important to explore and understand. The intersubjective space can be explored through acknowledgement of sameness and difference, in privilege, power and/or the sense of subjugation.

How can researchers critically reflect on their intentions (conscious and unconscious) for doing the research?
How does intersubjectivity lend itself to understanding research into the human condition?

All registered attendees should automatically be sent a Zoom link. The link will be re-sent the day of the event.
Author biographies:
Dr Michelle Elliot (she/her) is a Senior Lecturer in the Division of Occupational Therapy and Arts Therapies at Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh. Themes of criticality, reflexivity and narrative are explored across her teaching and scholarship.
Dr Lindsey Nicholls has a senior academic post at University of Essex. Her doctoral work explored a psychoanalytic understanding of care through the lived experiences of therapists and their clients. She has published work on the use of psychoanalytic theory in research methods (reflexivity) and co-authored a book on psychoanalytic thinking in occupational therapy.

Spaces of Refuge: The Clinical Practice of Félix Guattari and Institutional Psychotherapy with Rachel Wilson and Anthony Faramelli
2022-11-25 16:00 - 18:00
Association for Psychosocial Studies Online Reading Group
Spaces of Refuge: The Clinical Practice of Félix Guattari and Institutional Psychotherapy
with Rachel Wilson and Anthony Faramelli
REGISTER HERE
Friday 25 November 2022, 4 – 6pm
Rachel Wilson and Anthony Faramelli will discuss the legacies of Félix Guattari’s clinical practice, Institutional Psychotherapy, and how this should inform our current approaches to issues of asylum and refuge for this months’ APS online reading group.
The article is available to download here
Abstract:
Félix Guattari’s work is most commonly discussed (and overshadowed by) his collaborations with Gilles Deleuze. This minimisation allows for a misrepresentation of Guattari’s work that minimises the fact that his theoretical writings were always couched in a grounded clinical practice. A practice which constitutes a politics of the sector.
Guattari’s prescient final text, Chaosmosis, argues that the conditions of Capital responsible for the current social-psychic-ecological crisis of migration demand modes of analysis capable of grasping their complexity, ones grounded in the ethico-aesthetic. It is a text that draws directly from the therapeutic practice that he, Tosquelles, Oury, and others in the Institutional Psychotherapy (IP) movement developed in their clinics. This work entailed the inclusion of aesthetic practices that work to deterritorialise the institution, shifting from carceral sites and creating therapeutic spaces of care and refuge.
This article explores the centrality of an ethico-aesthetic approach to the understanding of therapeutic space within the sites and clinical practice of Institutional Psychotherapy. Looking especially at daily life and the inclusion of aesthetic practice, it examines the particular notion of asylum that emerged in these sites that so informed the clinical and critical work of Guattari and Deleuze, and draws connections to the current global crisis of migration in the necessity of such sites to the forced segregation between those deemed mad and sane.
All registered attendees should automatically be sent a Zoom link. The link will be re-sent the day of the event.
Author biographies:
Rachel Wilson is a Recovery Coordinator in an accommodation service for people with high support mental health needs operated by the charity SHP. As a researcher, Rachel’s work is situated at the intersection of radical forms of psychotherapy, aesthetics, filmmaking and the histories of institutional analysis. She is currently conducting her doctoral studies in the Department of Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths, University of London. Rachael is also a researcher at the Centre for Institutional Analysis and a member of the Network for Institutional Analysis.
Anthony Faramelli is an organisational consultant and a lecturer in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London where he co-directs, with Janna Graham, the Centre for Institutional Analysis. Anthony’s research is situated at the intersection of psychosocial theory, recent French philosophy and postcolonial theory, with a focus on Institutional Psychotherapy and the work of Félix Guattari and Frantz Fanon. Anthony is also a member of the Executive Board of the Association for Psychosocial Studies and a member of the Network for Institutional Analysis.
Other events are currently in the planning stage, follow us on Twitter, Facebook or sign up as a Member to keep up to date with everything. Members will continue to receive copies of the Journal of Psychosocial Studies as a further benefit of subscription to the Association.

Playful States of Mind
2022-12-19 10:00 - 17:00 | Birkbeck College, WC1E 7HX
Organisers: Lynne Froggett, Noreen Giffney and Candida Yates

Date: December 19th 2022
Venue: Room G10, Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre, Birkbeck, University of London, 43 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PD.
ASP Playful States of Mind 19.12.2022
What do the terms ‘play’, ‘playin
g’ and ‘playfulness’ mean in different contexts? How might we understand play as both a doing and a being; an activity and a state of mind? In what ways might play be related to creativity and destructiveness? What kinds of feelings might be enacted, evoked or contained while engaging in moments of play? How do we play and what might we be communicating to ourselves and others, consciously and unconsciously, in our play and in the ways in which we play? Why is a capacity for play so important for our mental health and general wellbeing? How might psychoanalysis and psychosocial studies help us to reflect on our experiences of play? These questions will frame our event.
This event will offer a series of immersive experiences centred around play, to help us to reflect on and talk about our individual and collective encounters with play. The emphasis will be on experience, reflection and conversation. Participants are encouraged to wear comfortab
le clothing and be prepared for an encounter with the unknown.
This event will app
eal to anyone interested in play, imagination and creativity. It will be of particular interest to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, psychologists, counsellors, group analysts, play therapists, creative arts therapists, social workers and social care workers, mental health workers, youth workers, artists, performers and curators, as well as academic researchers and students in the fields of psychosocial studies, cultural studies, and in the arts, humanities and social sciences more broadly.
Places are limited so early registration is advised. Participants are requested to register only if they are available to attend the whole day, as this event makes use of a group experience.
Book here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/playful-states-of-mind-tickets-
448238151377

Jacob Johanssen: Platform Aesthetics and Enlarged Sexuality: Perspectives from Jean Laplanche
2023-01-19 17:00 - 19:00
Psychosocial Interventions: Aesthetic Analysis in Practice and Theory
An Event Series by APS and the Department of Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths

Psychosocial Studies is a transdisciplinary form of academic scholarship that engages the ways in which subjective experience is interwoven with social life. Psychosocial Studies is characterised by its orientation towards progressive social and personal change. An important, but often overlooked, aspect of Psychosocial theory and practice are aesthet-ic interventions. More than a mere science of perception, aesthetics plays an important, but often overlooked, role in the theory and practice of institutional forms of psychotherapy, and guide psychosocially informed politics. The Visual Cultures Spring 2023 Public Programme looks to elucidate a psychosocial understanding of the interconnected role aesthetics play in politics and psychotherapeutic practice.
This series is organised in partnership with the Association for Psychosocial Studies.

Schedule:
• Thursday 19/01: Jacob Johanssen
• Thursday 26/01: Susan Kelly
• Thursday 02/02: Hannah Dee
• Thursday 09/02: George Dake
• Thursday 16/02: Rachel Wilson
• Thursday 02/03: Janna Graham and Wanderley Santos
• Thursday 09/03: Lita Crociani-Windland and Jonathan Mosley
• Thursday 16/03: Felix Birch and Sebastian Birch
• Thursday 23/03: Guilaine Kinouani
• Friday 24/03: Workshop with Lynn Frogget
• Thursday 30/03: Nini Fang

Lectures will be held in the Professor Stuart Hall Building (Goldsmiths), LG01. No booking required.

Susan Kelly: Turning: a Micropolitical Cartography of Colonial Rehabilitation
2023-01-26 17:00 - 19:00

Hannah Dee: It’s A Good Home Ain’t It? Memories of Broadmoor
2023-02-02 17:00 - 19:00

Felix Birch and Bass Birch: Mapping Waste
2023-02-03 17:00 - 19:00

George Dake: Map-making as a Psycho-social method: The Everyday lives and lived experiences of men who sell sex to other men
2023-02-09 17:00 - 19:00

Rachel Wilson: Every Little Thing: Institutional Psychotherapy at Work
2023-02-16 17:00 - 19:00

APS Reading Group: Spaces of Refuge: Guattari and Institutional Psychotherapy
2023-02-24 16:00 - 18:00
For our February Reading Group Rachel Wilson and Anthony Faramelli will be presenting their recently published article exploring the psychosocial pressures associated with seeking refuge and their argument as to why the “ethico-aesthetic” clinical practices found in Institutional Psychotherapy offer a grounded way to house those in need of asylum.
The article is available to download for free here
Register: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/association-for-psychosocial-studies-february-online-reading-group-tickets-533876618337
Abstract:
Félix Guattari’s work is most commonly discussed (and overshadowed by) his collaborations with Gilles Deleuze. This minimisation allows for a misrepresentation of Guattari’s work that minimises the fact that his theoretical writings were always couched in a grounded clinical practice. A practice which constitutes a politics of the sector.

Guattari’s prescient final text, Chaosmosis, argues that the conditions of Capital responsible for the current social-psychic-ecological crisis of migration demand modes of analysis capable of grasping their complexity, ones grounded in the ethico-aesthetic. It is a text that draws directly from the therapeutic practice that he, Tosquelles, Oury, and others in the Institutional Psychotherapy (IP) movement developed in their clinics. This work entailed the inclusion of aesthetic practices that work to deterritorialise the institution, shifting from carceral sites and creating therapeutic spaces of care and refuge.

This article explores the centrality of an ethico-aesthetic approach to the understanding of therapeutic space within the sites and clinical practice of Institutional Psychotherapy. Looking especially at daily life and the inclusion of aesthetic practice, it examines the particular notion of asylum that emerged in these sites that so informed the clinical and critical work of Guattari and Deleuze, and draws connections to the current global crisis of migration in the necessity of such sites to the forced segregation between those deemed mad and sane.

All registered attendees should automatically be sent a Zoom link. The link will be re-sent the day of the event.

Author biographies:

Rachel Wilson is a Recovery Coordinator in an accommodation service for people with high support mental health needs operated by the charity SHP. As a researcher, Rachel’s work is situated at the intersection of radical forms of psychotherapy, aesthetics, filmmaking and the histories of institutional analysis. She is currently conducting her doctoral studies in the Department of Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths, University of London. Rachael is also a researcher at the Centre for Institutional Analysis and a member of the Network for Institutional Analysis.

Anthony Faramelli is an organisational consultant and a lecturer in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London where he co-directs, with Janna Graham, the Centre for Institutional Analysis. Anthony’s research is situated at the intersection of psychosocial theory, recent French philosophy and postcolonial theory, with a focus on Institutional Psychotherapy and the work of Félix Guattari and Frantz Fanon. Anthony is also a member of the Executive Board of the Association for Psychosocial Studies and a member of the Network for Institutional Analysis.

Other events are currently in the planning stage, follow us on Twitter, Facebook or sign up as a Member to keep up to date with everything. Members will continue to receive copies of the Journal of Psychosocial Studies as a further benefit of subscription to the Association.

Janna Graham and Wanderley Santos: TBC
2023-03-02 17:00 - 19:00

Lita Crociani-Windland and Jonathan Mosley: Buildings as psychosocial assemblages: a psychosocial mapping of political architecture- La Siege du PCF/Espace Niemeyer (prepared in collaboration with Sophie and Nigel Williams)
2023-03-09 17:00 - 19:00

Guilaine Kinouani: Difference, Whiteness and the Group Analytic Matrix
2023-03-23 17:00 - 19:00

Workshop with Lynn Frogget: The Visual Matrix
2023-03-24 14:00 - 16:00
Psychosocial Interventions: Aesthetic Analysis in Practice and Theory
“The Visual Matrix with Lynn Froggett is now fully booked. There is no on-line option for this event. For those who have registered to attend, we confirm that the time is 2-4 pm and not 5-7 as advertised on the website schedule. We sincerely apologise for any confusion caused.”
An Event Series by APS and the Department of Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths

Psychosocial Studies is a transdisciplinary form of academic scholarship that engages the ways in which subjective experience is interwoven with social life. Psychosocial Studies is characterised by its orientation towards progressive social and personal change. An important, but often overlooked, aspect of Psychosocial theory and practice are aesthet-ic interventions. More than a mere science of perception, aesthetics plays an important, but often overlooked, role in the theory and practice of institutional forms of psychotherapy, and guide psychosocially informed politics. The Visual Cultures Spring 2023 Public Programme looks to elucidate a psychosocial understanding of the interconnected role aesthetics play in politics and psychotherapeutic practice.
This series is organised in partnership with the Association for Psychosocial Studies.

Schedule:
• Thursday 19/01: Jacob Johanssen
• Thursday 26/01: Susan Kelly
• Thursday 02/02: Hannah Dee
• Thursday 09/02: George Dake
• Thursday 16/02: Rachel Wilson
• Thursday 02/03: Janna Graham and Wanderley Santos
• Thursday 09/03: Lita Crociani-Windland and Jonathan Mosley
• Thursday 16/03: Felix Birch and Sebastian Birch
• Thursday 23/03: Guilaine Kinouani
• Friday 24/03: Workshop with Lynn Frogget
• Thursday 30/03: Nini Fang

Lectures will be held in the Professor Stuart Hall Building (Goldsmiths), LG01. No booking required.

Nini Fang: Culture as the Bad Object
2023-03-30 17:00 - 19:00

Digital Culture and the Object of Race
2023-06-09 18:30 - 21:00 | Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art, St James's, London, SE14 6AD, United Kingdom
Register here

Psychoanalysis Meets Virtual Reality
2023-06-23 09:00 - 17:00
A one day event using a series of group activities to reflect on our individual &collective experience of virtual reality
There is a significant amount of work happening at the interface between research on mental health and Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR). This work brings together artists, curators, clinical practitioners, patient advocates, academics and activists. VR, AR and MR make use of arts-based technologies to facilitate individuals having an immersive sensuous experience by means of wearing a headset. Some experiences require the individual to engage with the environment – opening virtual doors or moving simulated objects, for example – while other experiences play out for the individual a bit like a cinematic encounter, by engaging the senses of sight and hearing.
This event will include an individual VR experience, ‘Perinatal Dreaming’ (fEEL 2023), which will be launched at the event. This will be followed by a number of small and large group activities to help us to reflect on, and talk about, our individual and collective encounters with ‘Perinatal Dreaming’. We will also have an opportunity to hear from Professor Jill Bennett and Dr Gail Kenning from the Big Anxiety Research Centre (BARC) and the felt Experience & Experience Lab (fEEL) at the University of New South Wales, Sydney about their work, and discuss what VR, AR and MR might offer psychoanalysis and vice versa. We will consider the importance of VR, AR and MR experiences within the context of arts and mental health projects more broadly. The emphasis will be on experience, reflection and conversation throughout the day.
What kinds of feelings might be evoked and/or contained while engaging in VR, AR and MR experiences? How might our engagement with VR, AR and MR experiences help us to become more aware of, and reflective about, the operation of introjection and projection? Might VR, AR and MR have a place in our clinics and/or as part of our clinical training programmes? What, in particular, might the ‘Perinatal Dreaming’ VR experience contribute to our thinking about the long-term impact of early life experiences? How might our participation in group activities, underpinned by psychoanalytic thinking, help us to make meaning of our individual encounters with the ‘Perinatal Dreaming’ VR experience? These questions will frame our event.
This event will be of interest to anyone interested psychoanalysis and VR, AR and MR. It will be of particular interest to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, psychologists, counsellors, group analysts, play therapists, arts therapists, social workers and social care workers, mental health workers, youth workers, artists, performers and curators, as well as academic researchers and students in the fields of psychosocial studies, cultural studies, and in the arts, humanities and social sciences more broadly. Given the focus of this event on the unconscious, the birth experience, and the long-term impact of early life experiences, participating in the VR experience and group activities might bring up painful feelings or memories. This event is an in-person event. It will not be recorded.
The event is organised by Professor Lynn Froggett (University of Central Lancashire), Dr Noreen Giffney (Ulster University, Belfast), Professor Jill Bennett (University of New South Wales, Sydney) and Dr Gail Kenning (University of New South Wales, Sydney).
The event is sponsored by the Association for Psychosocial Studies, the Big Anxiety Research Centre, felt Experience & Empathy Lab, and Psychoanalysis +, and the Institute of Group Analysis in London, UCLan’s Psychosocial Research Centre and Ulster University’s Communication, Media and Cultural Studies
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/psychoanalysis-meets-virtual-reality-tickets-623270939157

Content Moderation and Its Discontents
2023-06-23 09:00 - 18:00 | St. Mary’s University, Twickenham, Waldegrave Road, London, TW1 4SX, United Kingdom
Programme and registration: https://www.stmarys.ac.uk/events/2023/06/content-moderation-conference

Counselling and Psychotherapy in Times of Political Violence
2023-06-30 10:00 - 17:00 | 1.264 Usha Kasera Lecture Theatre, Old College South Bridge Edinburgh EH8 9YL, 1.264 Usha Kasera Lecture Theatre, Old College South Bridge Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH8 9YL, United Kingdom
Registration: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/counselling-and-psychotherapy-in-times-of-political-violence-tickets-648236010357?aff=oddtdtcreator
“Counselling and Psychotherapy in Times of Political Violence” is a transdisciplinary symposium addressing poverty, forced displacement, racism, and misogyny as key forms of political violence which we see on the rise globally. Grounded in the psychosocial perspective that our inner world and the sociopolitical environments are intertwined, the symposium explores the potential of counselling and psychotherapy in understanding and working with the impacts of political violence in therapeutic and training settings. The symposium brings together researchers from various fields such as culture and media studies, psychoanalytic and psychosocial studies, post-colonial studies, and feminist studies. It promotes a collaborative, reflexive approach to generate a collective inquiry on the impacts of political violence within therapeutic and training settings and how we may bridge the gap between theory and practice, psyche and social, by exploring the political dimensions of counselling and psychotherapy.
The symposium will be held at the University of Edinburgh’s Old College. The symposium is convened by Dr Nini Fang and Rhea Gandhi in collaboration with several PhD and ProfDoc students based at Edinburgh, Mingxi Li, Kartika Ladwal, and Sarah Nghidinwa. It is organised jointly by the Centre for Creative-Relational Inquiry and the Association for Psychosocial Studies and is supported by alumni and friends of the University of Edinburgh through the Student Experience Grants scheme and the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Grant.
The symposium is free to attend and open to all, bringing together counselling and psychotherapy communities both within and outwith Edinburgh. Lunch (meat, vegetarian, and vegan options) and light refreshments will be provided on the day. We would kindly invite that participants with specific food allergy and intolerance to prepare your own food.
Conference convenors:
Dr Nini Fang, University of Edinburgh nfang@ec.uk
Rhea Gandhi, University of Edinburgh rhea.gandhi@ed.ac.uk

SYMPOSIUM SCHEDULE – 30TH JUNE , FRIDAY
10.00 – 10.20 Registration
10.20 – 10.40 Symposium Opening: “Counselling and Psychotherapy in Times of Political Violence” by Dr Nini Fang, Lecturer and Convenor of the Symposium [University of Edinburgh]
10.40 – 11.40 Session i:“Poverty as Political Violence” by Dr Lucy Stroud [University of Aberdeen]
Chaired by Mingxi Li, Prof-Doc Researcher [University of Edinburgh]
11.40 – 12.00 Coffee/Tea Break
12.00 – 1.00 Session ii:“Forced Displacement as Political Violence” by Shireen Dossa, PhD Researcher [University of Essex]
“Coloniality and racism as political violence”by Rhea Gandhi, PhD Researcher and Co-convenor of the Symposium [University of Edinburgh]
Chaired by Kartika Ladwal, Prof-Doc Researcher [University of Edinburgh]

1-2.30: Lunch @ Playfrair Library, Old College

2.30 – 3.30 Session iii:“Misogyny as Political Violence” by Lasse Schaefer, PhD Researcher [University of Edinburgh]
“Transphobic ideologies as Political Violence” by Jaz Halow, Prof-Doc Researcher [University of Edinburgh]
Chaired by Sarah Nghidinwa, Prof-Doc Researcher [University of Edinburgh]

3.30 – 3.50 Break

3.50 – 4.50 Final Plenary: “Counselling and Psychotherapy in Times of Political ViolenceG.159 MacLaren Stuart Room, Old College
4.50 – 5.00 Closing and Event Evaluation

Whose Borderline is it anyway?
2023-11-02 14:30 - 19:00 | Anomolous Space, 36 Pentonville Road, London, United Kingdom
A special edition of the Journal of Psychosocial Studies commissioned articles to engage critically with questions about what is going on with the diagnosis of ‘Borderline’? This event provides space for some thought and reflection on some of the issues raised.
The diagnosis and concept of ‘borderline’ has become one of the most used in the psy-lexicon. And yet it remains one of the most controversial.
‘Borderline’ has emerged in the past couple of decades as a common feature, not only of the psychiatric landscape, but has also become an object of public discourse clearly visible in the wider culture of the ‘western’ world.
‘Borderline’ and its assumed associated problems figure saliently among the problems perceived to be significant within mental health services, primary care, welfare services and even the education system.
Borderline has also received high levels of dissent and criticism, both from within the mental health professions and from the outside. Service user and survivor groups have aimed fierce criticisms at diagnostic and treatment practices.

2.30pm: Welcome
3 .00pm: Whose borderline is anyway? (Jo Lomani and David Jones)
Francesca Lewis – The borderline as diagnostician: an autø/gnøstic reading of a history of binaries
Hattie Porter: It’s not my sense of self that’s unstable, it’s the world’s sense of me: the harms of the construct of ‘personality disorders’ towards transgender communities
Cassie Lovelock – Are you borderline or did you grow up without a racial identity?
Nina Fellows – The lability and liability of female ‘borderline’ sexuality: a feminist Foucauldian discourse analysis
David Jones: A history of borderline: disorder at the heart of psychiatry
4.00pm: Discussion: Where now?
5 .00pm: Drinks and nibbles
1 8-45 – Close

Date: Thursday Nov 2nd 2023
Time: 14:30:00 GMT+0000 (Greenwich Mean Time)
Location: Anomalous Space 36 Pentonville Road, London, N1 9HF (This venue is accessible)

Tickets and Details: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/whose-borderline-is-it-anyway-tickets-721944825407?aff=oddtdtcreator

Organisers: David Jones & Jo Lomani

How to publish in the Journal of Psychosocial Studies?
2023-12-07 10:00 - 11:00
Association of Psychosocial Studies: How to publish in the Journal of Psychosocial Studies?

Date: 7th December, 2023
Time: 10 – 11am UK time/ 3.30 – 4.30pm IST
Where: Zoom
Register here

Getting your researched published in a journal can feel daunting, especially if you are no longer in an academic environment.
In this event, the Editors of the Journal of Psychosocial Studies – Liz Frost, University of the West of England, UK and David W. Jones, Open University, UK – will walk you through the big questions about whether the Journal of Psychosocial Studies a good home for your research. Meet the Editors and discuss the submission process, what the journal is looking for and more advice for Early Career Researchers.

Introductory remarks by Rhea Gandhi, PhD Candidate at the University of Edinburgh.

Here are some of the things that will be addressed:

· What is psychosocial?
· What kind of research is the JPS looking for?
· What qualifies as psychosocial research?
· Themes for submissions

Questions for the Open Space:

· What kind of articles fit into the Open space vs. Reearch. What separates these spaces?
· Why publish in the Open space?
The aim of this session is to demystify the process of academic publishing and increase accessibility. So bring all your questions, we look forward to having you there!

Emeritus Prof Stephen Frosh: Psychosocial studies with psychoanalysis (Reading Group)
2024-01-24 18:00 - 19:30
We are incredibly happy to invite you to join us for the first APS online reading group of the year! We are starting this academic year with Stephen Frosh’s important work on some of the principles of psychosocial thinking, including its transdisciplinarity and criticality and its interest in ethics and reflexivity.
Stephen Frosh will be there to talk about his work and in particular his paper:
`Psychosocial studies with psychoanalysis’ (Journal of Psychosocial Studies, 2019)
https://bristoluniversitypressdigital.com/view/journals/jps/12/1-2/article-p101.xml

Please book here:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/emeritus-prof-stephen-frosh-psychosocial-studies-with-psychoanalysis-tickets-781427790557

Abstract:
Psychosocial studies is methodologically and theoretically diverse, drawing on a wide range of intellectual resources. However, psychoanalysis has often taken a privileged position within this diversity, because of its well-developed conceptual vocabulary that can be put to use to theorise the psychosocial subject. Its practices have become a model for some aspects of psychosocial work, especially in relation to its focus on intense study of individuals, its explicit engagement with ethical relations, and its traversing of disciplinary boundaries across the arts, humanities and social sciences.
This article begins with a brief description of some principles of psychosocial thinking, including its transdisciplinarity and criticality and its interest in ethics and in reflexivity. It then explores the place of psychoanalysis in this genealogy, presenting the case for psychoanalysis’ continuing contribution to the development of psychosocial studies. It is argued that this case is a strong one, but that the critique of psychoanalysis from the discursive, postcolonial, feminist and queer perspectives that are also found in psychosocial studies is important. The claim will be made that the engagement between psychoanalysis and its psychosocial critics is fundamentally productive. Even though it generates real tensions, these tensions are necessary and significant, reflecting genuine struggles over how best to understand the socially constructed human subject
Author biography:
Stephen Frosh is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Birkbeck, where he founded the Department of Psychosocial Studies. He has a background in academic and clinical psychology and was Consultant Clinical Psychologist and latterly Vice Dean at the Tavistock Clinic, London, throughout the 1990s.
He is the author of many books and papers, including Hauntings: Psychoanalysis and Ghostly Transmissions (Palgrave MacMillan, 2013) and Hate and the Jewish Science: Anti-Semitism, Nazism and Psychoanalysis (Palgrave MacMillan, 2005). His recent book Antisemitism and Racism: Ethical Challenges for Psychoanalysis, was released last year by Bloomsbury. His book, Those Who Come After: Postmemory, Acknowledgement and Forgiveness (Palgrave, 2019) won the 2023 British Psychological Society award for the best Academic Monograph. His current research interests are in processes of acknowledgement and recognition after social violence and in questions of social identity. He is co-editor of the Palgrave Handbook of Psychosocial Studies.
Stephen is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, an Academic Associate of the British Psychoanalytical Society, a Founding Member of the Association of Psychosocial Studies, and an Honorary Member of the Institute of Group Analysis. He has been Visiting Professor at the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa, and at the University of São Paulo, Brazil.
This event is free – but please make a donation if you can to help cover our costs so that we can continue to make events like this accessible to all.

Violence of Politics and Politics of Violence
2024-02-01 15:00 - 17:00 | 1.264 Usha Kasera Lecture Theatre, Old College South Bridge Edinburgh EH8 9YL, 1.264 Usha Kasera Lecture Theatre, Old College South Bridge Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH8 9YL, United Kingdom

2024-03-13 14:00 - 2024-07-12 16:00
DECOLONISING COUNSELLING & PSYCHOTHERAPY – REFLECTIONS FROM PSYCHOSOCIAL PERSPECTIVES

This public-facing seminar series challenges Eurocentric perspectives in traditional therapy and develop politically progressive, decolonial alternatives in line with University- and sector-wide decolonisation efforts. It examines the psychosocial impacts of colonial violence on contemporary socio-political dynamics. It is funded by the Principal’s Teaching Awards Scheme and is led by Nini Kerr in collaboration with Rhea Gandhi and Mariya Levitanus.

You can register for any/all of our events here – they are free and open to everyone!

Programme Schedule:

13th March, Wednesday, 2-4pm: Nini Kerr on ‘Culture as the Bad Object’ and Erica Burman on ‘Child as Method as a resource for decolonial theory and practice‘ – G.07 Meadows Lecturer Theater, Doorway 4

[Special Book Launch Event] 18th March, Monday, 4.30-6.30pm: ‘The Rebel’s Clinic’ by Adam Shatz. Register here.

12th April, Friday, 2-4pm: Mariya Levitanus on ‘Beyond the Norm: Decolonial Queer Perspectives on Counselling and Psychotherapy’ – Sydney Smith Lecture Room – Doorway 1

10th May, Friday, 2-4pm: Rhea Gandhi & Isaac Yu on ‘Therapy as Political Resistance’ – Sydney Smith Lecture Room – Doorway 1

5th June, Wednesday, 2-4pm – Lynne Layton ‘Social Psychoanalysis, Normative Unconscious Processes, and an Ethic of Repair [room tbc]

12th July, Friday, 2-4pm – Sheyda Esmali on ‘Unravelling Xenophobia Psychoanalytically’ [room tbc]

We look forward to seeing you there!

Project Team:
Nini, Rhea, and Mariya

Prof Tony Jefferson: The Free Association Narrative Interview (FANI)
2024-03-27 17:00 - 19:00
Registration: Click here for more details
Join us in our APS online reading group, as we listen to Emeritus Prof Tony Jefferson’s reading of Panic and Perjury and FANI method
We are incredibly happy to invite you to join us for our next APS online reading group! We are welcoming Tony Jefferson to share his important work on the Free Association Narrative Interview (FANI) Method as a key methodology for psychosocial research.
Tony Jefferson is an Emeritus Professor at Keele University who has researched and published widely on questions to do with youth subcultures, the media, policing, race and crime, masculinity, fear of crime, racial violence and psychosocial methodology. He worked with Stuart Hall and others to produce Resistance Through Rituals (1976/2006) and Policing the Crisis (1978/2013). His books on Policing include Controlling the Constable (1984/2023) and Interpreting Policework (1987/2023), both co-authored with Roger Grimshaw, and The Case Against Paramilitary Policing (1990/2023).
His fear of crime project, with Wendy Hollway, produced the novel Free Association Narrative Interview (FANI) method and a subsequent book, Doing Qualitative Research Differently (2000/2012). Teaching psychosocial criminology with David Gadd produced their jointly authored text, Psychosocial Criminology (2007). His latest book is Stuart Hall, Conjunctural Analysis and Cultural Criminology (2021). He has held Visiting Professorships in the United States, Australia, Denmark and Sweden and was a one time European editor of the journal Theoretical Criminology.
To prepare for this reading, please read:
‘Panic and Perjury: A psychosocial exploration of agency’ by Hollway and Jefferson, 2005
https://oro.open.ac.uk/22982/
Abstract:
The primary aim of this article is to explore the predicament of one man, Vince, in difficult circumstances, in order to produce a psychosocial analysis that could contribute to the understanding of agency . In the process we note the role of what we prefer to call affect, rather than emotion, in most contexts. If emotions are, as Blackman and Cromby (2007: 6) suggest, ‘those patterned brain/body responses that are culturally recognizable and provide some unity, stability and coherence to the felt dimensions of our relational encounters’, it is perhaps unsurprising that, because we are focusing on unconscious dynamics in this chapter, the term affect proves more relevant to our analysis than the emotions of anger and shame that are, arguably, the core suppressed emotions in the account. Vince himself never talked in terms of specific emotions, but rather, in line with Blackman and Cromby’s definition that ‘feelings register intensive experiences as subjective experience’ (ibid), of how he was experiencing his painful world. In highlighting his embodied ‘sickness’, and the accompanying anxiety, we focus on the affective dimension. In this usage, anxiety is an affective state.

Lynne Layton on 'Social Psychoanalysis, Normative Unconscious Processes, and an Ethic of Repair.
2024-06-05 14:00 - 15:00
We are delighted to invite you to join us for a public lecture by Lynne Layton on ‘Social Psychoanalysis, Normative Unconscious Processes, and an Ethic of Repair. The lecture is part of the seminar series on ‘Decolonising Counselling and Psychotherapy: Reflections from Psychosocial Perspectives’, organised by Nini Kerr, Rhea Gandhi, and Mariya Levitanus, in collaboration with the Association for Psychosocial Studies.

When: Wednesday, 5th June, from 2-3pm.
How: MS Teams – please contact Rhea Gandhi for the link to join the event

Session abstract
This talk takes up the question of what a social psychoanalysis might look like in the clinic, in our psychoanalytic institutions, and in our society. Drawing on some earlier psychoanalysts’ concepts that have connected the social world and the psychic world, I introduce the concept of normative unconscious processes, which addresses the ways that racism, heterosexism, classism and other social inequalities are unconsciously replicated in the clinic. The talk then explores how therapists can resist unconsciously replicating such cultural inequalities. We will then look outside the clinic at how cultural inequalities manifest in the wider circles of contemporary institutional and sociocultural life. Here, too, we will explore how we, as citizens and therapists, both unconsciously replicate and can resist replicating harmful, unequal relations. We will think together about how to address the places in our different subjective and communal worlds where harm has been done, and engage together on how to make repair.

Author bio:
Lynne Layton has a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and in Clinical Psychology. She is a psychoanalyst and has taught and supervised at the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis. She is also a Corresponding Member of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Psychiatry Department at Harvard Medical School. Lynne is the author of Who’s That Girl? Who’s That Boy? Clinical Practice Meets Postmodern Gender Theory, and co-editor of 3 books: Narcissism and the Text: Studies in Literature and the Psychology of Self; Bringing the Plague: Toward a Postmodern Psychoanalysis; and Psychoanalysis, Class and Politics: Encounters in the Clinical Setting. From 2004-2017, she was co-editor of the journal Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society and she is currently an associate editor of Psychoanalytic Dialogues. She is a past-President of Psychoanalysis for Social Responsibility and founded Reflective Spaces/Material Places-Boston, a group of psychodynamic therapists committed to community mental health and social justice. Lynne is on the organizing committee of a national Black-led reparations campaign. She is the author of the 2020 book Toward a Social Psychoanalysis: Culture, Character, and Normative Unconscious Processes, winner of a 2021 book award from the American Academy and Board of Psychoanalysis.

Please contact Rhea Gandhi for the link to join the event.

APS-APCS 2024 Conference
2024-06-17 - 2024-06-18 | St. Mary’s University, Twickenham, Waldegrave Road, London, TW1 4SX, United Kingdom
Psychosocial approaches to researching and experiential learning

A joint conference of the Association for Psychosocial Studies and the Association for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society
17th-18th June 2024
St Mary’s University, Twickenham, London TW1 4SX
Conference programme: https://www.conftool.net/aps-apcs-2024/sessions.php
Registration: https://www.conftool.net/aps-apcs-2024/
Registration information: https://www.psychosocial-studies-association.org/registration/
Conference enquiries: conference2024@protonmail.com

Call for papers: Confronting Violence: Exploring the Psychosocial Dynamics of Gender-Based Aggression
2025-01-17 08:00 - 17:00
Call for papers:
Confronting Violence: Exploring the Psychosocial Dynamics of Gender-Based Aggression
Special Edition of The Journal of Psychosocial Studies

The recent report by the National Police Chief’s Council on Violence against Women and Girls has once again highlighted the critical nature of this issue. Declaring the scale of the problem as a national emergency, comparable to terrorism, the report underscores alarming statistics: one in six homicides in England and Wales is linked to domestic abuse, and 20% of all police-recorded crimes—over one million offences annually—are categorized as violence against women and girls. These offences include sexual assault, stalking, harassment, domestic violence, and controlling and coercive behaviour, with the true total estimated to be twice as high.
We believe that psychosocial perspectives are essential for understanding gender-based violence, as it is deeply rooted in social and cultural contexts and lives within the intimate worlds of both perpetrators and victims. We seek articles that engage with the inseparable interplay between psychological and social factors, and offer fresh insights into the complex dynamics that drive these harmful behaviours.
Particular topics that might be included are (for example):

Sexual assault and rape
Stalking
Coercion and control
Institutional misogyny
INCELS
Online abuse and misogyny
Domestic abuse
The impact of abuse and violence
Preventing VAWG
Harassment
Violence in Schools
Policing and VAWG
Intergenerational impacts of abuse and violence

We can publish both formal research papers (that would need to be written in the expected style and sent out for independent review) and open space articles (less formal articles, that might be based on personal experiences and reflection that might take the form of prose, poetry, visual art).
Details are here: https://bristoluniversitypressdigital.com/view/journals/jps/jps-overview.xml?tab_body=instructions-for-authors

Interested contributors should:
Send an abstract of around 500 words to Pete Harris (p00096516@brookes.ac.uk) by Friday 17th January 2025. Please make it clear which type of paper you hope to submit. We are likely to be expecting draft of selected papers to be submitted around November 2025.You will be informed within one month of receipt whether we invite the full submission. Interested contributors are welcome to contact us with queries.

Special Edition Editors

Jane Meyrick – University of West of England (Jane.Meyrick@uwe.ac.uk)
David Gadd – University of Manchester (david.gadd@manchester.ac.uk
Peter Harris – Oxford Brookes University (p00096516@brookes.ac.uk)
David W Jones – The open university (david.jones@open.ac.uk)
Ioanna Gouseti – Oxford Brookes University (p0096557@brookes.ac.uk)
There are more details about the journal here: https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/journals/journal-of-psychosocial-studies

Performing (Post) Pandemic Grief: Prof Fintan Walsh
2025-02-19 16:00 - 17:30
Register here

We are incredibly happy to invite you to join us for our next APS online reading group! We are delighted to welcome Fintan Walsh to present his research on the reckoning with grief in pandemic theatre.
Please join us to learn more about the vital contribution of theatrical performance to the ongoing work of public mourning in the wake of COVID-19.
In advance of the session, please access Prof Walsh’s new book: Performing Grief in Pandemic Theatres. The text is quite short but we especially invite participants to read sections 1, 4 and Coda.
Abstract:
This Element explores how theatre responded to the death and loss produced by the COVID-19 pandemic, by innovating forms and spaces designed to support us in grief. It considers how theatre grieved for itself, for the dead, for lost ways of living, while also imagining and enacting new modes of being together. Even as it reckoned with its own demise, theatre endeavoured to collectivise grief by performing a range of functions more commonly associated with funerary, health and social care services, which buckled under restrictions and neglect. These pandemic theatres show how grief cannot only be let mourn over individual losses in private, but how it must also seep into the public sphere to fight to save critical services, institutions, communities and art forms, including theatre itself.
Author biography:
Fintan Walsh is Professor of Performing Arts and Humanities at Birkbeck, University of London, where is the founding Director of Birbeck Creative Practice Lab and Head of the School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication. His research focuses on theatre, performance and cross-disciplinary arts practice, with monographs including Performing Grief in Pandemic Theatres (Cambridge University Press, 2024), Performing the Queer Past: Public Possessions (Methuen Drama, 2023), Theatre & Therapy (Methuen Drama, 2013; expanded and reissued 2024), Queer Performance and Contemporary Ireland: Dissent and Disorientation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), and Male Trouble: Masculinity and the Performance of Crisis (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). Edited volumes include Writing Queer Performance: Contemporary Texts and Documents (Methuen Drama, 2025), Theatres of Contagion: Transmitting Early Modern to Contemporary (Methuen Drama, 2020), That Was Us: Contemporary Irish Theatre and Performance (Oberon Books, 2013), Performance, Identity and the Neo-Political Subject (with Matthew Causey, Routledge, 2013), Queer Notions: New Plays and Performances from Ireland (Cork University Press, 2010), and Crossroads: Performance Studies and Irish Culture (with Sara Brady, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). Fintan is the founder and Senior Editor of the series Elements in Contemporary Performance Texts (Cambridge University Press) and is a former Senior Editor of the journal Theatre Research International (Cambridge University Press).

Rising Authoritarianism and the Implications for Counselling and Psychotherapy, Friday, 11th April 2025
2025-04-10 10:00 - 13:30
Rising Authoritarianism and the Implications for Counselling and Psychotherapy, Friday, 11th April 2025

We warmly invite students, staff, and the wider therapeutic community to a mini symposium exploring the impact of rising authoritarianism on counselling and psychotherapy. As political landscapes shift globally, we will examine how authoritarian dynamics influence personal and collective psychosocial wellbeing, therapeutic practice, and the profession itself.

Join us for a morning of insightful discussions with leading thinkers in the field by registering here.

Date: Friday, 11th April 2025
Time: 10:00 AM – 1:30 PM
Venue: Hybrid; Mclaren Stuart Room, Old College, University of Edinburgh
Please note: this event is hybrid for accessibility – it is free and open to all. We highly encourage in-person attendance for those in and around Edinburgh.

Symposium Programme

10:00 – 10:10 AM | Opening Remarks by Nini Kerr
10:10 – 10:50 AM | William Kerr – Nationalism and the Global Rise of Authoritarianism
Break
11:00 – 11:40 AM | Susie Orbach – The Seductions and Perils of Authoritarianism
Break
12:00 – 12:40 PM | Barry Richards – Toxic Confusions In and Around Authoritarianism Today
12:40 – 1:10 PM | Small Group Discussion – Rising Authoritarianism and the Implications for Counselling and Psychotherapy
1:10 – 1:30 PM | Final Plenary

This symposium offers a space for critical reflection on the rise of authoritarianism and its implications for therapeutic practice and communities. the role of the therapist and of course, We see our coming together as a political act of engagement in these turbulent times and look forward to your participation in this timely conversation. The symposium is funded by Student Experience Grant

Symposium Convenors: Nini Kerr, Rhea Gandhi, and Jahnavi Dutta
Symposium Anchors: Yaxin Hu (Prof Doc), Beca Sammon (MSc in ICC), Ally Fukada (MSc in CS), Kartika Ladwal (Prof Doc)

If you have any queries regarding registration, please contact Rhea, who is able to advise you: rhea.gandhi@ed.ac.uk
