Annual Lecture
Saturday 1st October 2011
Dr Adshead “Evil”
“Offences and defences: staff distress and the
organisational defences in secure hospitals”
The work of Isobel Menzies Lyth encouraged us to look carefully at the unconscious ways that professional carers deal with the distress of being close to physically ill people. Her work has been taken up by later authors; but not applied in depth to forensic residential care, where the patients are people who have acted in cruel and frightening ways. In this presentation, I will look at psychological defences generally; and then at how they might be enacted in forensic psychiatric care. I will particularly reflect on institutional defences; and question how we can help ourselves to not be unthinking carers of damaged people.
Dr Gwen Adshead is a forensic psychiatrist and psychotherapist. She trained at St George's Hospital and the Institute of Psychiatry; and qualified as a group analyst with the IGA. For the last ten years, she has worked as a consultant psychotherapist at Broadmoor Hospital. Gwen's research interests include attachment theory and its applications to personality disorders, violence and problems in care giving.
Tickets £22 (in advance), £25 (at the door), £10 (students), free to LCP students.
Available from the LCP Office, 32 Leighton Road, Kentish Town, London NW5 2QE Tel:
All events have been organised in aid of the London Centre for Psychotherapy - Registered Charity No. . All proceeds from these events will go to The London Centre for Psychotherapy, a member institution of the British Psychoanalytic Council.
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