What's On
IAFP Evening Seminar - Thursday 21 May 2026 - Online 7.00 - 8.30pm
Cruelty Informed Practice - Dr Chris Scanlon
In this presentation I will discuss my experience of offering reflective-practice in organisations offering services for victims/survivors of interpersonal violence and cruelty. I will argue that ‘trauma-informed (trauma focussed) practice’ too-often unhelpfully splits-up the victim-perpetrator-rescuer-bystander matrices in ways that lets-loose ‘uncoupled violence/cruelty’ into the organisational dynamics.
I will discuss examples of how this uncoupled/split-off perpetrator-violence is played-out as cruelty between management-and-frontline-workers; between-frontline workers, and between frontline workers and the victim-survivors that they are tasked to help.
I will conclude by proposing a conceptual move from ‘trauma-informed’ to ‘cruelty-informed’ reflective practice in order to better enhance our understandings of the ways in which uncoupled/split-off violence and cruelty plays out in services dedicated to helping victim-survivors in order to provide better containment for staff teams and in so doing improve the quality of services for victims-survivivors.
The theme of this year’s conference addresses global concerns around exclusion, structural violence, identity-based hostility and the increasing social, political and institutional pressures affecting both forensic systems and clinical work.
Around the world, governments and institutions are enacting policies restricting personal freedoms, speech, and difference. These shifts generate intense societal anxieties, foster mechanisms of projection and boundary‑making, and create hostile environments for those perceived as “strangers”. The conference examines these dynamics through psychoanalytic and systemic thinking, exploring their impact on individuals, institutions, and societies.
For more details about the conference please click here.
FORENSIC PSYCHOTHERAPY SOCIETY
Evening Seminars £35
Thursdays 7.00 - 8.15pm
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Please note that FPS seminars are not recorded and must be watched live
This is their last evening seminar of this term
04.06.26 - Katya Orrell - Victim & Perpetrator: Sexual abuse (Part 2 - Incest)
11.06.26 - Leslie Lothstein - Abnormal Development of Skin Ego and its Role in Paraphilias
18.06.26 - Anna Motz - Intoxicated States of Mind
Thinking Under Fire: Bion for Today
UCL Psychoanalysis Unit in Collaboration with Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing
27 - 28 June 2026 10.00 - 5.00pm
Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health - UCL , and Online via Zoom
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Bion continues to have a global influence nearly forty years after his death. The publication of his Complete Works on PEP will increase this impact further. This hybrid in-person and online conference provides an opportunity to explore the ongoing significance of Bion’s contributions in a world where thinking is more than ever under fire.