UKCP conference: Psychotherapy in a changing world

Dr Aaron Balick is a leading voice in the demystification of psychology and its power to deepen understanding and unlock personal and professional evolution. His ground-breaking book The Psychodynamics of Social Networking made him an international authority on the psychology of social media and technology.

Synopsis

Becoming a Psycho-technologist: Making sense of AI, hyper-connectivity, and the digitally mediated human.

Our current era is defined by rapid advances in technological innovation that pose unprecedented challenges to the human psyche that struggles to evolve quickly enough to meet them. We are increasingly hyperconnected within networks that are influenced by algorithms we barely understand that deeply shape our internal worlds as well as mediating our relationships with others. From AI and machine learning to social media and dating apps, today’s technological forces are reshaping human behaviour, relationships, mental health, and even social cohesion. Psychotherapists can no longer look the other way. As a profession at the vanguard of preserving personal insight and relational complexity, it has never been more of an imperative to engage with these advancing technologies.  Join Dr. Aaron Balick, author of The Psychodynamics of Social Networking, who will help us explore the profound impact of technology on the human psyche, and show how now, we must all become psycho-technologists.

Professor (Dr.) Divine Charura is an Honorary Fellow of the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP), an adult psychotherapist and researcher. He is also a practitioner psychologist registered with the Health and Care Professions Council in England and a coaching psychologist.

For Divine’s publications, please see https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/profile/2104

Synopsis

Navigating a Paradigm shift:  Engaging with tensions of opposites through authentic encounter, love, and intersectionality in exploring social change.

Therapists are increasingly aware of the need for socioculturally attuned and decolonised practice within their own socio-political contexts. As professionals from a diverse range of communities there are many ways, we can achieve social change. In this changing world we are faced with many challenges both in the therapy consultation room, and in the diverse communities we work in. I am making the case in this plenary that at present there are tensions in our world sometimes emerging from our differences in understandings or perspectives for example in relation to gender, class, sexuality, social class and economic factors, age, dis/ability, and ethnicity, neurodiversity, power, privilege and so on. 

How do we authentically demonstrate our value of intersectionality, acknowledging privilege and/or inequalities in meeting the un/known other. What are the difficult questions, and consequent paradigm shifts we need to face in hearing from and learning from the voice of the oppressed, and marginalised? How can we engage in a dynamic of ‘power with rather’ than ‘power over the other’? How can we manage engaging with tensions of opposites we all face, through authentic encounter, love, and intersectionality, in exploring social change?

Mick Cooper is an internationally recognised author, trainer, and consultant in the field of humanistic, existential, and pluralistic therapies. He is a UKCP-registered psychotherapist, Chartered Psychologist, and Professor of Counselling Psychology at the University of Roehampton. 

Synposis 

A World On Fire: Can Psychotherapy Help to Douse the Flames?

What contribution can psychotherapy make to addressing the major social, political, and environmental threats of our time? In this presentation—based on his recent book Psychology at the Heart of Social Change (BUP, 2023), and through the development of the Therapy and Social Change network—Mick will suggest that psychotherapeutic theory and practice has a unique and important part to play. This is through a variety of ways. First, psychotherapy can help us deepen our understanding of why social difficulties, such as authoritarianism, arise, and how they can be tackled. Second, psychotherapeutic practices, client-by-client, can contribute to more peaceful, mindful, and thriving citizens. Third, practices informed by psychotherapeutic ideas, such as nonviolent communication and social and emotional learning, have the potential to enhance cooperative and empathic modes of relating—including in political systems, themselves. Finally, by looking at parallels across intra- and interpersonal processes of change, we can help to develop an understanding of the system-wide principles by which ‘better’ can be achieved. Psychotherapists should be confident that their ideas and practices have the potential to change the world—not in isolation, but in collaboration with those others also striving for greater social cooperation, justice, and peace.

Graham Music is a psychotherapist, trainer, author, and supervisor. He has been a consultant child and adolescent psychotherapist at the Tavistock Centre for over 25 years and an adult psychotherapist for 35 years. 

Synopsis

Energy, Spark and the Body:  Challenging hopelessness in therapy, life and the world.

This talk will focus on clients, adults and children, who lack ‘spark’, who can be hard to reach,  who seem flat, dulled down, and who can feel be a challenge to work with.

It will outline why energy and spark are so central, why we need to become ‘nervous-system whisperers’, and why we need to galvanise hope and a ‘life-giver’.

Graham will suggest that, while providing safeness is essential in trauma work, there can be a danger in this of not finding the courage to allow challenge needed to face what we defend against.

He will differentiate ways in which our clients might lack spark, both due to the profound effects of neglect rather than overt trauma, but also due to shut-down after overt trauma, and dissociation. He will suggest how these lead to different bodily states in patient and therapist and require different approaches.

Alison is a consultative supervisor with 25 years of experience in group work, therapy, and applied theatre. She has been privileged to work in prisons and Romanian orphanages with military veterans and survivors of complex trauma. She worked for several years as a Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in Counselling and Psychotherapy at the University of South Wales. She co-founded Re-Live, an arts and health charity that creates life story work for older adults and people recovering from trauma and adversity.

Synopsis 

Moral Injury and the power of storytelling.

Moral injury is the deep emotional and psychological distress caused by “perpetrating, failing to prevent, bearing witness to or learning about acts that transgress deeply held moral beliefs” (Litz et al, 2009), exacerbated by a sense of betrayal by someone in authority. Understanding of moral injury evolved in the military context when soldiers returning from Vietnam were unable to reconcile acts committed with their personal moral codes (Shay, 1994). The pandemic accelerated awareness of moral injury in healthcare staff and all who work on the human frontline. In a recent survey of doctors by the BMA, 78% said the terms moral injury or moral distress resonated with their experiences. Moral injury is now recognised across multiple professions, including social work, chaplaincy, nursing and journalism. Anecdotal examples include not being able to provide care that feels good enough, a sense of betrayal by those in authority due to lack of accountability, staff shortages, and pay freezes. This is a global issue beginning to present in counselling and psychotherapy contexts.

Tree is a published author of various academic papers, contributing articles and editorships including Body Psychotherapy (ed, Routledge, 2002) and Being a Therapist in a Time of Climate Breakdown (co-eds Anderson, Staunton, O’Gorman and Hickman, Routledge 2024).

Synopsis

Being a Therapist in a Time of Climate Breakdown

The work of therapy is to turn crisis into meaning. There is no question that we are living within various overlapping and unfolding crises – social, cultural and environmental. How do we as therapists meet the challenges these bring to our own lives and to the lives of our clients? How do we find meaning?

In this talk Tree Staunton presents clinical research and writing from within the growing field of Climate Psychology, a discipline which seeks to explore and understand the non-rational dimensions of our collective paralysis in the face of worsening environmental breakdown. How can we think the unthinkable, bear the unbearable? And if not us, then who?

Julie Stone is the UKCP’s Independent Ethics Lead and Chair of its Ethics Committee. An academic healthcare lawyer and ethicist by background, Julie Stone has directly influenced healthcare regulatory strategy, policy development and professional standards for over thirty years, advising regulators, professional associations and the Government. 

Synopsis

Ethics Myth Busting.

This thought-provoking session will explore and dismiss various myths about ethics and psychotherapy, showing that the process of arriving at an ethically sustainable decision is part of the everyday, reflexive skill-set that informs good practice.  It dispels the notion that there is one ‘right’ answer, or that a Code can contain a blueprint for all clinical situations.  It will explain why the therapist in the room is best placed to decide what course to take, such as when to respect client autonomy and when a breach of confidentiality might be necessary.  It probes what it means to be a ‘good/good enough’ practitioner, and how, ethically, that question is informed in relation to the evidence base.  It will discuss key ethical notions such as consent, limits of competence, and professional boundaries, questioning whether current training equips practitioners for dilemmas they are likely to encounter in practice.