This newly curated collection of presentations provides a glimpse into the field of psychopathology, ranging from severe manifestations of forensic psychological disorders to the more ordinary neuroses of everyday life. The collection combines 21 hours of edited audio or video material, which has been selected from our other online modules for its relevance to this theme. The package focuses on conditions that are described as mental illnesses, and which satisfy DSM diagnostic criteria but discussed via a range of different theoretical perspectives.

For example, viewed as attachment issues, affect dysregulation or post- traumatic stress disorders. The collection can be purchased as a digital resource for home study or bought in combination with a 24-week taught seminar series that leads to a certificate or diploma in this field.

• This content is available 24/7 for 1 year per subscription
• Continuing Professional Development (CPD) credits for 21 hours are available as part of the course fee. You will need to fill out an evaluation form and pass a multiple choice questionnaire related to the content in order to receive your certificate.

• Video lectures and presentations
• Clinical role-play videos
• Interviews and discussions
• A comprehensive study guide
• Research resources
• Therapeutic skills

The experienced clinicians featured in this module have integrated the latest research on trauma, neurobiology, attachment and object relations into their therapeutic work.

Narcissism is one of psychotherapy’s core concepts and the treatment of its pathological presentation has been a major focus of much research and theorising. These ostensible personality disorders are now understood to be the product of early emotional trauma, disturbed attachment relationships and, in some, early developmental arrest of the right brain. The various and distinct symptoms of both presentations are now generally thought to be the psyche’s attempt to defend against and regulate the overwhelming embodied affects of rage and shame. The differences between NPD and BPD are here considered.

Along with Borderline Personality Disorder, treating pathological narcissism has traditionally been seen as difficult and unrewarding therapeutic work. Experimenting beyond the usual analytic and cognitive approaches has proved very effective in forming, maintaining and protecting the therapeutic alliance with these fragile patients as well as fostering their capacity for resilience and empathy. A range of contemporary therapeutic approaches and the most recent theoretical analysis is offered.

• This content is available 24/7 for 1 year per subscription
• Continuing Professional Development (CPD) credits for 19 hours are available as part of the course fee. You will need to fill out an evaluation form and pass a multiple choice questionnaire related to the content in order to receive your certificate. You can submit this test up to a maximum of 5 times.

This package of resources provides 19 hours of CPD on the subject of psychotherapeutic work with people who have received a diagnosis of a Narcissistic or Borderline Personality Disorder, or those who express personality traits often associated with those definitions such as difficulty regulating extreme affective states in relationships and of maintaining a stable, realistic view of the self and other. It combines a rich archive of:

• Continuing Professional Development (CPD) credits for 16 hours are available as part of the course fee. You will need to fill out an evaluation form and pass a multiple choice questionnaire related to the content in order to receive your certificate.

So much psychotherapy takes place within the confines of a consulting room. But what happens when therapy takes place in a natural setting – or when the natural world is invited into the narrative of self and other? This module brings together the practices of ecology and psychotherapy to illustrate how engagement with nature, which includes ourselves, is a powerful transformative tool, both in itself and – potentially – when integrated into any therapeutic approach.

This module rests on the principle that by seeing ourselves as part of the biosphere, rather than above or beyond it, we can begin to return to a relationship with the natural conditions that once provided us with the core of our psychological, spiritual and cultural sustenance. We suggest that our rapid withdrawal from nature is the source of damaging alienation from a part of ourselves and the inherent context of our lives. The 16 presenters propose that the biological and ecological field of being is always somewhere present in the relationship and, when embraced through ecologically-aware therapeutic modalities, profound transformation of emotional states can occur.

• This online resource provides a unique package of lectures and presentations by the speakers below, supported by notes and diagrams
• This content is available 24/7 for 1 year per subscription
• The package offers 9 hours of video, accredited as 16 hours CPD including study of module papers
• The literature has been studied in order to offer a reliably researched, hyperlinked bibliography

• Continuing Professional Development (CPD) credits for 14 hours are available as part of the course fee. You will need to fill out an evaluation form and pass a multiple choice questionnaire related to the content in order to receive your certificate.

This online module offers the practitioner a set of videoed talks and research resources on the psychotherapeutic treatment of violent offenders and those with violent tendencies or fantasies. It offers a psychodynamic understanding of why someone may commit acts against another that are as brutal as murder or rape.

In this analysis, it is proposed that the underlying psychological pressures that erupt in violence stem from abuse in childhood and/or intergenerational trauma, when burdens on the psyche overwhelm the individual’s capacity to contain their aggressive response to past shame, humiliation, persecution and loss.

While the module is designed to illuminate why human beings can be dangerous, murderous or perverse, it is also an opportunity for non-forensic professionals, who nevertheless encounter acts of sadism in their clinical work to develop effective strategies for understanding those dynamics.

The presenters range from psychoanalytic psychotherapists, psychiatrists to psychologists but all are connected by a belief that dangerous people can be effectively treated psychologically rather than punitively, and that by enabling them to understand the underlying causes of their offender behaviour they begin their rehabilitation.

• This online resource provides a unique package of lectures and presentations by the speakers below, supported by notes and diagrams
• This content is available 24/7 for 1 year per subscription
• The package offers 8 hours of video, accredited as 14 hours CPD
• All the materials have been commissioned by Confer and cannot be obtained elsewhere
• The literature has been studied in order to offer a reliably researched, hyperlinked bibliography

This collection of new videos and papers brings together the work of an extraordinarily diverse and talented group of psychotherapists – from psychoanalysts to body psychotherapists – who see the body as central to the therapeutic process.

We began by asking each of them to elaborate their reasons for working with this approach. The result is a fascinating, multi-faceted collection of works that illustrates the new theoretical movement within psychotherapy that regards the body – or the mind-body, bodymind or embodied mind – as an integrated entity that cannot be sub-divided into psyche and soma.

The special relevance of the embodied mind concept to psychotherapy is that the raw materials of therapy – affect and relationship – are seen as located in the body, which is thus central to the therapist and client’s experience and therapeutic process.

Merging theoretical strands from Reichian body work, humanism and relational psychoanalysis, the embodied approach to psychotherapy is now unifying project that includes deliberate attention to the body as part of its repertoire of effective techniques.

“Body matters are so weighty, so deeply important, they often cannot be spoken. Untellable, they can only be shown – like much that happens in consulting rooms.” Muriel Dimen (1943 – 2016)

• This online resource provides a unique package of lectures and presentations by the speakers below, supported by notes and diagrams
• This content is available 24/7 for 1 year per subscription
• The literature has been studied in order to offer a reliably researched, hyperlinked bibliography
• Links to selected papers and books
• Discussion forum
• Continuing Professional Development (CPD) credits for 16 hours are available as part of the course fee. You will need to fill out an evaluation form and pass a multiple choice questionnaire related to the content in order to receive your certificate.

• Discussion forum
• Continuing Professional Development (CPD) credits for 14 hours are available as part of the course fee. You will need to fill out an evaluation form and pass a multiple choice questionnaire related to the content in order to receive your certificate.

While recognising that the relationship between neuroscience and the talking cure is still in its infancy, significant insights are constantly emerging on how the mind works and how that may be relevant to therapeutic technique.

We can now, for example, articulate the core mammalian emotional processes, how they are underpinned by specific neuro-physiological pathways, and see how these scientific insights can lead to therapeutic interventions that are sensitive to that physiology and thus more effective in supporting the patient’s capacity for self-regulation.

We can elucidate the role of relationships in the development of the nervous system, and explain the aetiology of affect dysregulation in terms of neurobiological deficits. We have a much stronger grasp of the role of emotion in the overall regulation of the body and the risk of adverse experiences to health.

The role of transgenerational trauma in impacting on gene expression provides a fascinating sign post to the complexity of the mind-body interface via epigenetics.

This self-contained module provides access to some of Confer’s best-attended live events and new recordings to deepen our understanding of the relevance of interpersonal neurophysiology to the development of psychotherapeutic insight and technique.

• This module includes 12 hours of lectures supported by notes and diagrams
• Supporting notes slides or references
• This content is available 24/7 for 1 year per subscription
• A selection of brief papers summarising the theoretical history, aetiology, diagnosis and treatment of trauma and dissociation
• Bibliography
• Links to selected papers and books

• Continuing Professional Development (CPD) credits for 20.5 hours are available as part of the course fee. You will need to fill out an evaluation form and pass a multiple choice questionnaire related to the content in order to receive your certificate.

Since John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth’s pioneering studies into the infant’s need for proximity to a loving caretaker, research and writings on attachment theory have flowered into a major psychological discipline. This has greatly influenced the way we understand the needs of the dependent child and the necessity of secure attachment throughout life for emotional growth.

This collection of talks and papers addresses the question of how these insights into attachment are applied to psychotherapy. Knowing the answer is something of a holy grail, the search for which is generating much important work, we hope that this collection of talks will contribute to the project of connecting some of the threads in this discussion.

We ask our presenters: How does attachment theory inform the practitioner’s understanding of their client’s relational history? How does it help us to understand the nature of the attachment between the therapist and client? What specific theoretical/technical advances should be taught about attachment-focused therapy? How does psychotherapy enable someone with an insecure attachment model of others become secure in their current and future significant relationships?

Some of the talks in our online module The Nature of Trauma and Dissociation are also about the application of attachment theory to clinical practice, for example, the talks by Dr Allan Schore. We are thus offering a combined package, which reduces the price of both modules. See Fees.

• This online resource provides a unique package of lectures and presentations by the speakers below, supported by notes and diagrams
• This content is available 24/7 for 1 year per subscription
• The literature has been studied in order to offer a reliably researched, hyperlinked bibliography

• Continuing Professional Development (CPD) credits for 20.5 hours are available as part of the course fee. You will need to fill out an evaluation form and pass a multiple choice questionnaire related to the content in order to receive your certificate.

The vast influence of Relational Psychoanalysis in the last 25 years has evolved into one of the most significant paradigm shifts in the field, impacting on almost every psychotherapy modality. This package offers a set of videoed talks on relational theory and practice, presented by some of most influential author-practitioners, and is designed to illustrate relational theory as it is applied to clinical technique.

The talks also cover the historical development of that thinking and an elaboration of key concepts: inter-subjectivity, the mutual influence of the two subjects in the process, the ‘Third’, enactment, rupture and repair, the therapist’s relational history, and the patient’s capacity to make a healing contribution to the process. Combined with study-guides, research links, and transcriptions, the module provides a sophisticated, layered and comprehensive exploration of the subject for practitioners of all levels of clinical experience.

• This online resource provides a unique package of lectures and presentations by the speakers below, supported by notes and diagrams
• This content is available 24/7 for 1 year per subscription
• The literature has been studied in order to offer a reliably researched, hyperlinked bibliography

• Our own analysis of the subject is offered in the form of summaries covering history, epidemiology, aetiology, neuropsychology, diagnosis and treatment approaches
• The literature has been studied in order to offer you links to reliably researched texts, papers and books
• A networking discussion forum is included
• Continuing Education (CE) credits for 21.5 hours are available as part of the course fee. You’ll need to fill out an evaluation form and pass a multiple choice questionnaire related to the content in order to receive your certificate.

This package of resources brings together a fresh collection of video and audio presentations to illuminate the relationship between neuroscience and psychotherapy. The interface between the two disciplines has aroused great recent interest and this collection of talks asks some of the most influential neuropsychologists and practitioners to explain the neuroscientific concepts that they consider the significant in developing the skills of psychotherapy or in understanding the mind.

One of the key questions to engage psychotherapists is the extent to which neurobiology is interpersonal. Insights from infant development studies, supported by scientific research into the brain and peripheral nervous system, have revealed the dynamic interplay between the mind of the mother/carer and that of the infant at the levels of both emotional and biological growth. This neuroplasticity is found to be a life-long relational phenomenon, raising the question about how profoundly developmental deficits can be relationally redressed.

Neurobiology is also of relevance in understanding any single emotional moment between two people due to its insights into the complex, unconscious and dynamic chemistry between the two mind-body systems. Insights into the biological underpinnings of our emotional life are offering a deeper understanding of affective states such as anxiety, depression, hyper or hypo arousal and techniques for modulating these. New therapeutic approaches that emphasise the somatic as an implicit part of emotional life, and thus therapy, are flourishing. Equally, the school of relational psychotherapy now enjoys an empirical basis for its theories of intersubjectivity and embodied resonance.

Some psychotherapists, for example Sensorimotor practitioners, use neurobiology to educate their patients about the psychophysiology of their affective states and how these can managed – for example, through mindfulness practices – the efficacy of which is now scientifically endorsed. These, of course, can be practised by both partners in the therapy relationship, allowing the self-regulating therapist to support the psychophysiology of their patient.

This vast and rapidly multiplying body of knowledge creates a bridge between empirically based research findings and the more conceptual field of psychotherapy. Answers to such questions such as “what constitutes the relational mind?” now have the potential of adding scientific knowledge to intuitive wisdom. These theoretical advances appear to rely on the accumulated results of experimental research, drawn together by individuals who identify the significant results and build a new theoretical framework to connect and contain these. These paradigm changers in the field of interpersonal neurobiology, many of whom are speakers in this module, are multidisciplinary thinkers who are taking psychotherapy beyond the purely conceptual, whilst holding onto its best traditions of relatedness. This is a fascinating era of consolidation and growth of knowledge, and we hope you will enjoy this online resource.

• This online resource provides a unique package of lectures and presentations by the speakers below, supported by notes and diagrams
• This content is available 24/7 for 1 year per subscription
• All the materials have been commissioned by Confer and cannot be obtained elsewhere

It combines a rich archive of:

• Video and audio lectures and presentations
• Interviews and discussions
• Comprehensive supporting study guides
• Research resources
• Therapeutic skills

Sexuality has always been a prime focus of clinical and theoretical debate, as well as controversy. Sexual desire and behaviour can reflect our attachment style, be affected by loss and trauma and is influenced by our neurobiology. Furthermore our assumptions about, expectations of and even enjoyment of sex are shaped by our gender identity that is itself often an unconscious product of a historically binary and normative social and psychoanalytic culture.

We live in a society that is both obsessed with and ashamed of sex, a paradox that extends to the consulting room where therapists can often find themselves uncertain about and avoidant of working with their client’s most intimate desires and the erotic aspects of transference. An in-depth knowledge of our own sexuality and our ethical responsibilities towards clients can enhance the safety and intimacy of the therapeutic relationship and help prevent sexual boundary violations that will inevitably re-traumatise clients.

• This content is available 24/7 for 1 year per subscription
• Continuing Professional Development (CPD) credits for 17 hours are available as part of the course fee. You will need to fill out an evaluation form and pass a multiple choice questionnaire related to the content in order to receive your certificate.

This package of resources provides 17 hours of CPD on a range of contemporary clinical perspectives to help support practitioners in working more confidently with this vast and complex subject.

It seemed the right moment to explore the reality of women’s experience and how the field of psychotherapy was responding. From the founders of feminist therapy to new voices, this inspiring module reflects the particular stresses of being a woman, how we relate to these as therapists, and the growth of female-centred perspectives in our work. Our speakers:

• Examine inherent relationships of power, race, control and intersectionality when working with women.
• Help to deepen our understanding of women who are childfree by choice, loss, or ambivalence.
• Consider how to introduce empowering narratives, rituals and goddess myths into therapy.
• Explore why women are three times more likely to self-harm.
• Offer ways of working sexual harassment, objectification, domestic violence and sexual abuse in the client’s world.
• Provide therapeutic strategies for working with sex workers and other women at risk.
• Offer a model for the psychology of female violence and ‘crimes against the body’.

Describe the roots of addiction and therapeutic efficacy when working with female addicts

• This content is available 24/7 for 1 year per subscription
• Continuing Professional Development (CPD) credits for 11.5 hours are available as part of the course fee. You will need to fill out an evaluation form and pass a multiple choice questionnaire related to the content in order to receive your certificate.

The core of these seminars were held in the aftershock of the 2018 #MeToo and ‘Time’s Up’ campaigns – an explosive moment in the history of gender relations that revealed not only the extent of institutionalised abuse perpetrated by powerful men, but also how a conspiracy of silence spanning decades had left survivors traumatised and abandoned.

This package of resources provides 19 hours of CPD on a range of clinical perspectives to help practitioners integrate spiritual ideas and approaches into their work. It combines a rich archive of:

• Audio and video lectures and presentations
• Interviews and discussions
• Demonstrations and supervisions
• First-hand accounts
• Comprehensive study guides

Among the many topics covered in the module, our speakers explore:

• Exploring how practitioners have followed or diverged from theology in approaching the therapeutic search for meaning
• Considering how a spiritual healing approach can be included in therapy if needed by the client
• Providing skills for working with survivors of religious cults
• Distinguishing between clinical psychosis and spiritual crisis
• Examining how to work with clients who have experienced their spirituality as a cause of suffering
• Allowing space in our thinking for the religious client
• Contemplative and meditative approaches to being present in the session

• This content is available 24/7 for 1 year per subscription
• Continuing Professional Development (CPD) credits for 19 hours are available as part of the course fee. You will need to fill out an evaluation form and pass a multiple choice questionnaire related to the content in order to receive your certificate.

Freud described psychoanalysis as “…the science of the soul”, a phrase which suggests a healer’s concern with integrating the experience of suffering. Traditionally, the search for meaning, and solutions to existential anxieties has been the domain of theologies, with psychotherapy taking a peripheral interest in those concerns. But in increasingly consumerist societies, where fewer people define themselves as religious, patients increasingly bring transpersonal and spiritual concerns to their sessions. How should we respond?

In curating the conference, we invited psychotherapists of all identities to come together to explore how post-slavery syndrome impacts upon our professional experience, our capacity to provide good therapy and appropriate trainings. This is not an easy discussion and it took courage to attend, to listen to these experiences with an open heart, and to develop a deeper sense of how we as individuals are positioned by our histories.

We heard how, for our black community this amounts to persistent experiences of feeling unsafe, devalued and misunderstood. For white people, the other side of this dyad often involves an emotional cocktail of shame, defensiveness and unwanted responsibility – sometimes referred to as “white-complexity syndrome”. It is suggested, however, that feelings of guilt are not useful. We are products of a system, not its architects. Nonetheless, adopting a sense of responsibility for addressing ongoing inequalities offers white mental health practitioners greater potential for insight, empathy and adaptability and the possibility of greater affinity with black colleagues.

Our hope was and is that by hearing stories about how People of Colour from the African diaspora as well as innovative white practitioners have developed a theory, vocabulary and therapeutic space for the post-slavery experience we can collaborate meaningfully across cultural barriers to find a shared meta-view of the post-slavery dynamic and roles played out between the black and white communities.

• This content is available 24/7 for 1 year per subscription
• Continuing Professional Development (CPD) credits for 3.5 hours are available as part of the course fee. You will need to fill out an evaluation form and pass a multiple choice questionnaire related to the content in order to receive your certificate.

This module is about living and practicing psychotherapy in a society that is deeply damaged by the legacy of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Filmed at our 2019 conference, the discussion is premised on the theory that through the mostly unconscious transmission of intergenerational trauma, affect and narratives, we continue to perpetuate a destructive power disparity between today’s black and white communities; that we are locked into histories that we didn’t create but which control our thinking and which need to be continually challenged in order for us to grow emotionally as a society.

The programme has been designed for mental health professionals to survey not only basic psychiatric understanding, but also the century-long accumulation of psychological knowledge about psychopathology. We hope that by offering an overview of the many possible disturbances of the mind with critical analysis, practitioners will be able to embark upon a serious and carefully constructed examination of the field.

The module focuses on the clinical phenomenology of each state of psychopathology, upon its aetiology, and its treatment. Although the primary theoretical lens is psychodynamic, broadly defined to include classical psychoanalytical and modern relational perspectives, viewers will also be exposed to the more traditional theories from biologically orientated psychiatry. Diagnostic categories are examined with a critical eye, placing them into a historical and cultural framework.

• This content is available 24/7 for 1 year per subscription
• Continuing Professional Development (CPD) credits for 22 hours are available as part of the course fee. You will need to fill out an evaluation form and pass a multiple choice questionnaire related to the content in order to receive your certificate.

This new online module (offering 22 hours of audio-visual content) provides an in-depth introduction to the field of psychopathology. It explores a wide spectrum of psychological disturbances from the severe, such as psychosis, self-harm and the forensic psychopathologies, to more common forms of suffering such as affect dysregulation and psychosexual problems through the lens of depth psychology and psychoanalysis.