BACP Private Practice Conference – September 2018

It is a real privilege to be one of the workshop presenters in London this year, at the BACP Private Practice Conference.  My topic is around risk and safety in Private Practice.

The part that most interests me in the presentation is around OBJECTIFICATION and SUBJECTIVITY.  When a client and therapist get together in the therapy room, are they creating something new?  Are they moving towards the empowerment of the client? – that the client will be experiencing greater autonomy, greater healing, greater joy and strength and resilience?  We would see this as a process of both parties moving towards subjectivity – truly knowing self and knowing other in the relationship.

However therapy also can get locked in the participants’ past – both parties get locked in transference and objectify self and other.  As a therapist I can become the person that my client most fears – this coming out of a process of transference and identification.  This is why therapists must attend supervision – to release themselves from the objectifying process of self and of the client and returning to ground!  As a therapist I need to know myself deeply, my darker desires, my Achilles heels, my weaknesses and what attracts my attention.  Only through a deep process of returning to myself and my subjectivity can I offer my clients the energy and life-giving “physis” and individuality that everyone needs in the therapeutic space.

It is thanks to Karen Minikin from Metanoia that I have been introduced to these ideas and I am deeply grateful to her input at various events and workshops – if you get a chance to see her in action grab it!