British Psychoanalytic Association

13/09/2025

“I was quite protective of the parent reader while I was editing this. I feel that so many of the books out there on the shelf have a real kind of finger wagging quality to parents. They kind of tell parents what to do, what not to do, mostly what they’re doing wrong. I felt like I wanted to create a resource that empathised with the parents’ position and that protected them, because this is literally the hardest thing in the world. So the protectiveness felt important to me, and it was one of the things that was really quite important that we always held the parent in mind, which is why every letter starts with “Dear Parent”.”

Listen to the full episode here:

“I was quite protective of the parent reader while I was editing this. I feel that so many of the books out there on the shelf have a real kind of finger wagging quality to parents. They kind of tell parents what to do, what not to do, mostly what they’re doing wrong. I felt like I wanted to cre...

09/09/2025

Join Caroline Beatrice Garland at our next 'Poetic mind' seminar on Saturday 4 October. Caroline is a psychoanalyst and widely published poet whose work explores the intersection of internal worlds and lyrical form.

Poetry and psychoanalysis have much in common: both incorporate many levels and depths of experience, and both need time and thoughtful interpretation if they are to be understood and appreciated.

Caroline's own need to write is, in part, because she's spent a lot of time listening to, and trying to understand, other people’s worlds. Writing poems exists in parallel to that: it’s a way of talking about the private way in which one sees, is touched by, and tries to grasp and respond to their own world, and the people that inhabit it.

To find out more and book your ticket visit: https://www.psychoanalysis-bpa.org/events/bpa-event-the-poetic-mind-what-is-a-poem-poetry-and-psychoanalysis/

30/08/2025

"These patients came to me in various states of despair. Maybe it is only in this state of mind – when we are unsure of what to do, when we no longer know which way to go – that we are motivated to understand ourselves better.

We can only make sense of our s*xual selves if we travel towards ourselves. This inward expedition leads us back and forth through time. As we remember, we discover. Discovering, we remember. Knowledge of our heart must come from our heart. We don’t receive this knowledge. We find it at the end of a journey no one else can make for us."

A married man’s hidden bis*xual life; a PhD student’s sideline in s*x work; a nun’s fear of pregnancy – over my long career, all have been laid bare in the intimate space of my consulting room

06/08/2025

In this podcast episode, you'll hear from Marion Bower about her book 'The Life and Work of Joan Riviere: Freud, Klein and Female Sexuality' (Routledge, 2018). Joan Riviere (1883-1962) is best known for her role in promoting the ideas of others. In her book, Marion puts Joan Riviere herself, the woman and the psychoanalyst, in the spotlight.

She shows how Riviere made use of the latest psychoanalytic ideas in a highly creative and original way, expressing herself with clarity and emotional depth in seminal works about the inner life of female s*xuality and treatment impasses.

Bower paints an intimate portrait of a woman with a stern and sometimes vitriolic public persona and a shy and fragile personality that was saved by her involvement in psychoanalysis. In her best moments she was able to bridge that gap in her psychoanalytic writing, revealing herself through her theoretical musings.

Listen here: https://newbooksnetwork.com/marion-bower-the-life-and-work-of-joan-riviere-freud-klein-and-female-s*xuality-routledge-2018

03/08/2025

In this episode of Talks on Psychoanalysis, Dr. Harriet Wolfe presents a unique application of psychoanalytic thinking. She describes an interdisciplinary group that is international, intergenerational and diverse that meets periodically to apply analytic thinking to intractable large-scale historical group traumas.

This method, called the International Dialogue Initiative, includes psychoanalysts but also others (e.g., economists, lawyers, diplomats, historians) who share stories and listen deeply with the purpose of gaining perspective on unmanageable feelings by exploring cases of traumatic residues.

While others, including Freud have theorised application of psychoanalysis to groups, this particular use is novel and important in today’s times and speaks to how psychoanalysis can be truly psychoanalytic and at the same time be applied to political and social issues.

Listen here: https://talksonpsychoanalysis.podbean.com/e/what-can-psychoanalysis-offer-to-alleviate-toxic-polarization/ via IPA International Psychoanalytical Association

The current social, political and historical context offers many difficult challenges. We have experienced up close and from a distance awareness of a remarkable number of challenges including the wars, political unrest, growing socioeconomic inequities, climate catastrophe, and human and animal suf...

29/07/2025

"Now that I am a patient in psychoanalysis, and I am a psychodynamic psychotherapist treating patients, I can see why my therapist needed to frustrate this desire, and offer me the opposite. What I wanted was to manage myself out of my emotions rather than feel them, to hack my life rather than live it – and that makes for a shallower existence, not a better one."

What we want is quick, clever fixes. What we need is quite different: the ability to tolerate intolerable feelings, to sustainably change and grow

26/07/2025

Our next event in the 'Poetic Mind' series will invite readers into a fertile space where poetry and psychological thinking intersect – not as separate disciplines, but as ways of thinking, feeling, and being. Drawing on clinical insight, literary sensitivity and philosophical depth, Professor Jonathan Green will offer a richly textured meditation on poetic communication.

For therapists, poets, and all those attuned to the inner life of language, this is a presentation about how poems can think.

Find out more and book your ticket here: https://www.psychoanalysis-bpa.org/events/bpa-event-the-poetic-mind-between-the-lines-approaching-poetry-as-mind/

22/07/2025

The animated short Hole follows Mo, who is autistic, through a day haunted by an ominous black orb that shadows their every turn. Through a vivid colour palette, jittery lines, jarring bursts of mixed media and a saturated soundscape, the Vancouver artist Gil Goletski immerses viewers into the spiralling theatre of Mo’s mind as both their inner turmoil and the hole grow harder to ignore. By gradually blurring the boundaries between internal experience and the external world, Goletski conveys the chaos and disorientation of peak sensory overload, providing a window into a reality that can be difficult for the neurotypical mind to grasp.

Watch it here:

The boundaries between internal experience and the external world blur in this immersive animated rendering of autism

21/07/2025

In this fascinating lecture, Roger Willoughby reveals aspects of the complex relationships between Manchester businessmen Emanuel and Philip Freud and their much younger brother Sigmund.

"Mutually supportive, at times idealising, and sometimes strained, these sibling relationships impacted on the mental economy of the founder of psychoanalysis, not only through bolstering his confidence, but also in helping shape Freud’s thinking on topics from physiognomy, character, and art, to the Oedipus complex."

Watch it here:

Book presentation of "Freud’s British Family: Reclaiming Lost Lives in Manchester and London" with Roger Willoughby and Christfried Tögel, 13.03.2025Drawing ...

19/07/2025

“I really think that the purpose is to make space for the unknown, uncertainty, and for our kind of humility in the face of the complexity of our belonging to the physical world. So it’s our animality, our physicality, all of that is so complicated and difficult to grapple with. The unknown is uncontrollable and is a huge abyss, as we know, for everybody. I do think that I’m trying to pivot here a little bit towards meeting the patient’s attempts to grapple with that unknown.”

“I really think that the purpose is to make space for the unknown, uncertainty, and for our kind of humility in the face of the complexity of our belonging to the physical world. So it’s our animality, our physicality, all of that is so complicated and difficult to grapple with. The unknown is u...

14/07/2025

Are poetry and psychoanalysis in any way complementary? Can unconscious phantasy be tapped into via the medium of poetry? In this online lecture, Dr Judith Edwards will hope to show that while there are profound differences between poetry and psychoanalysis, there are also similarities, as the work with students has highlighted. She will also include three brief clinical vignettes to illustrate her ideas.

Find out more and book your ticket here:

The Poetic Mind Seminar ‘This is not for Tears: Thinking’‐ Poetry and Psychoanalysis in Orbit’ Book your ticket now Dr Judith Edwards, Psychoanalyst This is the second in a series of dialogues on the capacity for poetry and psychoanalysis to articulate the internal world. Saturday 19th July ...

13/07/2025

Take a virtual tour of the Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna and see the interplay between contemporary art, analysis and mental health:

Under the title VIENNA SHOWCASE, the Vienna Tourist Board launched a series in 2020, inviting visitors to take virtual tours of Vienna's current highlights i...