About this event

Dates: Mondays 6:30pm to 8pm on 26th January, 2nd, 9th and 23rd February, and 2nd, 9th, 16th and 23rd March 2026.

This series is hybrid, participants are welcome to join in person or online.

This series will be chaired by Emma Staples Hotopf and Rachel Gibbons.

Each session will consist of a lecture followed by a discussion.

This eight-part series will explore the nature of human destructiveness and its clinical manifestations in suicide and self-harm, tracing the evolution of psychoanalytic thought—from Freud to contemporary perspectives—while grounding this theory in the experiences of those who have lived through suicidal distress, clinical care, and bereavement.

Alongside leading psychoanalytic clinicians, leaders in lived-experience expertise will contribute their knowledge of how suicidal distress is communicated, held, and negotiated in real encounters. Their presence will support an exploration of how dialogue across different standpoints can generate new forms of understanding.

Participants will be invited to consider destructiveness within the self, the patient, the therapeutic relationship, organisations, and society. Attention will be paid to how these dynamics circulate between people, and how unconscious forces shape the emotional atmosphere around suicide.

The aim is to deepen participants’ capacity to engage with suicidal states of mind; to understand how destructiveness is communicated and enacted; and to explore how clinicians can work with the emotional impact of this work in order to sustain compassion, curiosity, and reflective practice. By integrating lived experience and professional experience, the series seeks to cultivate new insights, new language, and new ways of thinking about the complex terrain of suicide and self-harm.

Monday 26th January: Seminar 1: Eight 'Truths About Suicide': Revisited (Rachel Gibbons and Prof David Mosse)

Monday 2nd February: Seminar 2: Suicide Bereavement, Blame, and the Risk to Clinicians (Rachel Gibbons and Dorit Braun)

Monday 9th February: Seminar 3: The Psychodynamics of the Pathway to Suicide (Rachel Gibbons and Rob Hale)

Monday 23rd February: Seminar 4: The Psychodynamics of Self Harm (Rachel Gibbons and Hannah Cadogan)

Monday 2nd March: Seminar 5: Who is Killing What or Whom? Some Notes on the Internal Phenomenology of Suicide (David Bell)

Monday 9th March: Seminar 6: On the Edge of Action: Preserving the Analytic Attitude in Encounters with Self-Destructiveness (Emma Staples Hotopf)

Monday 16th March: Seminar 7: Relating to Self-Harm and Suicide: Clinical Priorities and Practice in Contemporary Psychoanalytic Contexts (Will Crouch and Stephen Briggs)

Monday 23rd March: Seminar 8: The containment of anxiety and suicidal states of mind: How a psychoanalytic informed risk panel can support staff and improve care (Jo O'Reilly)

© Image: Matthew Kolakowski, 'Storm Inside' 2010

REFUND POLICY: Tickets are fully refundable until 14 days before the first lecture, after which time no refunds will be issued.

Concession tickets are available, for students, BPAS candidates and NHS trainees and nurses. Please email [email protected] if you are unsure if you qualify for a concession ticket.

Views and opinions expressed by speakers are their own and do not represent the views or opinions of the Institute, event organisers or other speakers. We expect delegates to respect the confidentiality of clinical material discussed in our events. The content must not be recorded, conveyed or disseminated in any format and participants must not share access to the event with non-registered participants.

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