Psychosocial Studies Online Reading Group: Citizens of the world?
2022-03-25 17:00 - 19:00 (Europe/London)
Chris Scanlon and John Adlam
Please note that we have moved the start time back to 5pm, after working hours, to accommodate those who will be participating in industrial action ending on 25 March.
This month we have a very special reading group. Chris Scanlon and John Adlam will be presenting their new book: Psycho-social Explorations of Trauma, Exclusion and Violence: Un-housed Minds and Inhospitable Environments.
Chapter 3 of the book is available to download for free here

About this event:
In our recently published book we explore the operation of discourses of power, privilege, and position as they are revealed in relations of domination and toxic ‘othering’ as between privileged in-groups ‘in possession’ and oppressed and dispossessed out-groups. We analyse and critique the inhospitable environments generated by these societal in-groups at local, societal, cultural, and global levels. We particularly foreground the complex intersections between empire, doctrines of supremacy and racism, human mobility, and climate disaster, which the present war of aggression being waged against Ukraine so catastrophically aggravates.

In the chapter this group will study, we develop our exploration of how excluded monadic outsiders experience the (in-)hospitality of the in-group; and the extent of their scattered and essentially ambivalent relationships with the out-group. We build on our Diogenes paradigm using vignettes from the life of the early Christian saint, Simeon Stylites, and we show how his almost suicidal asceticism disturbed his fellow monks beyond even their own considerable endurance.

Like Diogenes, Simeon’s position in relation to a societal in-group was to consider that the only place he can take his stand is at the very edge of it. We explore how from this positioning both men earned and built what trust came their way by virtue of their truth-telling about the relations of domination to which they were exposed. We extend our discussion of the problematic nature of this liminality by exploring the relationship between the modern in-group, in the form of the State and its ‘metropolitan’ systems of care, and the various contemporary, out-groups who are experienced as (and vilified and silenced for) being ‘out-of-place’.

Psycho-social explorations of trauma, exclusion and violence: Un-housed minds and inhospitable environments

You can order the book from the publisher’s website here

Endorsements

“This book inspires a feeling of relief. It brings together the most pressing issues of our time – climate change, genocide, exclusionary nationalism and deep-rooted dehumanising racisms – in profoundly original ways that address power relations, exclusions, ‘unhousedness’ and (re)traumatisation. It faces the pain they engender while refusing familiar, patronising tropes of otherness. Its perceptive, and sometimes poetic, scholarship brings deep hope that other, genuinely psychosocial ways of living and relating are possible, despite disagreements and disappointments along the way.” Ann Phoenix, Professor of Psychosocial Studies, UCL

In this elegantly argued, carefully documented work, Chistopher Scanlon and John Adlam offer a refreshing critical angle on some of the most pressing forms of social traumatization and exclusion. Going beyond ‘dispossession’, ‘necropolitics’, and ‘states of exception’ as means of characterizing the social injury wrought by inhospitable neoliberal sovereigns, they deploy a deeply critical, practice-based lens to looking at the suffering in our world produced by colonial and racist structures, mechanisms of dispossession and unhousedness, and ecocidal policies that are exacerbating a global migration crisis. The authors mitigate their disappointment at the persistence of oppression by proposing a blueprint for solidarity around anti-oppressive social action. Prof Michael O’Loughlin, Adelphi University, New York, co-editor Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society.

Starting from homelessness and ending with ‘race’ this is a study of abjection and shame and of its refusal, the refusal to go quietly into the night and accept your place on society’s outermost margins. Scanlon and Adlam examine the vexed relations between those who are cast out and those who, simply by occupying the position that they occupy, do the casting. This wonderfully imaginative and principled book draws upon a startling diversity of sources to explore the paradoxes and predicaments of structural violence. Prof Paul Hoggett, Co-Founder of the Climate Psychology Alliance.

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

Author biographies:
Chris Scanlon is a psycho-socialist consultant/researcher, group analyst, consultant general adult and forensic psychotherapist, and associate lecturer in psycho-social and organisational studies at the Tavistock & Portman NHS Trust. c.scanlon@btinternet.com Twitter: @CHRISTOPHERSCA8
John Adlam is an independent researcher, group psychotherapist and consultant psychotherapist. He is a founder member of the Association for Psychosocial Studies and a former Vice President of the International Association for Forensic Psychotherapy. john.adlam1@btinternet.com Twitter: @Diogenesquely
Chris and John were both colleagues at the Outreach Service of the Henderson Hospital Democratic Therapeutic Community before that Service’s abrupt and scandalous closure in April 2008.

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.

6 months on from COP26 Psycho-Social Reflections: What have we learnt?
2022-05-04 - 2022-05-07
The Association for Psychosocial Studies and the Climate Psychology Alliance are jointly hosting a two-day, international online event reflecting through a psychosocial lens upon the lessons learnt 6 months after COP26.
Two parallel events will be taking place – one in the Western Time Zone and one in the Eastern Time Zone. Sessions in both regions will mirror one another, with the events being a mixture of live and pre-recorded sessions.
Keynote Speakers:
Paul Hoggett – From COP15 in Copenhagen to COP26 in Glasgow
Shelot Masithi – Climate Change and Thirs
This event aims to:

Face together the realities on the ground as a result of the failure of COP26 to effectively tackle disastrous levels of global heating.

Increase understanding and enable dialogue between different climate-affected groups and places across the globe.

Identify and support emergent processes that strengthen individual and community resilience in their engagement with climate crisis

Support the development of psycho-socially informed perspectives and practices around climate change and its impact upon physical and mental wellbeing.
Keynote speeches will be delivered by Paul Hoggett and Shelot Masithi. More information about their speeches can befound here.
Across the two-days and two time zones, there will be four panel discussions focusing on different aspects of the climate emergency and how different nations/actors have responded.
For a detailed overview of the event, please visit the event website. The website will be updated on a regular basis, with a section dedicated to useful resources linked to the event.

Psychosocial Studies and Journal of Psychosocial Studies Online Reading Reading Group: On not being able to read
2022-05-27 16:00 - 18:00
Myna Trustram
Please join us for our monthly online reading groups where we will be coming together and discussing topical psychosocial articles. This month we are incredibly lucky to have Myna Trustram present her essay “On not being able to read” published by the Journal of Psychosocial Studies.
The essay can be accessed and download free of charge by clicking here

Abstract:
This experimental essay sets out an imaginative and cognitive space in which I might explore my bizarre and troubling experience of not being able to read. I open a book that I suspect will reveal things I want to know and I am unable to go beyond a few paragraphs. It is not due to a lack of time or dyslexia; it is about the emotional world that I enter when I read.

The essay is not a flowing narrative because my mind does not think in that way about the problem; rather, it is a collection of notes for an unthought work. This is, actually, how I read – never quite going all the way. I write the essay not to solve the problem but to see if I can make something of it, which means encountering it and so feeling it all the more.

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

Author biography:
Myna Trustram worked in England for many years as a historian, museum curator and academic. In 2021 she stopped paid work and now focuses on being a writer. Myna writes short experimental essays in which she calls upon literary and academic forms to consider themes such as mourning, childhood, separation and emptiness. Myna has publications in Victorian social history, museum studies and now this more adventurous form that calls upon psychoanalysis and the psychosocial.

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.

Psychosocial Studies Online Reading Group: Invisible Trauma Women, Difference and the Criminal Justice System
2022-06-10 16:00 - 18:00
Anna Motz, Maxine Dennis, Anne Aiyegbusi
We have a very special event for the final reading group of the summer. Anna Motz, Maxine Dennis, Anne Aiyegbusi will be presenting their new book: Invisible Trauma : Women, Difference and the Criminal Justice System
A sample chapter can be downloaded here
You can order the book from the publisher’s website here

Abstract:
There is an expectation that women will be nurturers and carers. Women who have been judged violent, destructive and criminal and who are detained in the criminal justice system can find themselves perceived through a distorted lens as unwomanly. This book explains how they become hypervisible in their difference, while the histories of trauma and suffering that are communicated through their offending and other risk behaviour remain hidden, and so are unseen.

Bringing together authors uniquely placed as experts in their fields, Invisible Trauma argues that it is essential to trace the traumatic roots of women’s violence and criminality. Powerful intergenerational factors perpetuate the cycles of offending and trauma re-enactment that current sentencing practice overlooks. The authors present a psychoanalytically informed account of the development of violence and other offending, identifying pathways for change to address trauma within the lives of these women and their children, and also to create a responsive, effective and sensitive workforce.

Invisible Trauma highlights the role of emotional, social and cultural forces in traumatising women who come into contact with the criminal justice system and uncovers areas of their lives that are all too often hidden from view. It will be invaluable to those working in clinical and forensic psychology, mental health nursing, psychotherapy, social work, medical practice and women’s health, as well as frontline practitioners in the criminal justice system, the health service and third sector organisations and for anyone with an interest in racism, equality and social justice.
All registered attendees should automatically be sent a Zoom link. The link will be re-sent the day of the event.

Author biographies:
Anna Motz is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist working with adults and adolescents, and also a consultant clinical and forensic psychologist with extensive experience of assessing and treating people who have long-standing difficulties with violence against themselves and others. Anna Motz is also the author of The Psychology of Female Violence: Crimes Against the Body (Routledge, 2008) editor of Managing Self Harm: Psychological Perspectives (Routledge, 2009) and Toxic Couples: The Psychology of Domestic Violence (Routledge, 2014.)
Maxine Dennis is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist and Psychoanalyst (British Psychoanalytic Society) and is Groups Lead in the Adult Department, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. She is also a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Essex Clinical Psychology Department where she organises and contributes to the teaching on diversity and psychotherapy. Currently she is Chair of the British Psychoanalytic Council Task Group on Ethnicity, Culture and Racism.
Anne Aiyegbusi is a Mental Health Nurse, Forensic Psychotherapist and Group Analyst. She manages a clinical network for personality disorder at West London NHS Trust and is a Director of Psychological Approaches CIC. Anne has extensive experience of working with women who have histories of self-harm, trauma and offending; and of working with racism in forensic and psychotherapeutic contexts. Anne is a member of the Board of Trustees at the Institute of Group Analysis where she is also a member of the Diversity in Training Group, prioritising issues of ‘Power, Privilege and Position’.

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.

Psychosocial Cartographies
2022-06-17 09:00 - 2022-06-18 17:00 | Prague, Czech Republic
Cartography, the art and science of mapping space, has a history which cannot be separated from issues of power, control and alienation. Indeed, mapping the Americas, Asia and Africa was integral to colonial projects to dominate the land as well as all that inhabited it. As thinkers such as Frantz Fanon and Michel Foucault demonstrate throughout their oeuvres (cf. “On Violence” from The Wretched of the Earth and “Panopticism” from Discipline and Punish), controlling a space directly impacts the psychic development of those who inhabit that space. This is to say that mapping always already has implications that are psychosocial in nature.
There is also an important, if often overlooked, history of psychosocial approaches to cartography. Examples of this include: Fanon who was, in the words of his mentor François Tosquelles, first and foremost a thinker of space; Fernand Deligny’s work with non-verbal autistic children mapping how they inhabit space in order to establish therapeutic relationships with them; Félix Guattari famously approached his understanding of the unconscious via cartography, a practice indebted to Deligny; and Jean Oury, Guattari’s long-time collaborator and the founder and director of La Borde Clinic, whose approach to psychotherapy began with a phenomenological mapping of the clinic. Different from psychogeography and the dérive, the afore mentioned practitioners actively mapped space in order to radically rework it, disalienating the institutional arrangements and the individuals within.
Today, be it in relationship to issues of racialisation, digital networks, urban studies, climate change, political transformations, prison abolition, clinical work in hospitals or care in the community, the need for a psychosocial understanding of cartography is perhaps more urgent than ever. This conference will seek to elicit psychosocial approaches to mapping space in order to inform how we might address the spatial concerns that structure contemporary issues of race, geography, psychotherapy, ecology and politics.
This two-day conference will involve a blended (in person and online) programme of panels, experiential interventions and a keynote presentation by Anne Querrien.
https://www.psychosocialcartographies.com/
Email question to Anthony Faramelli at a.faramelli@gold.ac.uk

Digital Mediation and Working Through in Times of Denial, Disavowal and Splitting: On the Un/Representable
2022-09-14 09:30 - 2022-09-15 15:00 | St Mary’s University Twickenham London, Waldegrave Road, Twickenham, London, TW1 4SX, United Kingdom
An International Workshop
Organised by Dr Orit Dudai and Assoc. Prof. Jacob Johanssen – Supported by the Association for Psychosocial Studies
The goal of this workshop is for presenters to share work-in-progress and engage in collegial discussion with each other and attendees. Places are, therefore, limited.
We live in a time that is characterised by increasing political polarisation, fake news, conspiracy theories and other forms of extremism. Recent political developments, such as the post-Trump moment, have been credited with an increase in political paranoia and conspiracy theories that have spread far and wide on the internet. Social media such as Facebook, Twitter or Instagram exhibit high levels of misogyny, sexism and racism and are described as lacking in empathy, compassion and love. Traditional media, such as tabloid and broadsheet journalism or television news, also find themselves part of “culture wars” and torn between different political positions.
This symposium will explore what role psychoanalysis in combination with other disciplines, such as media and communication studies, philosophy and sociology, can play in analysing such phenomena, as well as finding possible solutions for them.
Do we need a new form of empathy or spirituality? To what extent are moments of denial, disavowal and polarization necessary? Can they revitalize political culture and society more generally? What are their limits? What solutions can be found? How are they intrinsically connected to questions of digital mediation and representation? How are they represented in film and popular culture? What tensions are revealed between what can be represented and what remains unrepresentable?

Speakers
Dr Jack Black (Sheffield Hallam University)
Dr Alfie Bown (Royal Holloway University)
Dr Orit Dudai (Kibbutzim College of Education, Technology and the Arts)
Assoc. Professor Jon Hackett (St. Mary’s University)
Assoc. Professor Jacob Johanssen (St. Mary’s University)
Dr Anthony Faramelli (Goldsmiths)
Dr Thi Gammon (Independent Scholar)
Dr Steffen Krüger (University of Oslo)
Dr Em. Sandra Meiri (Open University, Israel)
Dr Mark Murphy (Independent Scholar)
Professor Raya Morag (The Hebrew University)
Professor Candida Yates (Bournemouth University)

Psychosocial Studies: Reading Group: Navigating sameness and difference in research
2022-10-28 16:00 - 18:00
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
