Gwen Adshead UNSPEAKABLE with Nigel Warburton

Unspeakable

A widow dares not utter her husband's name. A prisoner of war buries the memories of his ordeal. A child hostage is rendered mute. What happens when trauma goes unspoken?

The pioneering psychiatrist and psychotherapist Dr Gwen Adshead invites us to witness her work with patients struggling in the wake of a range of distressing and painful life events. What is the quality of their survival? Who and how do they want to be now? With her help, these courageous people step out of the darkness of shame and fear to discover new possibilities, and find that sometimes the hardest words to say out loud are the very ones to set us free.

Suffused with hope, Unspeakable powerfully shifts our understanding of the meaning and outcomes of trauma.

Gwen Adshead

Dr Gwen Adshead trained at St Bartholomew’s hospital, St George’s hospital and the Institute of Psychiatry and in 2024, she was named as one of five Honorary Fellows of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Dr Adshead currently works part-time in the NHS, as a consultant in a high secure hospital and in a women’s prison. With Eileen Horne, she wrote a book for general readership about her work as a therapist with violence perpetrators called ‘The Devil You Know’. She now returns to her second project with Eileen in 'Unspeakable : Survival and Transformation after Trauma'