Attachment Theory & Affect Regulation: Video Course

At this practical and therapeutically oriented seminar which would be especially relevant for psychotherapists, psychologists, counsellors and psychiatrists, Dr Adshead draws on modern interpretations of Attachment thought, recent neurobiological findings and her long-standing psychodynamic and clinical experience to help us comprehend:

• Attachment as ‘hidden regulator‘, physiological, psychological, sociological: revealed at times of threat, crisis, illness
• Attachment inscribed in body and brain
• Our clients’ ability to manage distress – how we can understand this from relational and neurobiological standpoints? What is it to be incapable of distress?
• The dandelion orchid hypothesis and how this links with developmental patterns
• Attachment patterns and their linkages with Affect Regulation strategies (including de-activation, hyper-activation and disorganised)
• Affect Regulation and Mentalizing – the acceptance of negative affect
• Mentalizing failures and Therapy as learning to mentalize
• Coming to terms with hate in countertransference

Viewing Attachment based approaches through the lens of ‘an organised personality structure’, Dr Adshead explains how therapists can apply these learnings in clinical settings and allow for provision of relational security at multiple levels.

About the speaker

Dr Gwen Adshead is a Forensic Psychiatrist and Psychotherapist. She trained at St George’s Hospital, the Institute of Psychiatry and the Institute of Group Analysis.  She is trained as a group therapist and a Mindfulness-based cognitive therapist and has also trained in Mentalisation-based therapy. She worked for nearly twenty years as a Consultant Forensic Psychotherapist at Broadmoor Hospital, running psychotherapeutic groups for offenders and working with staff around relational security and organisational dynamics. She is the co-editor of Clinical topics in Personality Disorder (with Dr Jay Sarkar) which was awarded first prize in the psychiatry Section of the BMA book awards 2013; and she also co-edited Personality Disorder: the Definitive Collection with Dr Caroline Jacob. She is the co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Forensic Psychiatry (2013) and the Oxford Handbook of Medical Psychotherapy (2016). She is also the co-editor of Munchausens’s Syndrome by Proxy: Current issues in Assessment, Treatment and Research.

Gwen was visiting professor at Yale School of Psychiatry and Law in 2013; and also honoured with the President’s Medal for services to psychiatry that same year for her work on ethics in psychiatry. She was awarded an honorary doctorate by St George’s hospital in 2015; and was Gresham Professor of Psychiatry 2014-2017. She now works in a medium secure unit in Hampshire in a service for high-risk offenders with personality disorder; and in a women’s prison. Her new book: The Deluded Self: Narcissism and its Disorders is out now with nscience publishing house.

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