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.
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, which will be conducted by Helen Morgan.
Please note: places at the Social Dreaming Matrix session are limited and must be booked separately and in advance (at no additional cost). We’ll allocate on a first-come-first-served basis, so please book when you book your conference place if you’d like to attend. (The session is only open to conference delegates.)
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 a Senior Parent-Infant Psychotherapist at SLAM and Editor in Chief of the Journal of Child Psychotherapy. She is Assessment Tutor for M7 and supervising tutor on the Child Psychotherapy Training (M80), both at the Tavistock. She 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
11.45-12.00
Chair: comments and online questions
12.00-12.45 – 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 – Helen Morgan
About Helen Morgan
Helen Morgan is a Jungian Analyst, a Fellow of the British Psychotherapy Foundation (BPF) and Training Analyst & Supervisor for BJAA – the Jungian Analytic Association within the BPF. She is also co-author with Fanny Brewster of the book Racial Identities published by Routledge in 2022 as part of their Jung, Politics and Culture series.
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.
Online delegates – £90
Online students/trainee delegates – £65
(booking fees apply)