The Relational Past as Lived in the Interpersonal Present: Using Attachment Theory to Understand Early Trauma and Later Troubled Relationships

Date: 17/05/2008

Audience: Counsellors

Location:
October Gallery
24 Old Gloucester Street
Bloomsbury
London
WC1N 3AL

Contact Email:  Click here

Further Details:

Attachment and Trauma CPD Workshop

The Relational Past as Lived in the Interpersonal Present:
Using Attachment Theory to Understand Early Trauma and Later Troubled Relationships

Workshop Leader – Paul Renn

Saturday 17th May 2008
10am – 4.30pm
October Gallery
24 Old Gloucester Street
London
WC1N 3AL

Cost £65
(£55 to members of the RTS, CAPP and the IAN)

The Attachment and Trauma CPD Workshop one day training programme is accredited by the Register of Trauma Specialists (RTS) and qualifies for 5 points towards CPD. The Workshop may be used in support of an application to join the RTS. More information may be accessed at www.traumaregister.co.uk under ‘Training Course Accreditation’ and at www.traumaregister.co.uk/noticeboard.htm

Workshop Description: The workshop will focus on the way in which attachment trauma in early life impacts on both our ability to mourn loss and to make and sustain emotionally meaningful and mutually enriching intimate relationships in adulthood. Trauma will be viewed not only in terms of overt separation, loss and abuse, but also as deriving from the cumulative effect of severe parent-child affective misattunement in a disorganized attachment-caregiving family system.

The intergenerational transmission of trauma and of secure, insecure and disorganized patterns of attachment, together with characteristic ways of regulating affect, will be explored, in part, by reflecting on our parents’ and grandparents’ attachment experiences and historical and socio-cultural contexts. Participants will be invited to share aspects of their own attachment histories in small groups to illustrate how the internal representation of early self-other relational patterns tend to persevere and become activated and externalised in our current relationships with partners, children, friends and colleagues, particularly at times of stress involving separation and loss.
The workshop will include a discussion of the key attachment concepts of the ‘secure base’ and ‘safe haven’. The provision of these emotional functions - by the caregiver in the parent-child relationship, and by each partner in the adult romantic relationship - help to meet the child’s and the adult’s attachment needs, deactivating attachment distress and restoring a sense of security by regulating fear and anxiety. Repeated benign experiences of these kinds may challenge outdated expectancies and promote emotional and psychological growth and change in the individual. The workshop will conclude with an exploration of how we may apply attachment theory and research to our clinical work.

About the Workshop Leader: Paul Renn is a member of the Register of Trauma Specialists and the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. He is a UKCP registered psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice in west London and central London. He is a member of the Centre for Attachment-based Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (CAPP) where he is a teacher, supervisor and training therapist. He has a background in the National Probation Service in London, developing a particular interest in assessing and working with violent men and couples from an attachment theory and research perspective. He is a member of the International Attachment Network, the International Association for Forensic Psychotherapy and the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. He has presented papers at international conferences and had articles published in professional books and journals in this country and abroad on the subjects of trauma, relationship violence and abuse, and attachment issues.

For more information and booking details email paul_renn2003@yahoo.co.uk or telephone
020 8894 3696.
Booking early is advisable as the workshop is restricted to 20 participants