Things to read, listen to, or think about

I recently attended a symposium at Edinburgh University on this topic. With guest speakers including the wonderful Susie Orbach, it provided a critical reflection on the rise of authoritarianism and its implications for my therapeutic practice as well as the role of the therapist generally.

The speakers raised more questions in me than they answered, and that’s for me to take to my own supervision and peer group discussions! But what I found very useful was a conversation that explored the relational dynamics that play out between nations and their populace, and in the one-to-one interactions of the therapeutic space: “Our troubled world is an imperfect container” as one speaker put it.

We’re all familiar with the concept of othering — in the school playground or at the work place, there is always an Us vs Them at play (the latter is usually a minority of course). I was led to think about how social and psychological factors intertwine to create The Other… What anxieties are people facing (and which are real, which are fantasy), and who is The Other for each of us?

Of course Mr Trump was used as a prime example of authoritarianism at work, “A chaotic and disorganised parent”, said Ms Orbach, dysregulating people wherever he goes. His suppression of tolerant, free thinking leads to splitting, making just about everyone The Other.

Susie’s closing words were:

“Too many are LEFT OUT, LEFT ALONE, LEFT BEHIND. We need more connection and solidarity.”

All sorts of things…

I listen to psychoanalytic podcast, Between Us, as soon as new episodes are released. I find the series very engaging and thought-provoking, and I always gleen something useful for my own practice, no matter what topic is being discussed or who the guest is.

I have listened to an episode called We Are Not Sovereign Individuals multiple times — the guest is Orna Guralnik, a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, probably best known from the BBC show, Couples Therapy.

The episode gave me a rare peek into another clinician’s practice along with a psychoanalytic perspective on what’s happening in the world, making it a very compelling episode. Therapist or not, it’s well worth a listen.

In 2024, I attended a British Psychoanalytical Society conference; the topic was ‘The Dynamics of Influence’, exploring the relationship between clients and therapists.

One speaker likened the therapeutic alliance to the complicated web of relationships betweentrees in a forest, which I loved. Trees are connected via subterranean fungal networks through which they share water and nutrients. But they also use these networks to communicate — they can send a distress signal about drought or disease for example, and other trees alter will their behavior when they receive these messages.

Likewise, the therapeutic relationship between clients and therapists relies on a constant flow of mutually influential and (hopefully) beneficial communication that help make therapy “an experience, not an explanation”.

Have you ever left a therapy session feeling annoyed, not heard or misunderstood? A trauma therapist talks about such moments in their own therapy that turned out to be surprisingly productive.

(28 minute podcast; transcript available for the hearing impaired)

Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a therapeutic approach I have inadvertently used as it’s comprised of various other theories, but only recently become aware of. Championed by Richard Schwartz, IFS views the mind as consisting of multiple subpersonalities — parts or voices. These are often made up of various people in our lives and the aim of IFS-based therapy is to facilitate internal congruence by helping clients understand and integrate these different parts of themselves (click to watch a 7 minute video, with subtitles for the hearing impaired).