We will thoroughly examine Lacan’s “Four Discourses” and their relevance to the psychotherapy setting in 2025. We will delve into their significance and relationship with truth, power, and authority. Additionally, we will scrutinize the implications of the Post-Truth Era on psychotherapy practice and equip therapists with practical tools to adeptly navigate discourse structures in therapeutic settings.

Some pivotal questions we will tackle include:
– How does the pervasive spread of disinformation impact our clients’ contemporary lives?
– What are our thoughts on the erosion of the authority of knowledge in this post-truth era?
– Where do we identify the challenge to power and authority, and what utility or threat does this hold?
– How can we skillfully guide our clients through a world of conflicting truths?

This workshop will be a journey with a departure point of Post-Truth Era philosophy. Through exploration and input, it will terminate at practical applications

The online world is sometimes seen as a risky place where minds exist without bodies, identities and ‘facts’ can be manufactured at will, and transgressive acts take place seemingly without consequence. Twenty years ago, Suler (2004) proposed that online relationships are characterised by anonymity, dissociation and acting out – in TA terms, a Petri dish for pathological Script. He called this the ‘Disinhibition Effect’ and it is still regularly referenced in therapeutic training. This workshop will explore what has been learned since 2004 and propose that in the world of online therapy which is emerging, we need a more sophisticated, nuanced and perhaps more positive approach. Participants will be encouraged to review their own experience in this new ‘proximal zone’.

Living with irrevocable loss. In September 2023 my husband, Ron Thompson, died. I want first to speak personally about this immeasurable loss. Then I want to present some of what I have learned from being widowed, both about myself, and about how I am learning to live with this loss. I will use TA concepts such as regression and script work, and hunger for strokes, stimuli, and structure. I will include ideas from Ronen Stilmen’s work on the rich potentials of digital relationship.

The workshop aims to help participants deepen their understanding of how attachment styles impact adoptees’ life scripts, transactions, and ego states through the use of case studies and reflective journaling exercises. Participants will explore how attachment experiences influence an adoptee’s internal dialogue and interactions, identifying how these dynamics play out in therapy sessions. I will share personal examples from my own therapeutic work, illustrating how attachment styles emerge in the therapeutic relationship and affect the client’s journey toward self-awareness and growth. This interactive approach encourages participants to connect theory with practice, fostering an empathetic and informed approach when working with adoptees as well as wandering through their own attachment experiences.

How can it be generative given that it consumes what it is trained on and produces an amalgamation of what it has learned, meaning it often distils and reproduces societal biases and global inequality and increases marginalisation?

In this workshop, we will explore the prejudices and dehumanisation of Autistic People through artificially generated images and text.

A conversational space considering who we are, how AI constructs us, what it can teach us about social rhetoric and discourse, and how we sharpen our critical thinking around the potential risk of emerging data-driven technologies

Autistic advocates are using online platforms to reshape understanding of autism.

Explore ways the democratisation of information production in the digital era may be impacting society’s conceptualisation of expertise, and how therapists might navigate this new landscape.

We ask:
Are charismatic personalities fostering a false sense of intimacy with their followers and steering us away from established clinical wisdom?
Or are online autistic voices unlocking a new form of collective intelligence that have the potential for positively revolutionising culturally-attuned psychotherapy?

Collaboratively explore and generate insights to inform the development of your approach for balancing clinical knowledge with lived experience assertions.

Relational conversations with clients necessarily involve a lot of improvisation, as we work towards establishing a relationship. How we feel about this mercurial aspect depends partly on our confidence in these exchanges. Can we be responsive? How well do we handle the unexpected? Will we reveal too much about ourselves? Do our habits help or do they prohibit curious diversions? These questions relate to our own spontaneity and ability to make decisions in the moment.

This workshop aims to explore this subject in relation to ego states and the autonomic nervous system. Using discussion and a few exercises to build on your own skills, personality and method. I will offer some ideas and ask you to explore your own spontaneity.

Learning outcomes: I hope to deepen our understanding of relational processes using a sense of OK-ness and curiosity. This is NOT a workshop in “improv skills”, but rather a way of exploring internal processes that are activated in our professional relating, recognising the subtleties and fragilities of human interaction.
As well as Berne’s theory of Ego States, and Porges’ Polyvagal Theory, this work is informed by the writing of Daniel Stern, esp Forms of Vitality (OUP 2010).

This workshop is aimed at curious therapists at any stage of their career.

We will examine the philosophies of European Exceptionalism and A City on a Hill, which drove European occupation of land and North American occupation of culture, political power and thought. We’ll investigate the origins of some core theories of humanistic psychology and transactional analysis, and focus on how European and North American frames of reference influenced their development. The aspiration of this workshop is to illuminate the significance and far-reaching consequences of the recently adopted ITAA/EATA joint mission statement, and how each of us can play a part in embodying in the world our shared mission, vision and values.

This is a space for participants to directly engage with the keynote material, a space for exploration, discussion, and emerging questions or ideas.

Using the PAC model and Non Violent Commication model I will explore with the participants how the post truth era presents in the therapy room and understand what need this is meeting for the client. I will support the participants to consider the current climate within this.

We will then explore how to give space to this within the therapy room considering our own counter-transference

And is her message still helpful for us to bear in mind as we write our poems over a century later?

How do we as writers convey our truth, our unique experience and at the same time stay in contact, in relationship, with our readers – and write poems that are relevant to their very different lives?

In this workshop we’ll reflect on the meaning of ‘voice’ in poetry by considering and discussing a selection of poems, before finding – and expressing in our own poems – our own truth.