Manchester Psychoanalytic Development Trust
Manchester Psychoanalytic Development Trust
MPDT Conference 2024
Reveries: Dreaming Across the Life Cycle
Saturday 6 July, St Thomas Centre, Ardwick Green North, Manchester M12 6FZ
and also online
We invite you to join us in Manchester (or online) for our 2024 conference.
The investigation of dreams and dreaming has been central to clinical work and the development of theory since the inception of psychoanalysis. This event is an opportunity to think together about the experience of dreaming throughout the life cycle as individuals and in social groups.
This will be a day-long hybrid conference, with delegates attending in-person in Manchester (with lunch provided), or online. CPD certificates will be issued after the event. We will record the conference sessions for viewing for 14 days after the event, so if you can’t make the day itself, an online ticket will allow access to the recording at your convenience.
The conference will be chaired by Veronica Gore, a Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society. She was a founder member of the North of England Association of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists, and has extensive experience of working in NHS Psychotherapy Services.
Timetable
8.00-9.00 – The Social Dreaming Matrix
In the Social Dreaming Matrix, participants meet to share their dreams. The primary task of the event is to associate to one’s own and other participants’ dreams which are made available to the Matrix so as to make links and find connections between individual thought and social meaning. It allows a space within the program for the unconscious which will hopefully enrich and inform the experience of the day. It is not necessary to bring a dream to take part in the Matrix.
Please note: this session has now sold out.
8.45-9.15 – Conference registration
9.15-9.30 – Welcome & Introduction, Chair, Veronica Gore
09.30-10.30
Dreaming the World and Mind into Being – Dr Alexandra de Rementeria
The author takes as her premise the idea that phantasy predates thinking and is necessary before any meaningful relationship to reality can develop (Bion, 1962). Also, then, that in the beginning, phantasy is not so much a distortion of reality as a bridge to apprehending reality. From hallucinatory wish-fulfilment (Freud, 1900), through symbolic equation (Segal, 1957) to the faltering ascendence of the reality principle (1911), the world and our minds emerge out of our love and hate and how both are met. In this way, much of infancy is a waking dream. Then, as self and other, reality and phantasy all begin to get distilled out, play emerges as the space for waking dreams. This becomes the arena where much of our internal conflict gets worked through.
The author explores this trajectory using material from infant observation and applied psychoanalytic observation, clinical work and child development research to highlight the importance of the capacity for reverie in carers to facilitate and nurture dreaming in the infant and child. While this is well understood in relation to primary carers and therapists, less is written about the importance of a capacity for reverie in the minds of those caring for and teaching infants and children in childcare and early years settings, and this is the focus of the final part of this paper.
About Dr Alexandra de Rementeria
Dr Alexandra de Rementeria is Co-Course Lead, Psychoanalytic Observational Studies, M7 Tavistock & Portman NHS Trust and Principal Child & Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist for Lambeth CAMHS. She is former Editor in Chief of the Journal of Child Psychotherapy. Alexandra works as a supervisor and clinician in private practice and lectures widely nationally and internationally. She has published various articles and co-authored Finding Your Way With Your Baby a BMA award winning book, with Dilys Daws.
10.30-10.45 – Break
10.45-11.45
‘I am worried I am doomed’. On Dreams and the Fear of Death in Adolescence – Dr Catalina Bronstein
Disturbed adolescents can concretely feel anxiety about fragmentation and annihilation through bodily symptoms and excessive fear of death. Pubertal changes can be experienced as bringing a metamorphosis that threatens any sense of continuity and also intensifies depressive anxieties connected with issues of separation, the loss of childhood, and an increased awareness of the passage of time, of loss and death, including parental deaths. With the help of a clinical example, this presentation will explore the place dreams occupy in therapy with disturbed adolescents, as, besides expressing unconscious wishes, dreams can play a crucial role in processing emotional experiences.
About Catalina Bronstein MD
Catalina Bronstein, MD, is a child psychotherapist, child, adolescent and adult psychoanalyst, Fellow and Training Analyst of the British Psychoanalytical Society and a Visiting Professor at the Psychoanalysis Unit, University College London, and former President of the British Psychoanalytical Society. She originally trained as a medical doctor and in psychiatry in Buenos Aires. Catalina Bronstein works at the Brent Adolescent Centre in London and in private practice with adults and adolescents. She has written and published many book chapters and papers. She has also edited a number of books: Kleinian Theory. A contemporary perspective, which has been translated into many languages. She has co-edited (with Edna O’Shaughnessy) Attacks on Linking Revisited. She also co-edited The New Klein-Lacan Dialogues and On Freud’s The Uncanny and with Sara Flanders the book: Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis in a Changing World. Another book, ‘Neurosis and Psychosis Revisited, is in the pipeline. She was a former London Editor of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis and now sits on the Board and on the Executive of IJP
11.45-12.45 – Lunch
12.45-13.45
Changing through Dreams: a Clinical Experience – Leon Kleimberg
Our speaker reflects on how dreaming and dreams can initiate or be the arrival point for psychic change and psychological transformation. He will discuss two patients with their corresponding dreams where the process of dreaming and the dream in itself, allows the mind to develop further and at the same time can generate a structural internal change in patients by shifting the meaning of internal objects and creating new object representations.Two different patients and two dreams will be presented to explore this psychic transformative event.
Leon Kleimberg is Psychoanalyst in private practice and a Training & Supervising Analyst with the British Psychoanalytical Society
13.45-14.00 – Break
14.00-15.00
Dreaming the Social: Exploring the Unconscious Dynamics of the Collective – Ali Zarbafi
Social Dreaming is a pioneering methodology, developed by Gordon Lawrence and his colleagues at the Tavistock Institute, London and elsewhere. This perspective regards dreams as more than the private possession of the dreamer and suggests that, by exploration in a social context through free association and amplification, the dream may help us edge our conscious, finite understanding further into the unconscious infinite and help us gain a greater awareness of the hidden, underlying dynamics of the setting within which it takes place. Long before Freud and Jung began to study them, dreams and dreaming had great significance to people such as the Australian Aboriginals, Native Americans, Africans etc. as they attempted to understand the meaning of their lives and the world in which they lived.
About Ali Zarbafi
Ali Zarbafi, D An Psych, is an Anglo-Iranian Jungian Analyst, Psycho-analytic Psychotherapist and Clinical Supervisor. He is a member of the Society of Analytical Psychology where he teaches and supervises trainees. He is a founder member of the Multi-lingual Psychotherapy Centre. Ali worked in the NHS for 30 years and is currently in private practice. He has an academic background in International Relations and Middle Eastern Studies. Ali worked with refugees since 1982 and has run workshops on the Refugee Experience for organisations. Ali has been involved in Social Dreaming since 1996. He has written a book (2nd edition) with John Clare entitled Dreaming the Social: From 9/11 to Covid (2023, Routledge) and co-edited a book with Shula Wilson Mother Tongues and Other Tongues: Narratives in Multi-lingual Psychotherapy (2021, Phoenix).
15.00-15.15 Break
15.15-16.15
Plenary: Chair and Speakers
16.15 Closing remarks and finish (Chair)
The conference will be a hybrid event with both in-person and online delegates.
CPD certificates will be issued after the event.
Bookings
In-person delegates – £100
In-person students/trainees – £75
In-person delegate tickets include lunch and refreshments.
All tickets permit access to a recording of the sessions for a 14-day period after the event.
Online delegates – £90
Online students/trainee delegates – £65
Tickets permit access to a recording of the sessions for a 14-day period after the event.
(booking fees apply)
Confidentiality Statement
All those registered for the conference are expected to adhere to the highest professional standards. This particularly relates to the absolute need to respect confidentiality.
If you are joining the conference from an online platform, please ensure that you are logging in from a secure environment where you will not be interrupted or overheard by other people.
If you think you recognise the identity of a patient in any presentation, please leave the session; this applies to remote participants and participants in the room.
Please do not discuss clinical material outside of the conference.
Do not record or disseminate any part of the presentations and discussions on any device. Access to recordings is for ticket holders only. Please do not disseminate any part of the recordings to any other parties or platforms.
By registering for this conference, you are confirming your compliance with these specific conditions.