Food for Thought
An Exploration of Nourishment, Nutrition, Relationships, and Identity
Food features in all relationships; between mothers and babies, parents and children, within peer groups, couples and families.
With Linda Cundy, Minna Daum, Charlotte Hastings, Mary-Jayne Rust, Rebecca Smith, Andrea Oskis, Jenny Riddell, Vincent Felitti, Charles Brown, Jeff Lane, Nailah Husbands and Tamar Posner
The dinner table may be associated with intimacy, pleasure, connection or conflict. Narratives of culture, gender and history influence the relationship with food, as does intergenerational trauma. How we nurture or deprive ourselves may be a re-enactment of how we were once fed by our caregivers, or at least, how we were emotionally nourished or starved. Climate anxiety and social values are often expressed through the ingredients we buy and put on our plates.
The kitchen or allotment could even become the setting for therapy.
We can learn so much about our clients through what and how they eat yet we rarely enquire about this aspect of their lives unless they present with an eating disorder or weight problems. In this series of seminars, experienced psychotherapists consider the many ways that food and feeding can be usefully explored within therapy sessions and, if we enquire, the rich source of material that may become available to be chewed over and digested.
The session will include a talk from a featured speaker, a discussion with our series host Linda Cundy and a Q&A to end.
TIMES
Wednesday afternoons at 14.00-16.00 EDT
FEES
Per seminar
Recording not included
$56 (Member $28)
(Click here to become a member)
Whole series of 9 seminars
Recording included
$400 (Member $200)
(Click here to become a member)
CE
2 hours per seminar/18 hours whole series
Certificates of Attendance will confirm that the participant joined the seminars
BOOK WHOLE SERIES OF 9 SEMINARS (for single seminars see below)
Purchasing all seminars as a whole series also includes recordings of the seminars as they become available (approx. 14 days post the event). You’ll also have unlimited access to these recordings for 1 full year.
All Seminars: $400 (BOOKING CLOSED)
All Seminars (Member): $200 (BOOKING CLOSED)
27 April 2022
Linda Cundy
All the Ingredients: Food and Identity
As therapeutic practitioners, do we work with specific symptoms or the client as a whole person? If it’s the latter, we try to help them in therapy to make sense of their unique relational environment, the influences that shaped their early experiences, how these were internalised, swallowed and digested or spat out, and how past experience continues to shape their present lives. Clients’ relationship with food, and the place of food in their relationships, can provide insights into these different ingredients of each person’s self-narrative. Stories of feeding and being fed have a valuable place in the therapist’s consulting room.
By attending this event, participants will be able to:
- Discover how to explore a client’s relational environment and its impact on their relationship with food.
- Explore the place of food in the development of a client’s identity.
- Consider the imprints of feeding and being fed in the adult client.
TIME:
US Eastern Time: 14:00 – 16:00
US Pacific Time: 11:00 – 13:00
14.00 EDT Introduction
14.05 Talk
14.50 Conversation with Eugene Ellis
15.15 Q&A
16.00 End
CE:
Certificates of Attendance will confirm that the participant joined the webinar
FEES:
Please note booking closes 12pm (EDT) Sunday 24 April
Recording not included
Live Seminar: $56 (BOOKING CLOSED)
Live Seminar (Member): $28 (BOOKING CLOSED)
4 May 2022
Minna Daum
Feeding the Baby: What Can Go Wrong?
Feeding the baby – breast or bottle – can be a huge source of pleasure, satisfaction and intimacy for parent and infant, providing the context for secure attachment to develop. But for parents with disrupted or difficult attachment histories, in which their own dependency needs have not been met, the feeding relationship is likely to become the focus of a host of unconscious representations and overwhelming feelings of guilt, anxiety, hostility and rejection.
This presentation will explore some of the ways in which the feeding relationship can go wrong, and discuss the developmental risks to the baby.
By attending this event, participants will be able to:
- Explore some of the ways in which the feeding relationship can go wrong.
- Discuss the developmental risks to the baby.
- Interpret the possible unconscious meanings behind feelings of guilt, anxiety, hostility and rejection in the feeding relationship.
TIME:
US Eastern Time: 14:00 – 16:00
US Pacific Time: 11:00 – 13:00
14.00 EDT Introduction
14.05 Talk
14.50 Conversation with Linda Cundy
15.15 Q&A
16.00 End
CE:
Certificates of Attendance will confirm that the participant joined the webinar
FEES:
Please note booking closes 12pm (EDT) Sunday 1 May
Recording not included
Live Seminar: $56 (BOOKING CLOSED)
Live Seminar (Member): $28 (BOOKING CLOSED)
11 May 2022
Charlotte Hastings
In the Kitchen with Teenagers and Parents:
Kitchen therapy, separation and rapprochement
During adolescence, the developmental stage marked by the separation injunction, conflict can often arise. Previous relationships with parents (good enough or not) and within the family must be revised as the young person undergoes a transformation.
Kitchen Therapy is a creative approach for exploring not only relationships with food but with people, the kitchen providing a setting for resolving internal and interpersonal conflicts. Drawing on Mahler’s concept of separation-individuation and rapprochement, this presentation explores how the relationship with food can provide a medium for working through the challenges posed by adolescence, with a potential for healing longstanding rupture or deficit.
By attending this event, participants will be able to:
- Discuss how the kitchen can provide a setting for resolving internal and interpersonal conflicts.
- Apply Mahler’s concept of separation-individuation and rapprochement, in the context of challenges posed by adolescence.
- Explain the benefits of ‘Kitchen Therapy’ as a creative approach to working with the family.
TIME:
US Eastern Time: 14:00 – 16:00
US Pacific Time: 11:00 – 13:00
14.00 EDT Introduction
14.05 Talk
14.50 Conversation with Linda Cundy
15.15 Q&A
16.00 End
CE:
Certificates of Attendance will confirm that the participant joined the webinar
FEES:
Please note booking closes 12pm (EDT) Sunday 8 May
Recording not included
Live Seminar: $56 (BOOKING CLOSED)
Live Seminar (Member): $28 (BOOKING CLOSED)
18 May 2022
Mary-Jayne Rust and Rebecca Smith
Getting Our Hands Dirty: Our Problematic and Therapeutic Relationship with Nature and Food
Mary-Jayne Rust
Ecopsychology and Food
For many our relationship with food can be deeply painful and may reflect our very earliest relationship with mother and her body. In a similar way our collective relationship with food reflects our relationship with Gaia, Mother Earth and our dysfunctional relationship with her body; this manifests in numerous ways, from consumerism to industrial agriculture and the abuse of our nonhuman relatives. In this free-range talk I will look at some of the ways we are healing from our giant eating problem: therapy on allotments, making conscious food choices, growing food, re-wilding self and land.
Rebecca Smith
Trauma, dislocation and allotments: growing people, crops and community
Food growing is a rewarding and challenging skill that encompasses the personal, inter-relational, and draws on a deepening connection with nature. Voltaire advised a garden can reveal much of life to us, and through the act of nurturing seeds into harvests, gardeners suffering from trauma, dislocation, deprivation and mental ill-health find solace, connection and meaning. Rebecca will share vignettes of moments in the process that she has encountered with clients, from two decades of horticultural therapy practice.
By attending this event, participants will be able to:
- Identify ways to heal a difficult relationship with food, in the context of eco psychology.
- Consider our relationship with food alongside our relationship to the earth.
- Explore the therapeutic benefits of growing food.
TIME:
US Eastern Time: 14:00 – 16:00
US Pacific Time: 11:00 – 13:00
14.00 EDT Chair introduces
14.05 Mary-Jayne presentation (to include just 5 minute Q&A)
14.45 Rebecca presentation (including 5 minute Q&A just for her)
15.25 Chair to facilitate conversation between presenters, moving into…
15.40 General Q&A
16.00 End
CE:
Certificates of Attendance will confirm that the participant joined the webinar
FEES:
Please note booking closes 12pm (EDT) Sunday 15 May
Recording not included
Live Seminar: $56 (BOOKING CLOSED)
Live Seminar (Member): $28 (BOOKING CLOSED)
25 May 2022
Andrea Oskis
Food as a Means of Communication: Family, Friends, Fight, Flight and other F words
It has been said, ‘you are what you eat’. But what about how you eat? And who you eat with? Even where you eat? All of these experiences, to varying degrees, make us who we are. This presentation will bring together research evidence from psychology and physiology, as well as clinical experiences, to explore how food is a powerful means of communication, over the lifespan, both intra- and interpersonally, across different affectional bonds. We will see how attachment research tells us about food love stories, but also, how food sharing is not always caring.
TIME:
US Eastern Time: 14:00 – 16:00
US Pacific Time: 11:00 – 13:00
14.00 EDT Introduction
14.05 Talk
14.50 Conversation with Linda Cundy
15.15 Q&A
16.00 End
CE:
Certificates of Attendance will confirm that the participant joined the webinar
FEES:
Please note booking closes 12pm (EDT) Sunday 22 May
Recording not included
Live Seminar: $56(BOOKING CLOSED)
Live Seminar (Member): $28 (BOOKING CLOSED)
15 June 2022
Jenny Riddell
Couples, Food and Meaning
Food and feeding are important ingredients in couple relationships; how individual tastes, preferences and needs are negotiated exposes significant dynamics and acts as a meaningful message between partners.
This seminar will include a brief presentation of a hypothetical couple, illustrating ways that the reality of food, and the couple’s use and abuse of it, revealed the dynamic of their relationship. Again, with the focus on food, the concept of ‘the couple fit’ will then be explored, in relation to both couple and individual therapy, where there may be use of ‘working with the couple in mind’.
By attending this event, participants will be able to:
- Illustrate the significance of food and feeding in working with the couple relationship.
- Discuss how autonomy and togetherness are expressed through individual tastes, preferences and needs.
- Explain the concept of ‘the couple fit’ and ‘working with the couple in mind’.
TIME:
US Eastern Time: 14:00 – 16:00
US Pacific Time: 11:00 – 13:00
14.00 EDT Introduction
14.05 Talk
14.50 Conversation with Linda Cundy
15.15 Q&A
16.00 End
CE:
Certificates of Attendance will confirm that the participant joined the webinar
FEES:
Please note booking closes 12pm (EDT) Sunday 12 June
Recording not included
Live Seminar: $56 (BOOKING CLOSED)
Live Seminar (Member): $28 (BOOKING CLOSED)
22 June 2022
Linda Cundy
Adverse Childhood Experiences, Self-feeding and Therapy
Harmful events in early life have many long-lasting consequences for mental health, as we learn from our work with clients. Research has also demonstrated a link between adverse childhood experiences and our relationship with food, including an increased risk of a range of serious health conditions resulting from what and how we eat. Why might that be? And what is the role of psychotherapy in addressing clients’ self-harming eating habits?
By attending this event, participants will be able to:
- Evaluate the findings of the ACE study and the implications for working with eating disorders.
- Give examples of how unspoken experiences in childhood can lead to psychological and physical health risks.
- Appraise the ongoing importance of the ACE study conducted by Felitti.
TIME:
US Eastern Time: 14:00 – 16:00
US Pacific Time: 11:00 – 13:00
14.00 EDT Introduction
14.05 Talk
15.15 Q&A
16.00 End
CE:
Certificates of Attendance will confirm that the participant joined the webinar
FEES:
Please note booking closes 12pm (EDT) Sunday 12 June
Recording not included
Live Seminar: $56 (BOOKING CLOSED)
Live Seminar (Member): $28 (BOOKING CLOSED)
29 June 2022
Charles Brown and Jeff Lane
Men, Culture, Bodies, and Food
Charles Brown
Eating Disordered: The Appropriation and Distortion of the Male Body with Special Reference to Black Bodies
In this presentation I will discuss the male body, its appropriation and destruction. Implicit assumptions and expectations of the male body and the environment it inhabits may be understood and recognised as products of history, of cultures and politics, and traumatic enactment, not simply borders or evolution. This discussion suggests that eating disorders are positioned as a form of cultural and political labour undertaken by men to embody the myth of the ideal body, and for others the repudiation of social mores.
Jeff Lane
The Men Who Feed the Nation
Drawing upon his long history and experiences of farming and food production Jeff will consider how men have played a part in feeding the nation. The physical labour involved, and rites of passage into productive adulthood, has a powerful impact on men’s bodies, psyches and sense of identity which is absent for many men in contemporary society. I will also consider the evolution and development of tools as means of preparing food and offer some thoughts regarding men’s relationship with tools and how that may impact on their sense of self in our modern ‘tool-less’ society.
By attending this event, participants will be able to:
- Discuss psychoanalytic concepts relating to the male body with a focus on the black male body.
- Consider the male body, psyche and sense of identity in contemporary society.
- Identify the potential significance of physical labour, using tools and working on the land for both men and women.
TIME:
US Eastern Time: 14:00 – 16:00
US Pacific Time: 11:00 – 13:00
14.00 EDT Chair introduces
14.05 Charles presentation (to include 5 minute Q&A)
14.45 Jeff presentation (including 5 minute Q&A )
15.25 Chair in conversation with presenters, moving into…
15.40 General Q&A
16.00 End
CE:
Certificates of Attendance will confirm that the participant joined the webinar
FEES:
Please note booking closes 12pm (EDT) Sunday 26 June
Recording not included
Live Seminar: $56 (BOOKING CLOSED)
Live Seminar (Member): $28 (BOOKING CLOSED)
6 July 2022
Nailah Husbands and Tamar Posner interviewed by Linda Cundy
Food, Family, Culture and Identity
Clients’ relationship with food – childhood memories associated with being fed, recipes that connect them to families, communities and cultures, political and social values regarding food production, their attitude to feeding themselves and other people – can provide the therapist with rich ingredients to work with. This portal into the client’s visceral experiences is often overlooked unless eating difficulties or weight are the presenting problem. For this seminar, two experienced therapists, Nailah Husbands and Tamar Posner, have agreed to be interviewed about the place of food in their own life stories and journeys; journeys through time and across the globe.
By attending this event, participants will be able to:
- Describe the potential significance of communities, culture, political and social values in relation to food for the client.
- Identify food as a portal into the client’s experience, even if disordered eating is not the presenting problem.
- Develop a better understanding of the importance of eating patterns.
TIME:
US Eastern Time: 14:00 – 16:00
US Pacific Time: 11:00 – 13:00
14.00 EDT Introduction
14.05 Interview with Nailah
14.35 Brief questions for Nailah
14.40 Interview with Tamar
15.10 Brief Q&A with Tamar
15.15 Conversation between Nailah, Tamar and Chair
15.35 Q&A
16.00 End
CE:
Certificates of Attendance will confirm that the participant joined the webinar
FEES:
Please note booking closes 12pm (EDT) Sunday 26 June
Recording not included
Live Seminar: $56 (BOOKING CLOSED)
Live Seminar (Member): $28 (BOOKING CLOSED)