APPCIOS Conference, 29th September 2024.
As a trainee Child Psychotherapist, I was particularly interested in attending APPCIOS’s fifth annual conference, Speaking the Unspeakable: How Psychodynamic Practice makes a good difference in the social world.
The day started with a presentation from Dr Mark Waddington outlining the work of Placement Support- a specialist provider of long-term psychodynamic intervention for children, families, and professionals. Waddington presented the work of a long-standing psychodynamic group who come together to discuss their work with networks and families. The need for the group was helpfully illustrated through a video of a three-pronged pendulum, the motion of which is somewhat predictable until there is a large displacement from its equilibrium, at which point it becomes chaotic and unpredictable. Watching the confusing and frantic motion of the displaced pendulum gave a powerful sense of the relational complexity of working with an adoptive family: initially being too overwhelmed to even look, a realisation that focussing on one part brings some grounding, an urgent wish to have others who can track the other two parts of the pendulum, a confusion at how the movement of three parts could ever be coherently linked.
Waddington illustrated how as an individual working with families we can only ever be in receipt of a small fragment of their emotional experience. The process of coming together in a psychodynamic group where different members are in touch with different fragments, gives insight into the complex relational mosaics of adoptive families. My work as a trainee Child Psychotherapist in CAMHS often involves complex network discussions, in which I am primarily identified with the child I work with and consider my task to be advocating for their experience. On reflection, Waddington’s presentation helpfully illustrated that coming together in a meaningful way, rather than asking everyone to look at your prong on the pendulum, requires a receptivity and curiosity to the experience of other professionals; to take the conflicting, binarizing experiences within a network as ‘data’ of a wider relational process.
The second presentation of the conference, ‘Those who sup with the devil should have a long- handled spoon,’ led by Dr Janine Cherry-Swaine, Consultant Child Psychotherapist and Sue Byrne, Senior Mental Health Nurse, explored their work in the NHS Trauma and Resilience Service in South Yorkshire. Developed in response to the Rotherham sexual exploitation scandal, the service offers consultations to professionals working with adult survivors of sexual exploitation. The presentation poignantly explored the composite case study of ‘Lydia,’ a vulnerable woman who Byrne had noticed was unconsciously turned away from in multiagency discussions. Organisational consultations were offered to support those working with Lydia and these gave a space to contain and process the strong projective processes of shame, disgust and abuse related to Lydia’s abuse and early history.
Wider group discussions explored Lydia’s complicated experience of being seen: as an infant exposed to a maternal gaze filled with shame; as a survivor of sexual exploitation exposed to the disturbing gaze of abusers. The work of the consultation group provided an opportunity for Lydia to receive an experience of a supportive gaze, which over time, she became curious about. This highlighted the importance and hopefulness of organisational consultation groups as therapeutic interventions in their own right for clients who would be unable to engage in direct therapeutic work.
The structure of the conference, skilfully facilitated by Emma Higgs, assisted in developing an experiential understanding of the power of the group. Following each presentation there were small break-out rooms, where I experienced the anxieties of being in an unknown relational space and the complicated process of seeking to understand and take in the differing and contrasting experiences of other attendees. This allowed for rich discussions of diversity, intersectionality, and the challenge of organisational limitations within the public sector, discussions made ‘speakable’ by excellent facilitators. Following the breakout rooms, the conference attendees joined back together for larger group discussions, which became organically led by conference presenters and small group facilitators. I noticed I found it difficult to gather my own words and thoughts in the larger group and wondered if this illustrated the need for relational safety to speak in a group which had been explored by Waddington. This made me wonder about where the capacity to speak might get projected within a network and who might be left with the silence.
Maria Williamson
5th October 2024