How does the body communicate in psychotherapy?

Join us online to celebrate the publication of Primitive Bodily Communications in Psychotherapy. You will hear from the book's editor, Raffaella Hilty, and from contributors who offer diverse psychoanalytic approaches in this significant and valuable edited collection. The event will be chaired by Ruth Williams.

Speakers:

Raffaella Hilty, psychoanalytic psychotherapist and editor of Primitive Bodily Communications in Psychotherapy

Ruth Williams, chair, Jungian analyst and integrative psychotherapist

Brett Kahr, psychoanalytic Psychotherapist, author and Visiting Professor at Regent’s University London

Christina Wipf Perry, Publishing Director at Confer & Karnac Publishing

Salvatore Martini , psychologist and Jungian analyst

Mark Linington, psychoanalytic psychotherapist with The Bowlby Centre

Valerie Sinason, psychoanalyst and President of the Institute of Psychotherapy and Disability

About the book:

"These essays show us the tensions, challenges and opportunities that occur when our clients use their bodies as a primary means of communicating their distress ..." Graeme Galton, Consultant Psychotherapist, Clinic for Dissociative Studies

Psychotherapists will be familiar with what it means to experience the hatred and despair of their most vulnerable patients in the midst of a psychotherapy session. Most often these patients will manage to express their feelings verbally, but what about those who never developed the capacity to speak? Or those who carry a complex range of unprocessed embodied feelings that cannot be verbally expressed?

The contributors to this book present a wide spectrum of clinical cases to illustrate how such patients can reach a state of better physical and emotional containment and, when possible, of verbal communication.

These bodily communications are referred to as primitive not because they are seen as inferior to verbal language, but because they point to the beginnings of psychological development, to primary ways of being and relating, as well as to enduring aspects of ourselves.

Book discount:

Attendees of the book launch can redeem a 20% discount on the book, using the code: PBCP20 at karnacbooks.com. Click here to order the book. (Offer valid until end of June)

About the speakers:

Raffaella Hilty, M.A. (Phil), is an attachment-based psychoanalytic psychotherapist with The Bowlby Centre. She has worked as an Honorary Psychotherapist within the NHS for a number of years, and she now works in private practice in London.

Ruth Williams, is a Jungian Psychoanalyst, Integrative Psychotherapist, IAAP/BAPPS supervisor and author of C.G. Jung: The Basics (Routledge, 2019). To learn more about Ruth, visit: www.RuthWilliams.org.uk

Christina Wipf Perry has been Publishing Director at Confer & Karnac Books since the launch of the press in 2020. A senior publishing professional with 30 years' experience in trade, academic, and educational publishing across a wide range of disciplines, Christina has worked in both books and journals publishing at large commercial and academic houses, such as Pearson and Oxford University Press, as well as smaller independent publisher Oneworld Press

Brett Kahr has worked in the mental health profession for more than forty years. He is Senior Fellow at the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology in London and Visiting Professor of Psychoanalysis and Mental Health at Regent’s University London. He is also Honorary Director of Research at Freud Museum London and Chair of the Scholars Committee of the British Psychoanalytic Council. Brett is Advisory Editor-in-Chief at Confer & Karnac Publishing and Editor of The Freud Museum London Series. He has written fifteen books including Dangerous Lunatics (Confer Books, 2020) and Freud's Pandemics (Karnac Books, 2021) and has served as series editor for more than sixty additional titles.

Mark Linington is an attachment-based psychoanalytic psychotherapist with The Bowlby Centre and the Clinic for Dissociative Studies in London. From 2013 to 2018 he was CEO at The Bowlby Centre, where he continues to work as a training therapist, clinical supervisor and teacher. He worked for 12 years in the NHS as a psychotherapist with children and adults with intellectual disabilities, who experienced complex trauma and abuse. He also worked as a psychotherapist for several years at a secondary school in London for young people with special needs, including autism, ADHD and other intellectual disabilities. He is currently Clinical Director and CEO at the Clinic for Dissociative Studies, where he is a specialist consultant psychotherapist and clinical supervisor, working with people with a Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). He works in private practice with children, adults and families and provides supervision to individuals and groups and training to organizations.

Salvatore Martini is a psychologist and a Jungian analyst. He is a member of the Italian Association of Analytical Psychology (AIPA) with which he collaborates in the context of its teaching activities, and of the International Association for Analytical Psychology (IAAP) for which he also supervises trainee analysts. He also teaches a course on analytical psychology organized by the Analytic Gestalt Institute (IGA). Salvatore collaborated for ten years in several mental health services, concentrating on therapeutic-rehabilitative ‘integrated theatre’ groups involving psychiatric patients and professional performers. This experience enhanced his understanding of the role of the body as an effective vehicle for expressing emotions and for unconscious communications, leading him to focus increasingly on the dynamics of embodied countertransference in his therapeutic practice. His paper ‘Embodying analysis: The body and the therapeutic process’ won the Fordham Prize in 2017. Salvatore lives and works in Rome, where he has a private practice.

Valerie Sinason is the grandchild of refugees. A widely published poet, writer and psychoanalyst she is President of the Institute of Psychotherapy and Disability, Founder Director and now Patron of the Clinic for Dissociative Studies and on the Board of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD) where she received a lifetime achievement award in 2016. The Truth About Trauma and Dissociation: Everything You Didn’t Want to Know and Were Afraid to Ask (Confer 2020) won the Frank W Putnam award. Trauma and Memory: the Science and the Silenced was co-edited with Ashley Conway for Routledge (2021) and a first novel The Orpheus Project will be published by Aeon books in 2022.