CPD Credits
1
Event Type
Live Online Event
Location
Zoom & Recording for 365 days
Time
6:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Standard
£15.00
Trainee/NHS
£11.75
Friday, December 8, 2023
Incorporating sense and sexuality in couple therapy – Is integration possible?
Lectures from the Tavistock Relationships Model
With Susan Pacey
In this seminar, Susan Pacey will offer therapists insights into the challenges of working with body, mind and relationship when couples present with sexual problems. Currently clients seeking help must choose between a psychoanalytic/psychodynamic approach, which mostly addresses unconscious mental models of relating, and psychosexual therapy, which focuses primarily on the body and conscious couple interaction. In this way the profession seems to mirror the psychic splitting of sex and love, which Freud first identified and which is a common phenomenon in clinical work. There is a growing number of psychotherapists, however, who are working with both approaches and Pacey will discuss psychological barriers to and benefits of integration.
Pacey will draw on nearly thirty years’ clinical experience as well as research undertaken as part of the Doctor of Couple Psychotherapy Programme at Tavistock Relationships, proposing that the major psychosexual therapy intervention known as sensate focus, a programme of tactile exercises given to couples as ‘homework’, has the potential to help integrate couple dynamics and sexual behaviour. This famous intervention illuminates for therapist and client alike the multitude of existential anxieties and defences that interfere with partners’ shared desire and lead to sexual avoidance in the consulting room and in the bedroom.
Programme
18.00 Introductions and housekeeping
18.05 Susan Pacey
In this seminar, Susan Pacey will share case vignettes from her new book, Sensate Focus and the Psyche, illustrating to delegates how to think about and assess couples who might benefit from the programme of tactile exercises. She will show how exploring partners’ responses to shared sensual behaviour may be interpreted using some of Winnicott’s seminal concepts, and how the tactile intervention may help clients repair debilitating sexual shame and reclaim bodily pleasure. Pacey will illustrate how sensate focus can help the therapist’s understanding of the couple through partners’ feedback from the homework, and help them talk to each other, and to the therapist, more openly about their anxieties and wishes about sex.
The intervention, however, is no panacea, and Pacey will elaborate on cases where it is definitely contraindicated, including those couples where aggression is paramount. Participants will gain an appreciation of the scope and limitations of sensate focus in practice.
The intervention, however, is no panacea, and Pacey will elaborate on cases where it is definitely contraindicated, including those couples where aggression is paramount. Participants will gain an appreciation of the scope and limitations of sensate focus in practice.
18.45 Q&A with Participants
An opportunity to ask Susan questions relating to the presentation and how you might integrate her thinking into your clinical practice.
19.00 End
Susan Pacey
Dr Susan Pacey has been a psychosexual and couple psychotherapist for 30 years, with a private practice in London W1 and also in the NHS for 15 years. In 2018 she completed successfully the Doctor of Couple Psychotherapy Programme at Tavistock Relationships (TR), having gained an MA in Psychoanalysis, Attachment and the Couple Relationship at TR in 2010. Pacey is a registered member of the UK Council for Psychotherapy and a senior accredited member of the College of Sexual and Relationship Therapists. She is the author of the book Sensate Focus and the Psyche - Integrating Sense and Sexuality in Couple Therapy based on the key findings of her doctoral study. She has written papers on the medicalisation of sex, the impact of pregnancy and childbirth on sexual relationships, circumcision, female genital mutilation and other aspects of sexuality. She was one of a team of editors for the journal Sexual and Relationship Therapy for several years and is a teacher, speaker and organiser for national and international professional conferences concerned with sexual relationships and sexuality.
- Psychotherapists
- Couple and Family Psychotherapists
- Psychoanalysts
- Psychologists
- Clinical Psychologists
- Psychiatrists
- GPs
- Counsellors
- Social workers
- Teachers/Educators
• Understand the challenges associated with the current dualism in the profession of psychotherapy
• Assess and identify couples who could benefit from the sensate focus intervention
• Recognise situations where sensate focus is contraindicated particularly for couples where aggression is a significant issue.
Sign up to Newsletter: £11.75
Standard Registration: £15.00
Trainee, NHS staff and Third Sector: £11.75
Group Rates (for 4 or more): Contact lucysam@trtogether.com for customised pricing.
Trainee discount: To qualify for this offer you need to be taking a course which provides core practitioner training in counselling or psychotherapy that is at least 1 year full time or two years part time and recognised by the BACP or UKCP. TR Together reserve the right to ask to see evidence of training being undertaken.
Alumni: If you are a TR Alumni (TRAPC member) please email anitabruz@tavistockrelationships.org for a discount code to add at checkout
Your CPD certificate will be available to download from your TR Together account within 48 hours of the event.