Connecting Conversations | Psychotherapy and the Arts

Originally hosted by Severnside Institute for Psychotherapy, in partnership with The Bridge Foundation and Rowan Arts, Connecting Conversations is a series of events bringing the arts together with practitioners from the world of psychoanalysis.

Dr. Susie Orbach is one of the most well known psychoanalysts of our time. Her eloquent and yet continually pressing thoughts and insights on women, feminism, bodies, food, relationships and the climate crisis have entered into our shared social consciousness. The author of twelve books, numerous newspaper columns and articles, she has brought alive the crises faced by many people, particularly women, and through her BBC Radio 4 series, ‘In Therapy,’ she shed light onto the mysterious encounter that is psychotherapy.

Beginning in 1976 with co-founding The Women’s Therapy Centre, something which Andrew Samuels called a “shock to the professional world”, Dr. Orbach has continued to be involved in establishing organisations committed to social change and awareness, including The Women’s Therapy Centre Institute, Anybody, Antidote and Psychotherapists and Counsellors for Social Responsibility. Susie's first book, ‘Fat is a Feminist Issue’, opened up the debate about women, their bodies and food, and remains one of the defining books on the subject. Her most recent book, the newly revised and updated, ‘Bodies’, has won the best book award from Women in Psychology.

She has lectured and supervised extensively around the world, been a consultant for institutions including The World Bank and the NHS, sat on government expert panels and coauthored recent government papers. Dr. Orbach was the first recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award for Psychoanalysis from the British Psychoanalytical Society.

Matthew Wyatt originally trained as a Movement Psychotherapist at the Laban Centre in London before training as a psychodynamic psychotherapist at the Severnside Institute for Psychotherapy in Bristol. Matthew currently works in private practice and at the Harbour, a Bristol based charity providing therapy for people affected by life threatening illness, and continues to have an interest in thinking about the body in therapy.

Originally hosted by Severnside Institute for Psychotherapy, in partnership with The Bridge Foundation and Rowan Arts, Connecting Conversations is a series of events bringing the arts together with practitioners from the world of psychoanalysis.

Tessa Hadley has published five novels including The London Train and Clever Girl, and two collections of short stories. Her new novel, The Past, will be published in September this year. She has also written one book of criticism, Henry James and the Imagination of Pleasure. She publishes stories regularly in the New Yorker, reviews for the Guardian and the London Review of Books, and is a Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University.

Ally Kessler is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, and a training therapist and supervisor for the Severnside Institute for Psychotherapy. As well as her private practice, she works at The Harbour in central Bristol, which offers free, professional therapy to people affected by life -threatening illness. Her background is in education and the arts.

Originally hosted by Severnside Institute for Psychotherapy, in partnership with The Bridge Foundation and Rowan Arts, Connecting Conversations is a series of events bringing the arts together with practitioners from the world of psychoanalysis.

As part of Holloway Arts Festival 2014 Daljit Nagra and Smita Rajput Kamble discuss the way in which his poetry, in collections such as Look We Have Coming to Dover! and Ramayanya: a Retelling, bridges the gaps between languages and creates new words and ways of expressing the inner emotional world.

Daljit Nagra was born and raised in West London, then Sheffield, and currently lives in Willesden where he works in a secondary school. His first collection, Look We Have Coming to Dover! won the 2007 Forward Prize for Best First Collection and was short-listed for the Costa Poetry Award. In 2008 he won the South Bank Show / Arts Council Decibel Award. In recent years his second collection Tippoo Sultan’s Incredible White-Man Eating Tiger-Toy Machine!!! and his version of Ramayana were both short-listed for the TS Eliot Prize.

Smita Rajput Kamble works as a psychoanalytic therapist in Milton Keynes. Prior to this she studied English Literature and worked as a journalist and copywriter in India. During her travels in the Far East, she taught English in an Indonesian international school and worked as a sitcom writer for Singapore Television. Her interest in the psyche and unconscious processes led to a psychodynamic training after she immigrated to the UK. She is interested in understanding Indian culture (Anglo Indian and British Asian), cinema and art as well as the Indian socio-political landscape through a psychoanalytical lens.

Originally hosted by Severnside Institute for Psychotherapy, in partnership with The Bridge Foundation and Rowan Arts, Connecting Conversations is a series of events bringing the arts together with practitioners from the world of psychoanalysis.

Bruno Schrecker will talk with Kate Barrows about the ways in which music completes the circle of life and is central to our emotional beings, giving access to the deepest levels of feeling. Music can transport us to profound depths of joy and sorrow, whilst other times brightening our lives with humour and mischief. The power of music is different from that of other arts – how is this so? What does it do?

Bruno Schrecker was born in Frankfurt am Main in 1928 and moved to England with his family in 1935. He took up cello playing in his teens and showed a remarkable aptitude. After learning for only one year he was awarded a scholarship at the Royal College of Music. There he studied with Ivor James who encouraged his growing love of chamber music. In 1953 he was given a scholarship by the French Government to study with Pablo Casals in Prades and this inspirational experience had a huge influence on his playing and his teaching from that time onwards. His rich and distinguished musical career included thirty-one years with the Allegri String Quartet, producing many acclaimed recordings. The Allegri worked with Benjamin Britten on recording his first and second string quartets. Bruno Schrecker is renowned as a teacher and still teaches quartets and string players whom he inspires with his deep love of the cello and his philosophy of music and its relationship to life.

Kate Barrows is a Training Psychoanalyst with the Institute of Psychoanalysis and a Child Psychotherapist. In addition to clinical papers and papers on literature and psychoanalysis, she has written about Britten’s opera ‘The Turn of the Screw’. She is also an amateur cellist and studies with Bruno Schrecker.

Originally hosted by Severnside Institute for Psychotherapy, in partnership with The Bridge Foundation and Rowan Arts, Connecting Conversations is a series of events bringing the arts together with practitioners from the world of psychoanalysis.

In relation to his work, Patrick Gale and Clare Harris will discuss themes of home and place, the persevering influence of past terrors, and how hidden knowledge and aspects of the self may be gradually uncovered and understood as a life unfolds.

Patrick Gale was born on the Isle of Wight in 1962 and raised in Winchester, where he studied at the Pilgrims choir school and Winchester College before being sent to read English at New College Oxford. He lives on his husband’s farm near Land’s End and is a keen gardener and cellist. He is a director of the Charles Causley Trust and the Cornish arts and spirituality charity, Endelienta. He chairs the North Cornwall Book Festival which takes place at Daymer Bay each October half-term and is secretary of the Penzance Orchestral Society. He has written fourteen novels, including the best-selling Rough Music and Notes from an Exhibition. His fourteenth novel, A Perfectly Good Man, won a Green Carnation award and was a favourite recommendation among Guardian readers in the paper’s end of year round-up. His two collections of short stories are Dangerous Pleasures and Gentleman’s Relish. His next novel, A Place Called Winter is being published by Tinder Press in February 2015 and he is currently writing a three part original, gay-themed drama called Man in an Orange Shirt for BBC2.

Clare Harris is a Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist in private practice in Bristol. She is a training therapist and supervisor for the Severnside Institute for Psychotherapy where she is presently chair of the Psychoanalytic Clinical Training. She previously worked at the Cotswold Community and in adult mental health.

Originally hosted by Severnside Institute for Psychotherapy, in partnership with The Bridge Foundation and Rowan Arts, Connecting Conversations is a series of events bringing the arts together with practitioners from the world of psychoanalysis.

Crime Writer Val McDermid and Group Analyst Sue Einhorn explore the world of crime fiction where human taboos of murder, incest and violence are broken and the human struggle with mortality is violently exposed.

Award-winning crime writer Val McDermid is the founder and life force behind the Harrogate Crime Festival and is a powerful, fascinating presence in her own right. Val was born in Kirkcaldy, a small town in the heart of the Scottish mining community. She graduated in English at St Hilda’s College, Oxford – the first from a Scottish state school to do so - before going on to be an award winning journalist for sixteen years. Her first novel was published in 1987. Today she is a Number One bestseller, translated into more than 30 languages, with over two million copies sold in the UK and over 10 million worldwide. She has written 26 bestselling novels. Cross and Burn – her latest novel - is her 27th.

Sue Einhorn is a Group Analyst and an individual psychotherapist who practises in the UK and trains and supervises internationally from Russia to Norway. She moved into psychotherapy over twenty five years ago following many years as a youth worker, community development activist and lecturer. She is particularly interested in how the social context lives in our unconscious and how each person then shapes the social world around them.

Originally hosted by Severnside Institute for Psychotherapy, in partnership with The Bridge Foundation and Rowan Arts, Connecting Conversations is a series of events bringing the arts together with practitioners from the world of psychoanalysis.

David Bell will discuss with MP Jeremy Corbyn his life-long commitment to campaigning and the defence of humans rights and reflect on how you sustain body and soul whilst keeping one’s ideals intact.

Jeremy Corbyn has been MP for Islington for 30 years and is very active both in his constituency and in parliament. He is committed to the needs of the poor and human rights at both a local (ie. affordable housing, benefits, immigration) and an international level (CND, All Party Parliamentary Groups on many subjects).

When not cycling around London, Jeremy has a busy international schedule, speaking at human rights and peacekeeping conferences across the globe, including Beijing, Mumbai, New Delhi, Rwanda, UNGeneva and other parts of Europe. Since September 11th he’s travelled to many countries to speak out against military efforts to solve problems and in favour of negotiation. He continues to argue for the rights of the oppressed, in particular, the Palestinians, Chagos (BIOT), and the Western Saharwi. In November 2013 he won the Gandhi Foundation’s International Peace Award “in recognition of his consistent efforts over a 30-year parliamentary career to uphold the Gandhian values of social justice and non-violence”.

Outside his parliamentary commitments he is a trustee andor patron of a number of local organizations including Rowan Arts and is a passionate advocate of the arts and culture.

David Bell, a former President of the British Psychoanalytic Society, is a Fellow of the Institute and a Training Analyst. He is a Consultant Psychiatrist in the Adult Department of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust where he is director of Fitzjohns Unit, a specialist unit for seriouscomplex psychological disorders. David Bell was also the 2012-2013 Professorial Fellow at Birkbeck College, Univerisity of London. He teaches Freud and the history of psychoanalytic concepts at the British Psychoanalytic Society and at the Tavistock Clinic. He is a leading psychiatric expert in asylumhuman rights.

Originally hosted by Severnside Institute for Psychotherapy, in partnership with The Bridge Foundation and Rowan Arts, Connecting Conversations is a series of events bringing the arts together with practitioners from the world of psychoanalysis.

As part of Holloway Arts Festival 2014 Katherine Quarmby and Valerie Sinason discuss ‘The Perennial Need for a Scapegoat‘. What is it that causes fear of the unknown other to such an extent that hate crimes are possible? Children and adults with intellectual disability are more vulnerable to discrimination, physical and mental ill-health, poverty, sexual abuse and other crimes that stem from hate. Children and adults with other forms of disability and vulnerability are also targeted. They are in the wrong place, the wrong body, the wrong colour, the wrong income. Why? What is it about the psychosocial meaning of disability – and different forms of ‘otherness’ – that can evoke such hostile responses?

Katharine Quarmby is an award winning writer and journalist who has grappled profoundly with the issue of disability hate crime for years in her books and interviews -particularly in her book Scapegoat: Why We Are Failing Disabled People. She has also thrown a spotlight on the experiences of Britain’s nomads, in her latest book, No Place to Call Home: Inside the Real Lives of Gypsies and Travellers.

Valerie Sinason is a psychoanalyst who has worked for over thirty years with children and adults with disability and author of Mental Handicap and the Human Condition: An Analytic Approach to Intellectual Disability, and also works with sex offenders and victims of abuse.

Originally hosted by Severnside Institute for Psychotherapy, in partnership with The Bridge Foundation and Rowan Arts, Connecting Conversations is a series of events bringing the arts together with practitioners from the world of psychoanalysis.

Recorded on Monday 14 October, 2013 at Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9AG.

Group Analyst Sue Einhorn talks to The Reverend Giles Fraser about ‘the personal is political’ in the context of his own experiences within the Church of England. Always outspoken and challenging in his views, his support for The Occupy Movement when he resigned from St. Paul's has given him a very wide audience indeed. How has such an Establishment figure come to align himself with forces for change that challenge the very institution he represents?

Originally hosted by Severnside Institute for Psychotherapy, in partnership with The Bridge Foundation and Rowan Arts, Connecting Conversations is a series of events bringing the arts together with practitioners from the world of psychoanalysis.

Award winning playwright, poet and author Deborah Levy and psychoanalyst and author Valerie Sinason pick up their conversation following the publication of Black Vodka, Levy's brilliant new collection of short stories. Themes of love, loss, disability, mortality will be discussed as well as the creative process itself. Levy reads from her work.

Originally hosted by Severnside Institute for Psychotherapy, in partnership with The Bridge Foundation and Rowan Arts, Connecting Conversations is a series of events bringing the arts together with practitioners from the world of psychoanalysis.

Howard Jacobson, often referred to as the 'English Philip Roth', although he prefers to think of himself as the 'Jewish Jane Austen', will explore with psychoanalyst Valerie Sinason his views on the creative process of writing, his feelings about his work and how he sees the role of cultural identity.

Originally hosted by Severnside Institute for Psychotherapy, in partnership with The Bridge Foundation and Rowan Arts, Connecting Conversations is a series of events bringing the arts together with practitioners from the world of psychoanalysis.

Jo Brand, former psychiatric nurse turned BAFTA-winning comedienne, writer and actress and David Bell, psychoanalyst, meet again after 25 years. Having both worked together at the Maudsley Hospital, they reunite to discuss Jo Brands life and work and in the process explore the nature of comedy.

Originally hosted by Severnside Institute for Psychotherapy, in partnership with The Bridge Foundation and Rowan Arts, Connecting Conversations is a series of events bringing the arts together with practitioners from the world of psychoanalysis.

A recording of the event which took place on 6 June 2012, where Ballet Boyz founder William Trevitt and Michael Nunn discussed their work with psychoanalyst Dr Luis Rodríguez de la Sierra.

Originally hosted by Severnside Institute for Psychotherapy, in partnership with The Bridge Foundation and Rowan Arts, Connecting Conversations is a series of events bringing the arts together with practitioners from the world of psychoanalysis.

Artist David Blandy meets with psychoanalyst Valerie Sinason to screen his latest film Child of the Atom and discuss making the work, memory and family legends in relation to historical traumas.

Originally hosted by Severnside Institute for Psychotherapy, in partnership with The Bridge Foundation and Rowan Arts, Connecting Conversations is a series of events bringing the arts together with practitioners from the world of psychoanalysis.

Choreographer Jasmin Vardimon met with Josh Cohen, Psychoanalyst and Professor of Modern Literary Theory at Goldsmiths University, to discuss the many themes and ideas in her work that resonate with psychoanalysis, including the body, the uses of memory, and the nature of interpretation. Jasmin's work is unique in contemporary dance for its fusion of the physical and the conceptual. In her performances, the body becomes an instrument for exploring fundamental philosophical and psychological questions.

Originally hosted by Severnside Institute for Psychotherapy, in partnership with The Bridge Foundation and Rowan Arts, Connecting Conversations is a series of events bringing the arts together with practitioners from the world of psychoanalysis.

Composer Nico Muhly, Librettist Craig Lucas and Director Bartlett Sher meet with psychoanalyst Sara Flanders.

Originally hosted by Severnside Institute for Psychotherapy, in partnership with The Bridge Foundation and Rowan Arts, Connecting Conversations is a series of events bringing the arts together with practitioners from the world of psychoanalysis.

A recording of a Connecting Conversations event at which artist Grayson Perry discussed his work with psychoanalyst Valerie Sinason. 

Originally hosted by Severnside Institute for Psychotherapy, in partnership with The Bridge Foundation and Rowan Arts, Connecting Conversations is a series of events bringing the arts together with practitioners from the world of psychoanalysis.

Loipa Araújo, leading Cuban ballerina (one of the four jewels of the Ballet Nacional de Cuba) and much sought after teacher in the UK and worldwide, explored with psychoanalyst Luis Rodríguez de la Sierra the parallels between her role as ballet teacher and the role of the psychoanalyst in the therapeutic relationship and within a psychoanalytic training.

Originally hosted by Severnside Institute for Psychotherapy, in partnership with The Bridge Foundation and Rowan Arts, Connecting Conversations is a series of events bringing the arts together with practitioners from the world of psychoanalysis.

A recording of the audience question and answer session which followed the Connecting Conversations event, at which poet Wendy Cope discussed her work with psychoanalyst Stephen Grosz.