Maudsley Lectures in Psychoanalysis | Perverse Organisations: denial, complicity and turning a blind eye in secure settings - Colin Campbell

Maudsley Lectures in Psychoanalysis | Autumn 2024

Violence in Mind: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Forensic Work

Perverse Organisations: denial, complicity and turning a blind eye in secure settings

Colin Campbell

Monday 18th November 2024

7:30pm - 9:00pm (GMT)

Hybrid

In-person at 10 Windsor Walk and Online via Zoom.

Recording available for 1 week following the event for registered participants.

For those working in secure settings, ways of working, procedures and protocols can often feel confusing, counterintuitive, or even anti-task.  Reports of failing services and corruption are not uncommon and investigations often describe a sense in which everyone ‘knew’ what had been happening all along, albeit in hindsight, as if the corrupt behaviour had taken place in plain sight. 

Susan Long, and others, have argued that unconscious perverse dynamics within organisations have become increasingly evident, together with the conscious accompaniments of corruption.  Within the ‘perverse organisation’, collusive denial or ‘turning a blind eye’ can act as an organisational defence against an all too evident reality, with individuals within the system simultaneously both knowing and not knowing about this reality, and being engaged, consciously or unconsciously, as accomplices in the perversion.

In this lecture, I will explore how unconscious perversity within secure settings and the process of turning a blind eye can help us understand anti-task or corrupt behaviour at the individual (including the ‘organisation-in-the-mind’), organisational and system levels.  In doing so, I will explore how understanding these organisational dynamics from a systems psychodynamics and forensic psychotherapeutic perspective can inform efforts to detect and prevent perversity within secure settings.

Dr Colin Campbell is Associate Medical Director and Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust.  He works clinically in Offender Personality Disorder (OPD) services in both secure health and prison settings and his research interests are in mediators of change and treatment outcomes in these populations.  He trained as an organisational consultant at the Tavistock and is President of the International Association for Forensic Psychotherapy.

Acts of violence have long been a source of fascination and bewilderment, not least because the shock of their impact invites a particular type of thinking, or non-thinking. When confronted with unthinkable, or apparently mindless, acts, we are all vulnerable to locating the source of violence in the 'offender', and not seeing the links with the violence, both interpersonal and structural, in our families, communities and societies. This lecture series will offer participants an opportunity to engage with a range of contemporary psychoanalytic perspectives on understanding and thinking about different types of violence, in minds and deeds. There will be a combination of theory and clinical presentations. This series has relevance for those who are experienced and those who are new to this area. 

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

Concession tickets are available, for students, BPAS candidates and NHS trainees and nurses. Please email outreach@iopa.org.uk 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.