What's On
Coming Up
Evening Seminar - Thursday, 20th November 2025 @ 7.00pm
Professor Massimo De Mari
Prisoners On The Couch
Working every day with violent patients in the prison system is not an easy task, especially in an institution where individuals who have just committed a crime and are awaiting trial are confined. These are often people experiencing prison for the first time, a large percentage of whom are non-EU citizens and drug addicts. The psychiatrist's first task is to treat symptoms of anxiety, depression, and opioid withdrawal. Only then is it possible to work in a more therapeutic way with a view to rehabilitation and reintegration into society. At this point, other difficulties arise that are part of the psychoanalyst's work: the difficult search for the psychic truth and the mind’s symbolic function against defence mechanisms, fighting with incoherent laws and psychotic environmental dynamics.
I would like to share some reflections that I have written over the last two years, in which I have attempted to focus on some of these dynamics through clinical cases and theoretical references drawn from psychoanalysis and Greek tragedy. I will be very interested in discussing with those who participate and wish to share their experiences and points of view on these issues.
Evening Seminar - Thursday, 15th January 2026 @ 7.00pm
Dr Roberta Babb
When the Outside World Enters the Room: The Chilling Effect in Forensic Psychotherapy
This seminar examines how external events and global crises shape the internal world of patients, staff, and institutions within forensic contexts. It focuses on the “chilling effect” – the silencing of speech under conditions of surveillance, fear, and institutional pressure – and its impact on therapeutic practice.
Drawing on psychoanalytic and psychodynamic perspectives, the seminar will explore how political crises, social and intersectional inequalities, and cultural anxieties enter forensic services and influence what can and cannot be spoken. The uneven distribution of silence across hierarchies and identities, and to the ways defensive practice and compliance cultures constrain therapeutic openness will also be explored.
Attendees will be invited to reflect on how silences emerge in their own work, the meanings they may carry, and how small acts of resistance can sustain the possibility of speech, reflection, and repair.
