Previous Lectures

The GCP holds a series of public lectures each spring which are open to the public as well as psychotherapists and health professionals. Here are some of the lectures we have previously held.

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2025

“The Physics of the Mind: New Perspectives for Psychotherapists”
Phil Mollon PhD is a psychoanalyst, energy psychotherapist and clinical psychologist – author of 14 books on topics such as trauma, dissociation, memory, self-psychology, narcissism, and energy psychology. He has been in clinical practice for 50 years, including 37 years within the NHS. For the last 25 years his passion has been the field of energy psychotherapy. His talk is based on his forthcoming book The Physics of the Mind: New Perspectives for Psychotherapists.

2024

”Hiding in Plain Sight – Misogyny in Psychodynamic Therapies”
Michaela Chamberlain trained at the Bowlby Centre and the Psychoanalysis Unit at UCL. After qualifying in 2016, she began teaching Freud and Attachment Theory and also became Chair of the Bowlby Centre. Michaela has presented clinical papers at public forums, including The Bowlby Centre, BPS, The Guild of Psychotherapists and IARPP Australia, lectured internationally and been published in the British Journal of Psychotherapy, Attachment: New Directions in Psychotherapy and Relational Psychoanalysis, New Associations and The New Psychotherapist magazine. Her book, Misogyny in Psychoanalysis, was released in June 2022 and explores the historical and current context of misogyny in psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice.
Michaela works in private practice in London as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, supervisor and training therapist.

2023

‘Gender Dysphoria – A Therapeutic Approach’.
Marcus Evans is a psychoanalyst and was a consultant psychotherapist and mental health nurse with 40 years of experience in mental health. He was head of the nursing discipline at the Tavistock & Portman NHS Trust, a post he occupied between 1998-2018. He was also one of the founding members of the Fitzjohn’s Service to treat patients with severe and enduring mental health conditions and/or personality disorders. He has written and taught extensively and is the author of three books. The first-Making Room for Madness in Mental Health: the psychoanalytic understanding of psychotic communications was published by Karnac in 2016. His second Psychoanalytic Thinking in mental health settings introduces front line mental health professionals to psychoanalytic thinking and was published by Routledge in 2020. His third book was written with his wife Susan Evans – Gender Dysphoria: A therapeutic model for working with children, adolescents and young adults, published by Phoenix in 2021.

2022

“Complex Trauma – Internal Worlds and External Realities”.
Dr. Joanne Stubley is a Medical Psychotherapist at the Tavistock Clinic. She leads the Tavistock Trauma Service and is a member of the British Psychoanalytic Society. She is also trained in Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (tf-CBT), Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) and MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD. Dr Stubley is Co-Chair of the Royal College of Psychiatrists Expert Reference group on historical child sexual abuse and a Clinical Trustee at the charity Freedom from Torture. She is co-editor of “Complex Trauma: The Tavistock Model”, due for publication December 2021.

2021

‘Clinical implications of Neuropsychoanalysis’.
Professor Mark Solms (PhD Neuropsychology, MA Neuropsychology, BA(hons) Applied Psychology, BA Psychology) is Director of Neuropsychology at the University of Cape Town and Groote Schuur Hospital. He is a psychoanalyst trained at the Institute of Psychoanalyis (London). He is the recipient of numerous prizes and honours. He has published 350 articles in neuroscientific and psychoanalytic journals and has authored eight books. The Brain and the Inner World was translated into 13 languages. His collected papers were published recently as The Feeling Brain (2018).

He is the editor and translator of the forthcoming Revised Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (24 volumes) and Complete Neuroscientific Works of Sigmund Freud (4 volumes).Currently his main scientific focus is the brain mechanisms of consciousness and the implications of these mechanisms for the understanding and treatment of psychopathology. See Solms (2013) ‘The conscious id’ Neuropsychoananalysis; Solms (2017) ‘What is the unconscious and where is it located in the brain? Annals of the NY Academy of Sciences; Solms & Friston (2018) ‘How and why consciousness arises’ J Consciousness Studies 25: 202-238.

2019

‘An Introduction to Neuroscience: Why it is important for Psychotherapists’. Dr Susan Mizen is a Consultant Medical Psychotherapist and SAP Jungian Analyst. She trained at the Cassel Hospital in West London before becoming a Consultant at Charing Cross Hospital Fulham. She wrote the business case for and until recently led the Devon Partnership Trust Specialist Personality Disorder Service. She is developing a neuroscientific psychotherapeutic Relational Affective Model, for teams working with people with severe and complex Personality Disorder. She is interested in the interface between neuroscience and psychoanalysis and is undertaking a PhD in Neuroscience. She was Chair of the Medical Psychotherapy Faculty at the Royal College of Psychiatrists between 2014 and 2018 and is Chair of the Talking Therapies Task Force.

2018

Alessandra Cavalli, child and an adult analyst in private practice, is a training and supervising analyst at the Society of Analytical Psychology (SAP). She supervises therapeutic work with children in care in Mexico (Juconi) since 2007. Her talk was entitled “Nowhere phenomena – Reflections on identification, de-identification and re-identification”.
Anne Alvarez, is a Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist (and retired Co-Convener of the Autism Service, Child and Family Dept. Tavistock Clinic, London, where she still teaches). Anne’s lecture was entitled “Melancholia and Mourning in Childhood and Adolescence: Some reflections on the role of the internal object”

2017

David Morgan, a consultant psychotherapist and psychoanalyst, both in the NHS and private practice, who worked for many years as a Consultant at the Portman Clinic. ‘Destroying the Knowledge and Need for Love: Perverse States of Mind, fear of the Void and Intimacy.’
Adam Jukes, a graduate psychologist currently in private practice in Highgate, London, spoke on ‘The Analytical States of Perversion in the Light of Cultural Changes’. Adam started ‘the Men’s Centre’, Europe’s first dedicated treatment centre for abusive men in 1984.

2016

Maggie Schaedel, Consultant Lead Adult Psychotherapist for Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust, founder ofThe Woman’s Service, an award-winning specialist psychotherapy service for survivors of childhood sexual abuse. ‘In Distrust of Merits: Reflections from a Specialist Psychotherapy Service for Survivors of Sexual Abuse’.
Coline Covington, former Chair of the British Psychoanalytic Council and a Training Analyst and Supervisor of the Society of Analytical Psychology and the British Psychotherapy Foundation. ‘Problems of Forgiveness and Reparation in the Aftermath of Evil’.

2015

Dr Earl Hopper, psychoanalyst, group analyst and organisational consultant in private practice in London and a Distinguished Fellow of the American Group Psychotherapy Association. ‘Trauma and Organisations in Everyday Life: some patterns of aggression as a defence against the fear of annihilation in the context of systemic regression’
Dr Gwen Adshead, Forensic Psychiatrist and Psychotherapist. ‘Murder Stories: narrative approaches to therapy with people who have killed’.

2014

Dr Peter Shoenberg, Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist in Psychotherapy at Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Hospital and a psychoanalytic psychotherapist – ‘Working with psychosomatic patients: contemporary psychoanalytic understanding’.
Dr Julian Stern, Consultant Psychiatrist in Psychotherapy in the Adult Department at the Tavistock Centre, where he is now head of the Psychiatry discipline – ‘Trying to keep the body and mind in mind: psychoanalytic psychotherapy with medically symptomatic patients’.

2013:

Dr Sarah Majid, Consultant Psychiatrist and Psychotherapist, Tavistock & Portman Foundation Trust – ‘Complex and Severe Trauma in Adults: a psychoanalytic approach’
Dr Jean Knox – ‘The Unbearable Nature of Meaning: neuroscience, dissociation, shame and the sense of self’

2012:

Jeremy Holmes – ‘From Freud to fMRI:
The Psychodynamic Clinician in the Mood Disorder Lab
What can we learn about depression? What can we contribute?’
Margaret Wilkinson – ‘Changing Minds in Therapy:
Neurobiology, Attachment and Trauma – Creating Connection’

2011:

Kate Burrows – ‘Healthy Feet in Good Shoes; Mourning & Developments in the Internal Object in the Recovery from Autistic and Narcissistic States of Mind’
Donald Campbell – ‘Understanding the Aggressive Act’

2010:

Dr. Margo Waddell – ‘Narcissism: An Adolescent Disorder?’
Amanda Jones – ‘Cumulative Relational Trauma in Parent-Infant Relationships’

2009:

Helen Morgan – ‘Between Fear and Blindness: Issues of ‘Race’ in Psychotherapy’
Fakhry Davids – ‘Race, Culture and Psychotherapy”

2008:

Dr. Carine Minne – ‘Violence to Body and Mind&’
Dr. Sheilagh Davies – ‘Madness or Pain’/li>

2007:

Dr. Marcus Johns – ‘Pain, Shame & Empathy’
Dr. Mary Target – ‘Successful Narcissism Breaking Down: in life and in treatment’

2006:

Prophecy Coles – ‘Should we take our siblings seriously?’
Margaret Rustin – ‘Taking Account of Sibling Relationships: A View from Child Psychotherapy’

2005:

Dr. Richard Lucas – ‘Making Sense of Psychosis’
Dr. Luis Rodriguez de la Sierra – ‘On the Way to Utopia: Working with unconscious factors involved in drug addiction’

2004:

Valerie Sinason – ‘Generational Transmission of Trauma: The biggest unconscious offence’
Dr. Ravi Rana – ‘My Mother’s Best Friend: A failure in the normal use of aggression during adolescence’