secrets and lies

Secrets and Lies

Uncovering Hidden Truths in Family Histories

Recorded Saturday 21 November 2020

With Dr Françoise Davoine, Trudy Gold, Maya Lasker-Wallfisch, John Simmonds and Dr Reenee Singh

CPD Credits: 4 hours

Many families have needed to shed a past identity in order to build new lives.  Especially those who have been subjected to social shame or exclusion. Often, unacceptable aspects of that family history are expunged from the family narrative; histories that are considered too painful to recount – either to protect the teller or listener – are deliberately or unconsciously hidden.

Photographs are removed from albums. Names are deleted from family trees. War records destroyed.

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FULL PROGRAMME

Dr Reenee Singh
Voicing the Unvoiced: Secrets and Systemic Family Psychotherapy
Much of our work as family and systemic psychotherapists comprises providing a safe space where untold, untellable stories can be told, and where differences and difficulties in family relationships can be voiced. Some of these secrets may have to do with miscarriages, terminations and still births, or children from previous relationships. Other, possibly more dangerous secrets, are about incest and sexual abuse. This presentation will explore how to work with secrets in systemic family psychotherapy, and how to appreciate the protective function that secrets might have, for example, when working with refugee, migrant and intercultural couples and families.

Q&A

Dr Françoise Davoine
The Transmission of Family Secrets Through the Transference
In psychoanalysis, such transmission often occurs through a memory recorded by the body in the present time of the sessions. While appearing as a symptom, such as voices, visions, rage or withdrawal, the hidden or previously unknown memory emerges from an unspeakable place, manifesting in the transference as an attempt to reach another in order to be shared and spoken. Françoise will detail moments in clinical work where unpredictable “elements” triggered some entrenched parts of her own history leading to a greater knowledge of both her past and the past of her client. In her experience it is at the crossroad of the clinician’s story, the patient’s story and history at large that secrets can become known.

Q&A

John Simmonds
Integrating the Known and the Unknown into Adoption
Over the last century, adoption practice has moved from being a solution to the maintenance of moral and social order in society to a solution for children who cannot be cared for safely and appropriately by their birth parents or birth family. It has moved from a position where secrecy in the family about the child’s origins was dominant, to one where the complexity of the child’s early experiences needs to be incorporated into a more secure, settled and sensitive family life. But while these changes have come to acknowledge the importance for everybody in coming to understand their history, heritage and identity, the challenge in doing so has not gone away. This presentation will draw on evidence and experience over the past 100 years about these fundamental questions and what may be a future direction of travel in building on the best of what we know.

Q&A

Maya Lasker-Wallfisch with Trudy Gold
To Know or Not to Know
In this conversation, consultant psychotherapist Maya Lasker-Wallfisch and the historian and activist Trudy Gold will explore the questions: what is a secret?, when is it toxic?, and what are the social and psychological implications within a family where the family is divided into those that know and those that do not, whether on a conscious or a subconscious level? They will also address the “secret” as a defensive adaptation to the truth in the service of protection, and consider some of the developmental injury that can occur as a direct response to being excluded from the truth.

Q&A

All panel Q&A

FEES

Includes: 1 year’s access, test and CPD Certificate of Attendance, subtitles and transcript

INDIVIDUAL

£60 (or £48 Confer member)

GROUP RATE

£50pp in groups of over 10 (please apply to accounts@confer.uk.com)

CPD

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) credits for 4 hours are available as part of the course fee. You will need to fill out an evaluation form and pass a multiple choice questionnaire related to the content in order to receive your certificate. You can submit this test up to a maximum of 5 times.

SCHEDULE

00:08:08
Dr Reenee Singh
Voicing the Unvoiced: Secrets and Systemic Family Psychotherapy

00:33:28
Q&A

00:38:28
Dr Françoise Davoine
The Transmission of Family Secrets Through the Transference

01:11:55
Q&A

01:24:55
John Simmonds
Integrating the Known and the Unknown into Adoption

02:01:39
Q&A

02:41:02
Maya Lasker-Wallfisch with Trudy Gold
To Know or Not to Know

03:18:25
Q&A

03:27:15
All panel Q&A

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

By attending this workshop virtually, participants will be able to:
  • Describe the possible functions of family secrets
  • Discuss the relationship between family secrets and intergenerational history
  • Utilise systemic and psychoanalytic ideas when working with secrets