Pink Therapy

Pink Therapy News
Keeping YOU in the Frame
January 2011
In This Issue
Essentials in Sexual Minority Therapy
The Development of the Self
Introduction to Psychosexual Therapy
Graduation and Accreditation News
Participants wanted
Lesbians in Focus
Getting the love you want
Omission of Transphobic Bullying
Dominic Davies - Free public lecture
Join Our Mailing List!
Greetings!

Dominic Davies
Happy New Year and apologies for the slightly later than usual  arrival of our monthly Pink Therapy News

We've got an interesting year ahead and my last professional duty of 2010 was to host the Associates Xmas party and awarding our initial cohort of Certificate in Sexual Minority Therapy (CSMT) students their Awards of Credit from Middlesex University. 

I am also really excited that we have the second cohort of students starting their CSMT later this month.  We've recruited a highly motivated group of therapists and I know their tutors Damian Mc Cann and Leah Davidson are looking forward to working with them.

I've also been putting together the 2011/2012 training programme, more news will follow on this next month, but please see the call for submissions for Lesbians in Focus below as we're looking for a few more proposals.

I hope to see you at one of our events soon!

Meanwhile for those of you who are into the social media, please follow us on twitter
Follow us on Twitter
Facebook at Pink Therapy
Find us on Facebook
Dominic Davies
Director
Essentials in Sexual Minority Therapy
Spring 2011 programme

circle of chairs
Do you offer counselling or psychotherapy to lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender clients?

Are you confident that you have had sufficient knowledge and training to work competently with sexual minority clients?

Would you be interested in updating your knowledge and have an opportunity to work on your values, belief and attitudes in this area?

Pink Therapy, the UK's leading sexual minority therapy training provider is offering a six day training in the Essentials of Sexual Minority Therapy.


Award: Attendance Certificate in Essentials of Sexual Minority Therapy. BACP Endorsed CPD Activity.


Attendance at individual weekends is also possible, subject to availability, but priority is given to people booking for the whole course.


The Development of the Self & the Function of the Therapeutic Alliance with Judy Yellin
Saturday 29 January 2011
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.

Introduction to Psychosexual Therapy  with Naomi Adams & Dominic Davies
Saturday 26th and Sunday 27th February 2011
Psychosex

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, as well as clients involved in Kink/BDSM practices.

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.


Graduation and Accreditation News


GraduationFour of our first cohort of Cert SMT students received their Awards of Credit from Middlesex University and graduated from the revised Certificate course. They've all gone on to make a significant contribution to the field and Director of Studies, Dominic Davies, informed the guests attending the graduation ceremony that:

Olivier Cormier Ota�o has just submitted a chapter (co-authored with Dominic Davies) for the Sage Handbook of Counselling and Psychotherapy on Sexual Minority Therapy and has a journal article on Asexuality (his Diversity Seminar subject) in press with ore of our Clinical Associates Dr Lyndsey Moon.

Christine Kell has recently presented a seminar on Gay Men and Jealousy (which was her dissertation subject) for London Friend and is negotiating to present a workshop at the World Association for Sexual Health congress in Glasgow in June. Su Connan had an abridged version of her dissertation entitled When Your Client is Kinky published as the cover article in Therapy Today has agreed to take over the Introduction to BDSM/Kink workshop in our CPD programme in January from Meg Barker. Finally, Diane Martin was recently interviewed by Ian Hislop for his TV series and has been invited to teach on SMT issues on her former Counselling Diploma course.  More photos from the event are here


We have a new cohort of seven students starting the intensive programme later this month and look forward to working with them.

Accreditation News

Christine Kell was awarded her certificate of Accreditation and now becomes an Accredited Sexual Minority Therapist and Paul Martin was the first person to receive Advanced Accreditation as a Sexual Minority Therapist. 

For further information about the Accreditation scheme please click on this link
http://www.pinktherapy.com/accred_new.html


Participants wanted for research on self disclosure of sexuality

Fraser Connell is a final year psychotherapy student at The Minster Centre carrying out qualitative research on gay male therapist's experience of self disclosure/non self disclosue of sexuality when working with gay male clients.
He would be carrying out a taped interview lasting approximately 1 hour and can travel within the Greater London area.
Please contact Fraser Connell on 07947 410088  or fraserconnell@ntlworld.com  

Proposals sought: Lesbians in Focus
2 women (arm round shoulder, smiling)We are just building our training programme for Sept 2011/July 2012 and we plan to host a weekend of short presentations covering the enormous diversity of issues relevant to lesbians.  Lesbians in Focus is scheduled for 2 & 3 June 2012.

We're interested in lesbian identity, physical health issues, sex and sexuality, relationships, young lesbians, older lesbians, lesbians who parent and those who don't and other topics relevant to counsellors/therapists working with lesbians. 

The event will be a weekend of workshops and presentations around contemporary and complex issues of being a lesbian.  The organising group are Lyndsey Moon and Leah Davidson and Dominic Davies.  We're probably looking for presentations of around 90 mins long.  We're envisaging an event open to people of all genders, but where the focus of the event is on lesbians and presented by women.

If you are interested to present something at the event please can you submit a proposal with a title, a brief description (up to 200 words) of what you'd propose to cover and why you consider this is relevant and whether it's a workshop (experiential) seminar (talk and discussion) or lecture (presentation) and a short biography about yourself (up to 50 words or so).

We're thinking to keep the event fairly small (around 20 participants) and offering travel expenses and a free place at the weekend for all presenters. Closing date for submissions 31 January.

Getting the love you want
7th - 8th May 2011 (Saturday 9am - 9pm and Sunday 9am to 6pm)
Joe Kort Phd, MSW, MA is an American psychotherapist, coach and author. He specialises in Gay Affirmative Psychotherapy and Imago Relationship Therapy. Joe is also a Certified Sexologist, specialising in sex therapy and sexual identity and a Certified Sexual Addiction Therapist working with childhood sexual, psychological and emotional abuse, chemical dependency, mixed orientation marriages, coming out, depression and anxiety.    In the States Joe runs a gay men's group therapy and a men's sexuality group therapy for straight, bi-and gay men who are struggling with specific sexual issues. Dr. Kort's practice is mixed with straight, gay, lesbian and bi-attractional individuals and couples. Joe is a well-known contributor on gay, lesbian and bi- sexual issues on the radio and in Gay and Lesbian publications.

For the first time in England:
"Getting The Love you Want" Specifically for Gay and Lesbian Couples
Based on the book Getting the Love You Want by Harville Hendrix, Ph.D. Offered by Dr. Joe Kort Psychotherapist, Clinical Sexologist, Imago Relationship Therapist

In these 2 days you will learn:
  • Communication skills to improve the connection with your partner and find solutions to long-standing conflicts
  • Greater compassion and understanding-of both yourself and your partner.
  • Why the unconscious forces that attract you to each other are also sources of
  • friction.
  • How to get unstuck from the power struggle you are in with your partner
  • Ways to re-establish the excitement and intimacy of your very first months or years
  • together.
  • How to achieve growth and lasting fulfilment- for both of you.
On 7th - 8th May 2011 (Saturday 9am - 9pm and Sunday 9am to 6pm)
London, England - Venue to be announced

Cost: �480 - Early bird special: �80 discount if paid in full by 31st January 2011

Contact: In London - Mic Austen on: 07788-442835
micausten@hotmail.com
joekort@joekort.com

www.joekort.com

Omission of Transphobic Bullying from education White Paper

The Department for Education has excluded transphobic bullying from its White Paper, "The Importance of Teaching", even though the "Engendered Penalties" survey of trans people showed that:

a - Half of the natal males and two-thirds of the natal females experienced bullying
b - Physical abuse and even unwanted sexual behaviours occurred in a majority of these cases 
c - About a quarter of the people who participated in the survey had been bullied by teachers

GIRES has prepared a commentary on the White Paper. The charity has also provided a link to the list of MPs in case you wish to write to your own about this omission:

http://www.gires.org.uk/schools.php

Dominic Davies - Free public lecture to the Gay and Lesbian Humanists
Friday 14th January, 7:30 pm

Dominic Davies will be giving a talk next week on Therapy's relationship to Homosexuality to the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association.  This text is from their event flyer:

Over the years members of our community have had plenty of negative experiences of psychiatrists, therapists, and evangelical religious groupings trying to "convert" us to "become straight" or simply avoided the reality of our sexuality altogether.

Pink Therapy is the largest independent therapy organisation working with gender and sexual minority clients, and their Director, Dominic Davies will argue that our psychological and therapeutic issues can be addressed effectively by those who adopt a sexually affirmative status and do not see sexual or gender variation as problems in any way".

Friday January 14th, 7:30 pm  Free (but booking essential vie the link below)

Conway Hall
25 Red Lion Square
WC1R 4LR London
0207 242 8032

http://www.galhameetup.com/calendar/15601044/

Volunteer Needed
Pink Therapy has an urgent need for a volunteer to help with organising our training resources and audio-visual library.  You need to be available in London to work from our office in Soho on a Monday or Tuesday daytime.  Ideally you need to be competent at using an Apple Mac computer. Please email: dominic.davies@pinktherapy.com for further information.
That's all for this month, thanks for your attention, and please do send us things that have a specific relevance to people working with gender and sexual minority clients.
Dominic Davies
Pink Therapy