Books with writing
CPD Credits
9
Event Type
Live Online Event
Location
Zoom & Recording
Time (UK)
9:00 am - 12:00 pm
Standard
£345.00
Trainee/NHS
£293.25
Book Tickets
Books with writing
Monday, August 3, 2026 - Wednesday, August 5, 2026

Online Contemporary Psychoanalytic Summer Programme

Delivered by leading clinicians in the field of contemporary psychoanalysis

With Dr Zack Eleftheriadou, Dr Jo Stubley & Dr Andrew Balfour

Join us this August for our online psychoanalytic summer programme exploring contemporary thinking across the lifespan.The programme brings together three highly respected clinicians and psychoanalytic practitioners: Dr Zack Eleftheriadou, Dr Joanne Stubley and Dr Andrew Balfour. Designed for counsellors, psychotherapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, trainees and mental health professionals at all stages of their careers, the Summer School offers a rich developmental journey from infancy through to later life.

Across the sessions, participants will explore:

  • The psychodynamic formation of the self, attachment, infant research and early relational development
  • Infant-parent and toddler-parent psychotherapy through the work of Donald Winnicott
  • The impact of trauma on development, including contemporary psychoanalytic perspectives on complex trauma and dissociation
  • Therapeutic adaptations for working with adults affected by complex trauma
  • Psychoanalytic work with parental couples and the transition to parenthood
  • Ageing, dementia, mortality and the continuing significance of relationships in later life

Psychoanalysis continues to evolve through ongoing dialogue with contemporary research and clinical practice, drawing on developments in attachment theory, developmental psychology, neurobiology and trauma studies while maintaining its central concern with subjective experience and the internal world. Far from being a static discipline, it remains fundamentally concerned with how early relationships shape the developing mind how a sense of self is formed, how emotional experience is represented and defended against, and how relational patterns are carried forward across the lifespan

The programme combines lectures, clinical examples, discussion and Q&A, making it an ideal opportunity to deepen knowledge, refresh thinking and engage with contemporary psychodynamic practice during the summer period.

Programme

9.00 Introductions
9.10 The psychodynamic formation of the self, infant research and attachment

The session will provide an overview of the formation of the self and what is required for optimum psychological development, including an inquiry into why early clinical intervention is fundamental and can have lifelong implications. We will go on to explore the psychodynamics of intrauterine life with links to recent research. We will study the contributions of prominent infant researchers, such as Trevarthen and Schore who have helped us understand the capabilities of infants, including their powerful drive to relate. We will refer to famous attachment research studies, such as the ‘still face’ and ‘strange situation,’ through the work of notable attachment researchers and clinicians, such as Bowlby, Ainsworth, Fonagy and Slade. To complement attachment studies, we will refer to pioneering work of psychoanalysts, such as Brazelton, Stern, Tronick and Beebe, who have not only investigated our earliest psychological beginnings but have closely studied the  links with adult psychological life.

10.10 Q&A
10.30 Break
10.45 Infant-parent & toddler-parent psychotherapy through the theoretical lens of Donald Winnicott

We will explore Winnicott’s most seminal theoretical contributions, focusing on his work with infants and toddlers. We will study some of Winnicott’s most well-known theoretical concepts, such as ‘the holding environment’, ‘primary maternal preoccupation’, ‘the good enough mother’, ‘true and false self’, ‘transitional objects,’ ‘mirroring’ and ‘going on being’ and discuss their relevance to child and adult therapy. Through a psychodynamic lens, we will discuss clinical case vignettes with infants and their families. Additionally, we will explore the psychodynamics of toddlerhood and clinical work with this early age group. We will use Winnicott’s famous clinical case of ‘The Piggle’ as the basis for our discussion on clinical work with toddlers. Alongside the case material we will think about how we can use transference and countertransference dynamics to understand unconscious states and defensive processes in the infant, parent, and the therapist. We will conclude by considering how our early life impacts adult life.

11.40 Review with Q&A
12.00 End

This workshop builds on the understandings from the previous day with Zack Eleftheriadou’s exploration of early infantile life, focusing on the ways in which the external environment can impinge upon and shape development. The first lecture outlines ways of conceptualising complex trauma and its varied clinical presentations, including dissociative disorders, while the second session turns to therapeutic approaches in work with adults experiencing complex trauma.

9.00 Introductions
9.05 Overview of research and contemporary psychoanalytic perspectives

This lecture offers an overview of current research in neurobiology, trauma and attachment, alongside psychoanalytic understandings of the impact of traumatic experience on mind and body. Particular attention is given to child sexual abuse and its relationship to dissociative phenomena. These theoretical perspectives are illustrated with clinical examples of different presentations.

10.10 Q&A
10.30 Break
10.45 Adaptations for work with complex trauma

The adaptations to traditional psychoanalytic work that are required when working with complex trauma will be considered and linked to the theoretical frameworks described in the first lecture. The potential transference / countertransference matrices that arise, the propensity to enactment as part of the repetition compulsion and the importance of containment will be addressed. The struggle to symbolise and the push for action make mourning difficult and the question of how one makes contact with the patient who is stuck in “trauma time” will be considered.

11.40 Review with Q&A
12.00 End

Dr Andrew Balfour will present two linked papers, each exploring the centrality of our relationships in navigating key developmental challenges across the lifespan.  Beginning with the couple becoming parents, discussed through a psychoanalytic lens, and then reflecting on the importance of our relationships as we face ageing and death.

9.00 Introductions
9.05 Between Partnering and Parenting: Psychoanalytic Work with Parental Couples

Couples often come for help around the time of becoming parents, perhaps unconsciously perceiving the psychic challenges the arrival of a child will bring.  We shall explore the research evidence which shows that the quality of the parental couple’s relationship is crucial in shaping children’s outcomes – their health, well-being, and long-term development.  Drawing on developmental and social research, analytic theory, and detailed clinical examples, this seminar will explore a psychoanalytic approach to working with the parental couple relationship – and how important this is, as the most important site for the inter-generational transmission of mental health.

10.30 Break
10.45 Our Relationship with Ageing, Dementia, and Other Fates of Time

In this session, we will focus on exploring the challenges of late life and what might help couples continue to live their lives, and inhabit their relationships, as creatively as possible.  This seminar is grounded in a psychoanalytic approach to understanding later life as a key point of developmental challenge and explores the experience of ageing, looking at internal and external realities, in considering some of the most difficult things couples can face, such as age-related illnesses and losses.

11.40 Review with Q&A
12.00 End

Zack Eleftheriadou

Dr Zack Eleftheriadou is a Chartered Counselling Psychologist and Fellow of the British Psychological Society (HCPC reg). She has trained as a child and parent-infant psychotherapist (CPJA/UKCP) and as an adult psychoanalytic psychotherapist (CPJA/UKCP & Tavistock Society/BPC). Zack runs the consultancy service ‘Noema Psychology and Psychotherapy’, providing psychotherapy, supervision and teaching. She lectures in the following areas: developmental issues, trauma/complex trauma, migration/cross-cultural work and the ‘replacement child’ psychodynamics. She has published widely, including the text ‘Psychotherapy and Culture’. She is member of The Bowlby Centre and is a visiting external examiner for Doctoral projects across the UK. She feels passionate about early intervention and regularly presents on ‘the psychology of the baby’, for health professionals and psychotherapists. She has previously worked in several London NHS Hospitals and charities, such as Nafsiyat Intercultural Therapy Centre and Freedom from Torture. She is also currently an honourary psychotherapist of the Tavistock Complex Trauma Service.

Andrew Balfour

Andrew Balfour PhD is Chief Executive of Tavistock Relationships. He originally trained as a clinical psychologist at University College London and then as an adult psychoanalytic psychotherapist at the Tavistock & Portman NHS Trust, whilst in a staff post there. He subsequently trained as a couple psychotherapist at Tavistock Relationships, where for more than 10 years he was Clinical Director before becoming Chief Executive in 2016. He has many years’ experience of working psychotherapeutically with couples and conducting research, publishing numerous papers in the field and teaching widely both in Britain and abroad. He has co-edited two books How Couple Relationships Shape our World (edited by Andrew Balfour, Mary Morgan & Christopher Vincent, Routledge, 2012); Engaging Couples - New Directions in Therapeutic Work with Families (edited by Andrew Balfour, Christopher Clulow, & Kate Thompson, Routledge, 2019) and his latest book is Life and Death: Our Relationship with Ageing, Dementia and Other Fates of Time (Routledge, 2025).

Joanne Stubley

Dr Joanne Stubley is a Consultant Psychiatrist and Psychotherapist and the lead clinician of the Tavistock Trauma Service, a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and a psychoanalyst who has also been trained in trauma-specific modalities of care. She is an honorary lecturer at University College London and teaches nationally and internationally. She is co-editor of “Complex Trauma: the Tavistock Model” with Linda Young, published in 2022, which was nominated for a Gravida Award. Talking about non-recent child sexual abuse: survivor, clinician and researcher perspectives is her most recent book, co-edited with Daniel Taggart and published in May 2026.

Book Tickets