• When: Monday 9th May 2022, 8 PM - 9:30 PM
• Where: Online event
• Tickets: £10 + booking fee
• Who it's for: This is a public event - everyone welcome!

Ticket holders will be able to access a recording for 2 weeks following the event.

Former England Test cricket captain, Mike Brearley, has had an illustrious career, including captaining England to victory over Australia in the Ashes, and can perhaps be considered one of England's greatest ever test cricket captains.

Alongside his professional cricket career, Mike has long been working as a psychoanalyst, having also served as president of the British Psychoanalytical Society.

This conversation between Mike Brearley, and psychoanalytic psychotherapist & SIP member, Mike Snudden, will be fielding topics such as sport and psychoanalysis, but no question from the online audience will be too broad.

Profit from the evening will go towards the fundraising effort of our 'A Home for SIP' campaign.

About Mike Brearley

I have been fortunate to have two if not four careers in my already long life. Cricket and psychoanalysis the two, philosophy and writing the others.

For years I oscillated between cricket and more obviously intellectual activities. I played cricket at University and briefly professionally, before doing post-graduate work in philosophy of the mind, and later teaching at the University of Newcastle-on-Tyne. Returning to full-time cricket, I captained Middlesex for 12 years and England over a period of four years from 1971 to 1982.

Having worked at a clinic for disturbed adolescents in Hendon, I trained as a psychoanalyst. I have worked now for half my life in this field, mainly in private practice, but also as a school counsellor, and at the Camden Psychotherapy Unit. I have written and lectured in this field, as well as on groups, leadership and sport. I was President of MCC in 2007-8, and of the British Psychoanalytical Society from 2008 and 2010.

I have written The Art of Captaincy (1985), On Form (2017) On Cricket (2018) and The Spirit of Cricket (2020). I am currently writing a sort of memoir of the mind, to be called Turning over the Pebbles. I hope this will come out towards the end of the year. In all of these recent and future efforts I have been trying to integrate activities that often seem diverse.

About Mike Snudden

I am a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and an artist, with years of experience in youth and community work and working with HIV and Aids prevention.

My experience in youth and community work paved the way for me to work in community mental health, working closely with the large psychiatric hospitals, in the Leeds and Bradford area, who were starting to place people back in the community often after many years of being hospitalised.

I had a couple of years in the NHS in Hull, working in HIV and Aids prevention and at the same time completed a foundation training with Group Analysis Manchester. I came back to Bristol to take up a position of psychodynamic counsellor with The Harbour (then The Red Admiral Project) working with people affected by life threatening illness. In Bristol I joined the Severnside training and I qualified as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist in 2001. I have worked in private practice for over 20 years and now I also work in Devon as a Principal Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist for the NHS Personality Disorder Service. I am also Professional Lead for the Psychotherapy Training Unit working with doctors training to be psychiatrists.

Initially I went to art college in the 1970’s but my interest with art did not go away. I completed an MA in Fine Art at Spike Island, UWE in 2016. I continue to make sculptures, which are more like installations as time goes on. I have exhibited in the south west. I think psychoanalysis has really helped me think about art and vice versa. Both allows something to bubble up, ultimately a creative expression.

About our ‘A home for SIP’ fundraising campaign

We are engaged in a major capital fundraising project to raise funds which will allow us to purchase, and adapt to make more accessible, our own premises. Purchase of our own premises will also significantly increase the amount of subsidised treatment and training we can offer, and support our outreach and clinic services. We have secured an interest free loan and are now raising the funds for a deposit. Read more about our campaign here.