Everywhere, Nowhere
Social Class and Psychotherapy
Recorded Friday 12 March 2022
With Anne Aiyegbusi, Sally Bild, Dick Blackwell, Bob Harris, Malcolm Peterson, Martin Weegmann, and Bridgette Rickett
CPD Credits: 3 hours
Although social class is studied in so many disciplines and has been amply addressed in the theoretical literature of psychotherapy, it continues to be an avoided and conflictual issue for many within our professional community in the UK.
This unique conference has been curated to provide space for expression of the lived experience of working-class practitioners in the world of psychotherapy. Our panel will ask difficult questions about why this experience so often involves a struggle for inclusion and acceptance within our professional community; why people from disadvantaged economic backgrounds on both sides of the consulting room experience a lack of sophisticated discourse to account for the emotional impact of coming from less privileged backgrounds.
READ MORE...How are we to understand the neglect of such powerful subjective experiences given the premium in therapy that is placed on insight? Why does the profession seem to find it so difficult to recognise the effects of the real, external world in which we are formed? Is psychotherapy, perhaps, a politically naïve profession that needs to add the ‘social’ to ‘psycho’?
CPD – An optional certificate of attendance for up to 3 hours of CPD, based on completion of a multiple choice questionnaire, will be available soon.
Access to the Talks On Demand runs for 365 days from the date of purchase.
SPEAKERS
Anne Aiyegbusi, Sally Bild, Dick Blackwell, Bob Harris, Malcolm Peterson, Martin Weegmann, Bridgette Rickett, ,FULL PROGRAMME
Bridgette Rickett
Psychology and Social Class: The Working-Class as ‘Other’
This talk will take a critical psychology approach to scrutinise the interrelationship between contemporary and historical research and theory within the ‘Psy’ disciplines on social class. I will argue that ways in which social class has historically been researched, theorised and practised fall broadly in three main themes which collectively construct the working-class mind as deficient. In addition, a singular preoccupation on deficient psychologies of the working-class Other has ensured that class-based oppression, poverty and inequality are largely absent in contemporary research.
Finally, I will review a few examples of very recent psychological work on social class that have identified social conditions and practices as means of explaining classed psychologies. It is this research that shows the promising ability to, first, shift and trouble the inherently deficient working-class self approach and, second, to enable psychology to work to both explain and reduce class-based inequalities at the societal level.
Q&A
Martin Weegmann
.…And Then There’s Harrogate. An Example of Middle-class Advantage & Anxiety
I grew up in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, in a ‘detached house’ as my parents liked to advertise. Being ‘well-spoken’, ‘thrifty’, going to a ‘good school’, and being ‘aspiring’ had enormous premium in the era. Many advantages followed, and yet the anxiety that travelled alongside the status was considerable… Martin Weegman is a clinical psychologist, group analyst and author. He works in the NHS – his abiding ‘higher power’- and has delivered training throughout the UK
Malcolm Peterson
The Pits? Tales from the Coalface of Psychotherapy
Malcolm will speak about his own personal experiences as a Yorkshire man who broke the mould and trained as a psychotherapist. His talk will focus on his Yorkshire dialect, working class background and how he feels this has been received by other psychotherapists during his initial training and beyond. Malcolm Peterson is a Group Analytic Psychotherapist and supervisor. He works in secondary care NHS settings as well as a small private practice, providing psychotherapy & supervision.
Anne Aiyegbusi
Out-Classed! Working Class Racism in the Post-War North
Anne will describe the surprising depth with which she found racism to be embedded in working class culture during 1960s. She will refer to her childhood as a racialised minority within this environment and how many decades later, the long-buried dynamics emerged during her training as a group analyst. Dr Anne Aiyegbusi is a group analyst, forensic psychotherapist and registered mental health nurse. She works part time in the NHS and as Director of an independent training and consultancy service
Sally Bild
Class Consciousness, Culture, and Complexity: A Search for Belonging
Sally grew up in London in a secular, working class Jewish family with intellectually aspirant, communist parents. She will be talking about how this has shaped her world view, her identity, and her sense of belonging. Sally Bild has worked in health and social care settings for nearly 30 years, firstly as a social worker and probation officer, then as an individual psychotherapist and group analyst. She currently works for the NHS in Enfield and in private practice.
All panel Q&A