Attachment Theory – How John Bowlby Revolutionised Our Understanding of Human Relationships
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
presents Saturday and Sunday, 19th - 20th September 2015 John Bowlby 25th Anniversary Event An International Conference in Celebration of John Bowlby’s Work Attachment Theory – How John Bowlby Revolutionised Our Understanding of Human Relationships Where is the Revolution Now? What are the Future Directions? CONFERENCE AIM in working with trauma and abuse. As part of our ongoing commitment to anti-discriminatory practice we offer a consultation service to the public and private sectors and are engaged in outreach and special projects working This conference will bring together a group of leading international clinicians with care leavers, women experiencing violence and abuse, offenders and and researchers in dialogue to debate new developments in attachment ex offenders, people struggling with addiction to drugs, alcohol, eating theory and clinical practice. difficulties or self harm, and to individuals and groups in a wide variety of mental health settings. Exploring questions such as: We run short courses on “Attachment and Dissociation”, and “The Application How do such advances bring fresh ways of thinking about how we promote of Attachment Theory to Clinical Issues” including learning disabilities. The wellbeing in society and help and support individuals and families? Bowlby Centre organises conferences including the annual John Bowlby Memorial Lecture, and has a series of publications which aim to further thinking and development in the field of attachment. JOHN BOWLBY AND ATTACHMENT THEORY Bowlby Centre members participate extensively in all aspects of the field, John Bowlby revolutionised our understanding of human nature and making outstanding theoretical, research, and clinical contributions. Their the needs of children in particular for consistent, sensitive and attuned cutting edge work is consistently published in the leading journals and caregiving from a preferred attachment figure. Attachment is linked to the monographs. human response to fear and is most clearly evident when there are threats of separation and abandonment. At these times we need a safe haven The Bowlby Centre is committed to the following clinical values: provided by an attachment figure from whom we seek safety, comfort and • We believe that mental distress has its origin in failed or inadequate affect regulation. attachment relationships in early life and is best treated in the context of a long-term human relationship. “Intimate attachments to other human beings are the hub around which a • Attachment relationships are shaped in a social world that includes person’s life revolves, not only when he is an infant or a toddler or a school- poverty, discrimination and social inequality. The effects of the social child but throughout his adolescence and his years of maturity as well, and world are a necessary part of the therapy. on into old age.” Bowlby (1980, p. 422) • Psychotherapy should be available to all, and from the attachment perspective, especially those discriminated against or described as THE BOWLBY CENTRE ~ Promoting Attachment and Inclusion ‘unsuitable’ for therapy. • Psychotherapy needs to be provided with respect, warmth, openness, Since 1976 The Bowlby Centre (formerly known as CAPP) has developed a readiness to interact and relate, and free from discrimination of any as an organization committed to the practice of attachment-based kind. psychoanalytic psychotherapy. The Bowlby Centre is a dynamic, rapidly • Those who have been silenced about their experiences and developing charity which aims both to train attachment-based psychoanalytic survival strategies need to have their reality acknowledged and not psychotherapists and to deliver a psychotherapy service to those who are pathologised. most marginalized and frequently excluded from long term psychotherapy. • The Bowlby Centre values inclusiveness, access, diversity, We provide a five year (+) part-time psychotherapy training accredited authenticity and excellence. All participants in our organization share by the UKCP and operate a psychotherapy referral service for the public the responsibility for anti-discriminatory practice in relation to race, including the low cost Blues Project. The Bowlby Centre has a wealth of ethnicity, gender, sexuality, age, (dis)ability, religion, class, educational experience in the fields of attachment and loss and particular expertise and learning style. PROGRAMME Saturday 19th September 2015 at The Institute for Child Health Sunday 20th September at The Anna Freud Centre Chair of the conference Sir Richard Bowlby 9. 30 Welcome and introduction to the morning from Kate White Exhibition Attachment: Our Enduring Need for Others 9.15 Welcome from Mark Linington, Chair of the Executive, Carol Siegel, Director of the Freud Museum and The Bowlby Centre Kate White, Curator of the exhibition, The Bowlby Centre 9.20 – Historical Introduction Brett Kahr Film: The Last Interview with John Bowlby by 9.40 Parent & Infant Work Virginia Hunter Arietta Slade in conversation with Amanda Jones Simon Partridge, Co-ordinator of the film’s recovery and restoration Chair: Sue Gerhardt 10.45 Refreshments 10. 30 Commentaries and discussion of film part 1: Lennox Thomas, Judy Yellin and Jean Knox 11.15 Clinical Work: Attachment & Trauma 11. 15 visits exhibition at the Freud Museum Sandy Bloom in conversation with Mark Linington Group 1 Chair: Valerie Sinason Group 2 and 3 tea/coffee at the Anna Freud Centre 12.20 Attachment & Neuroscience 11. 45 Group 2 visits exhibition at the Freud Museum Allan Schore* in conversation with Felicity de Zulueta Group 3 goes to Freud Museum ready to visit the exhibition Chair: Elizabeth Howell room 1.15 Lunch Group 1 tea/coffee at the Anna Freud Centre 2.00 Attachment & The Body 12. 15 Group 3 visits exhibition at the Freud Museum Susie Orbach in conversation with Kate White Chair: Mark Linington Groups 1 and 2 browse the bookstall and museum shop 3.00 Children & Families 12. 50 Plenary discussion of film part 2, reflections on the exhibition Karl Heinz Brisch in conversation with Miriam Steele and the anniversary event as a whole Chair: Christopher Clulow Lennox Thomas, Judy Yellin, Jean Knox and Robert Marvin 4.00 Refreshments 1. 30 Lunch and music at the Anna Freud Centre 4.30 Research Developments & Future Directions Howard Steele in conversation with Oliver James 2. 30 Return to visit Freud Museum exhibition if people wish Chair: Jeremy Holmes 5.30 Concluding remarks – Sir Richard Bowlby & Robert Marvin * Unfortunately, due to health issues, Professor Schore is unable to attend the conference in person, but we have arranged for Felicity de Zulueta and Elizabeth Howell to be in conversation and have included a pre recorded interview with him to screen at the conference. and the Psyche and also Life Lessons from Freud. Tea with Winnicott, as well as CONFERENCE SPEAKERS BIOGRAPHIES Winnicott’s Anni Horribiles: The Creation of ‘Hate in the Counter-Transference’. Brett Kahr is currently editing Ursula Bowlby’s “forgotten” book Happy Infancy for SIR RICHARD BOWLBY publication. He works with individuals and couples in private practice in Hampstead, North London. Richard, Founding Patron of The Bowlby Centre, worked as a scientific photographer in various medical research institutions where he produced visual aids for communicating ARIETTA SLADE research findings. He now gives lectures to health care professionals using video material and personal insights to Arietta Slade, Ph.D. is Clinical Professor at the Yale Child promote a much broader understanding of his father’s work Study Center, and Professor Emerita, Clinical Psychology, on attachment theory. He supports a range of organisations The City University of New York. An internationally that address challenging attachment issues, and is seeking recognized theoretician, clinician, researcher, and teacher, ways to help the general public benefit from a better she has published widely on reflective parenting, the clinical understanding of attachment relationships. implications of attachment theory, and the development of parental mentalization. For the past 13 years she has been co-directing Minding the Baby, an interdisciplinary MARK LININGTON reflective parenting home visiting program for high-risk mothers, infants, and their families, at the Yale Child Study Mark Linington is an attachment-based psychoanalytic Center and School of Nursing, one of only 17 certified psychotherapist with The Bowlby Centre in London, where “evidence-based” home visiting programs in the United States. Dr. Slade is editor, he is Chair of the Executive Committee, a training therapist, with Jeremy Holmes of the six volume set, Major Work on Attachment (SAGE clinical supervisor and research lead. He worked for 12 Publications, 2013), with Elliot Jurist and Sharone Bergner, of Mind to Mind: Infant years in the NHS as a psychotherapist with people with Research, Neuroscience, and Psychoanalysis (Other Press, 2008), and with learning disabilities who experienced complex trauma Dennie Wolf, of Children at Play (Oxford University Press, 1994). and abuse. Currently, he works as psychotherapist for the Clinic for Dissociative Studies and at a secondary school in London for young people with special needs. He also AMANDA JONES works in private practice. Amanda Jones is a Consultant Perinatal Psychotherapist and Professional Lead of North East London NHS Foundation Trust’s Perinatal Parent Infant Mental Health BRETT KAHR Service. She trained as a family therapist. Her doctoral Professor Brett Kahr is Senior