| The Development of the Self & the Function of the Therapeutic Alliance |
 How do we get a self? What do we mean by 'having a sense of self'? How secure or insecure do we feel about who we are and our connections to others? How is our sense of self shaped in a homophobic, gendered culture?
This workshop will explore the idea that, from the beginning of life, we construct our 'senses of self', including our sexual and gendered selves, from our experiences of being in interaction with others. We will look at some ideas about the relational nature of the 'self', drawn from contemporary approaches to psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Using concepts from attachment theory, we will think about how our sense of ourselves develops initially within the context of our early relationships with others, and continues to emerge and change through our interactions with significant others throughout life.
Research into early attachments has shown the enduring and vital necessity of a secure and reliable connection to other people who are attuned to what we are feeling and who can respond appropriately. We will explore how traumatic failures of attunement, mutual recognition and response can impact negatively on the development of a stable yet flexible sense of self, and diminish our ability to create mutually satisfying close relationships throughout life. We will think in particular about the role played by shame and rejection in undermining a secure sense of self for both sexual minority clients and their therapists.
We will consider the potential of the therapeutic relationship to offer a secure base and facilitate the development of sufficient trust and safety to enable a different experience of 'self with other' that can allow the emergence of new, more creative 'senses of self'.
Saturday 23 February 2008 1pm - 7pm with Judy Yellin who is a relational psychoanalytic psychotherapist and clinical associate with Pink Therapy. Full details here & Booking Form here
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| Introduction to Psychosexual Therapy |
 Unless one does a specialist sex therapy training, one is probably ill prepared for understanding much about sexuality issues.
This two day workshop provides an introduction to some of the key issues in working therapeutically with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender clients with psychosexual concerns. The workshop will cover current models of sexual response, the classification of sexual difficulties and a brief review of the literature and then explore some of the implicit assumptions in these hetero-normative models.
By widening our understanding of sex, sexuality and sexual difficulties we will give workshop participants an opportunity to explore some of the multiple contexts (sexuality, gender, age, ethnicity, culture, religion etc) that shape both clinicians and clients views of sexual difficulties and diverse sexual practices.
We will then move on to interactive exercises with the aim of helping participants develop practical skills in assessment and therapeutic interventions with individual clients and couples.
We hope that by the end of the two days, participants will feel a greater sense of confidence in incorporating discussions of sex and sexual functioning into their general clinical work and/or developing their psychosexual therapy.
Course will take place on Saturday 08 March 1pm - 7pm and Sunday 09 March 9am - 5pm. It will be facilitated by Dr Naomi Adams and Dominic Davies. Further details here
We will also be running a more advanced workshop for experienced sex therapists and people who have undertaken this workshop in April 2008.
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