Trauma Transmissions Affect Many Generations by Jill Salberg, Ph.D., ABPP Heinrich Himmler standing near refugees in occupied Metz, France. Photo is from a group of photos of Himmler and Nazi soldiers Psychotherapy and psychoanalytic studies have found that traumatic experiences of physical and sexual abuse in the history of parents become trans-generationally transmitted to the next generation as fear, anxiety and sometimes actualising abuse behaviour. There is great need for intervention and psychotherapy treatment to help people heal from trauma and prevent further transmissions of traumatic states and experiences. There have been important shifts in psychoanalysis moving away [...]

Love as a Cure for Madness by Richard Gipps What, as you see it, is the most absurd of our therapeutic fantasies? To imagine that a patient suffering a deep disturbance of the brain’s balance could be cured by a passionate offering of nurture or concern? As I see it, at least, that just about fits the bill. Consider: a middle aged man unexpectedly collapses into a dreadful psychotic depression. His adoring wife and daughter, his therapist, do all they can to care for, pray for, show sympathy to, him…and just three months later he’s killed himself. What went wrong? [...]

Primate Change, Stillness and Moving Out Of the Chair by Roz Carroll Roz Carroll, one of the speakers at our upcoming event Moving Out of the Chair: Freeing Up Creative Potential in the Therapeutic Relationship https://www.conferonline.org/event/moving.html on Saturday 7 December in London “…a ‘threshold’ appears first as a boundary and then once approached, you realize that it is only the limit of one layer of understanding while, at the same time, it acts as the doorway to the next, deeper layer.” (Chambers, M.) Primate Change I’m reading a book about Primate Change – the adaptation of our bodies to [...]

Lament for a Giant’s Sigh by Toby Chown A reverie of nightwalking In 2008, as part of my dramatherapy training, I found myself walking in silence at night across Dartmoor. We were given instructions to have a buddy and carry a torch. We were told that one staff member would go at the pace of the fastest, and that another leader would go at the pace of the slowest, and others would walk between us. We had already surrendered our phones, and we were asked not to use words to communicate. We walked in rare darkness, free of [...]