BACP Private Practice Conference 2017 - Identity: Can you tell me who I am?

This conference will explore a range of issues behind the question, including sexuality, gender, culture, bereavement and loss, abuse, and physical and mental ability. The emphasis will be on the issues you face as practitioners, and the newer challenges associated with our public and private selves: with social media, online identities and what lies beneath in the more private space of the therapy room.

Delegates can choose to attend two from a varied programme of workshops designed and tailored specifically for therapists working in private practice, including Mel Adisu on ‘the many layers of me’; Kate Anthony on the psychological aspects of online disinhibition and the effects on identity; Brian Charlesworth on working with a warrior’s identity in the therapy room; Debbie Clements on gender identity; Lesley Finney on archetypal defences and eating disorders; Jonathan Hartley on bereavement as a break in the ‘continuity of being’; Andelo Tabu Ngandi on spiritual identity; Tamar Posner on identity in later life; and Mary Louise Russell and Dr Gillie Jenkinson on helping ex-members of cults re-establish their identities.

The keynote speaker who has the opening session is keynote is Abigail Austen, the first officer in the British Army to complete gender reassignment from male to female. Closing the conference as the  last keynote speaker is Adam Pearson, Adam is an experienced speaker and gave a talk as part of TEDxKalamata. He is also an ambassador for Jeans for Genes.