John Bowlby Memorial Conference Monograph Series – Serie

The 2011 John Bowlby Memorial Conference, 'From Broken Attachments to Earned Security - The Role of Empathy in Therapeutic Change', focused on what needs to take place to facilitate empathy and attunement and ultimately the achievement of earned security. The confernce posed the challenge of how to re-establish a secure sense of self, mutuality, and the capacity for inter/intra-subjectivity when difficulties in empathy and attunement exist as a result of relational trauma. This can be between parent and child, within adult relationships, between client and therapist, or in organisational contexts. The outstanding collection of papers in this volume make a significant contribution to the field of attachment and our understanding of how child rearing affects each aspect of our lives, from the interpersonal to the organisational and societal. Each paper moves beyond the academic and theoretical to provide answers to the many difficult questions raised at the conference. The practical, sometimes step-by-step explanation of the use of empathy in one-to-one clinical work, in health service organisations or society generally, offer a positive and hopeful way forward. All of the presenters faced up to the challenges of repairing or reversing the impact of derailed attachments and the toxic impact of trauma, offering a realistic but hopeful route to improved relating and healthier attachments.This publication will be a valuable resource for students, seasoned practitioners, and health service professionals alike who want to enhance their understanding of empathy and attachment in this demanding field. Subject areas covered by your book in order of importance and key subject area:- causes of insecure attachments- impact of relational trauma- how to re-establish a secure sense of self- working one to one and in organisational settingsContributors: Sandra L. Bloom, Sue Gerhardt, Jane Haynes, Oliver James, Andrew Odgers, Anastasia Patrikiou, Eleanor Richards, Kate White

This monograph brings together the presentations from the nineteenth John Bowlby Memorial Conference in 2012, organised by The Bowlby Centre. The aim of this was to explore the growing role of the body in relational psychotherapy over the last decade, and to bring us up to date in thinking about the relationship between attachment, the body and trauma. Questions addressed included: How do we anchor the new understandings we are gaining within the framework of attachment? How might the integration of these ideas about the body change what we do in the consulting room? What impact might this have on the therapy relationship? Can we maintain and respect the place of a secure, attuned attachment between therapist and client, and its healing potential, at the centre of our therapeutic work?Pat Ogden's paper "Wisdom of the Body, Lost and Found" was the conference centrepiece and there are contributions from leading clinicians including Roz Carroll, Mark Linington, and Orit Badouk Epstein. Each in their different ways have brought their clinical experiences to life in their presentations and demonstrated this leading edge work in relation to the themes of the body and touch with clients including those so often regarded as "unsuitable for therapy", namely those who have a physical or learning disability or those who have survived extreme trauma through the painful means of psychic protection resulting in dissociative states of mind.Other contributors include Phil Mollon on "Attachment and Energy Psychology" and Nick Totton on "Embodiment and the Social Bond".

This outstanding book is an important collection of papers from the 2013 John Bowlby Memorial Conference by accomplished clinicians from different modalities who share their experience of working with people with different kinds of addiction. The papers bring together an in-depth understanding that addictions are a response to, and hold the pain of, broken attachments and are best treated within healthy interpersonal relationships. For a long time the person with an addiction has been seen as the problem with society being able to live in denial of the causes. These papers open up innovative and effective ways of working with people troubled by addiction from an attachment-informed perspective.Contributors: Cara Crossan, Richard Gill, Lynn Greenwood, Bob Johnson, Liz Karter, Edward Khantzian, Arlene Vetere, Kate White, Jason Wright

Drawn from the Bowlby Memorial Lecture, founded in commemoration of the influential Dr John Bowlby, this volume explores issues of the body and the historically taboo subject of touch in psychoanalysis. It includes contributions from a wide range of professional backgrounds, including two papers presented by pioneering analyst Susie Orbach.Contributors: Anne Aiyegbusi; Brett Kahr; Bernice Laschinger; Susie Orbach; Margot Sutherland; Colwyn Trevarthen; and Kate White.

The second book in the John Bowlby Memorial Conference Lecture Series. It explores our thinking about the developmental, relational and interpersonal aspects of the links between attachment and sexuality as they emerge in clinical practice.Contributors:Bernice Laschinger; Chris Purnell; Joanna Ryan; Joseph Schwartz; Kate White; Rachel Wingfield; and Judy Yellin.

Drawn from the John Bowlby Memorial Conference, the theme of this book addresses the often hidden and ignored subject of attachment, race and culture. Can our individual narratives in relation to race, culture and attachment be unmasked in the therapeutic dyad to reveal our human connectedness? The contributors explore how the conscious and unconscious meanings of therapists' and clients' racial and cultural identities shape the dialogue between them. How this emerges for both therapist and client in their work together is illustrated in clinical accounts.Contributors: Kimberlyn Leary; Farhad Dalal; Barbara Ashton; Cascia Davis; Zack Eleftheriadou; Irris Singer; and Kate White

As clinicians we want to further our understanding of work with adult clients who have experienced massive and cumulative psychic trauma to which there is no possible adaptive response strategy. This monograph of the 2008 John Bowlby Memorial Conference brings together papers by leading contributors to the field of attachment and trauma that explore the means by which individuals struggle to cope with exposure to war zones, both large scale conflicts and societal breakdown, and the domestic war zones where adults and children experience violence and sexual abuse. These papers seek to further our understanding of the intergenerational transmission of experiences of trauma, as in the examples of the Holocaust and slavery. In times where talk of terror is everywhere, psychotherapists offer a clinical perspective on terror which may translate to the world at large. Papers by Professor Arietta Slade, Shoshi Asheri, Dr. Joseph Schwartz, Adah Sachs, Dick Blackwell and Judith Erskine explore topics such as: experiences of terror states in the consulting room; the multiple survival strategies engaged by people struggling to cope with exposure to relational and environmental war zones; the intergenerational transmission of trauma and terror within an historical and cultural framework; the connection between therapists' own experiences of terror and those of their clients; how therapists may appropriately adapt their approach to include those who have been seen as 'unanalysable'; how the non-verbal aspects of a terrorised person's experience can be safely and effectively worked with therapeutically and the implications for the therapeutic frame and technique; and how we might more adequately provide support and legitimacy within the profession for work 'on the edge'.

'This monograph contains a rich variety of material that is not usually included in traditional writings on trauma. In addition to the theoretical and clinical perspectives, poetry and storytelling join in to weave a vivid tapestry of multifaceted approaches to trauma. Whilst remaining true to its theoretical base (which, of course, is Bowlby's attachment theory), the monograph succeeds in locating its subject matter in wider perspectives, thus enabling the reader to appreciate the complexity of contributing factors. It is not easy to compile a single publication out of a conference; yet, this monograph achieves its objective by offering a coherent treatment of trauma that also includes some up-to-date approaches and innovations. The papers are written with authority, clarity and sensitivity and will provide the reader with a most beneficial elaboration of trauma from an attachment theory perspective.'- Renos K. Papadopoulos