The Clinical Site: Haya Oakley

The Clinical Site is a series of clinical workshops for practicing psychotherapists and psychoanalysts, and those at advanced stages of their training. Each workshop is facilitated by a senior member of The Site for Contemporary Psychoanalysis, who will lead a group in an exploration of a clinical topic of particular interest to them. Each meeting of the Clinical Site therefore represents a one-off working group, with participants encouraged to bring and share their own clinical experience and ideas. The workshops are limited to approximately 20 participants, and meet in-person in the upstairs meeting room at Swedenborg House. Suggested reading will be circulated before the event.

Haya Oakley: ‘Have we forgotten how to suffer? Working with ‘’Common unhappiness’’ as part of the ‘Human condition’.

‘’When I have promised my patients help or improvement by means of a cathartic treatment I have often been faced by this objection: ’why, you tell me yourself that my illness is probably connected to my circumstances and the events of my life. You cannot alter these in any way. How do you propose to help me then? ’And I have been able to make this reply:

‘No doubt fate would find it easier than I do to relieve you of your illness. But you will be able to convince yourself that much will be gained if we succeed in transforming your hysterical misery into common unhappiness. With a mental life that has been restored to health, you will be better armed against that unhappiness’.”

― Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud, Studies on Hysteria

This workshop invites participants to reflect on the relevance and clinical implications of Freud's terms 'common unhappiness' or 'common misery' to contemporary psychotherapeutic practice.

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This is an in-person event only.

NO REFUNDS AVAILABLE