• To those who have replied and sent in thoughts, ideas and appreciative comments, it keeps me going!
• To those who have, or pretend, to appreciate the jokes!
• To those who downloaded the trial course. I still need feedback though as none received so far! (There’s a new summer one too, on Play, see below)
• To those who showed interest in the body/trauma course. It is in the plotting stage
• Most importantly for all the work you have done, often with incredibly complex and challenging cases, for which we rarely get thanked.

Below there are the usual subscriber downloads, plus book, podcast and blog recommendations, loads of bad cartoons and jokes, a poem, a sad goodbye to Colwyn Trevarthen, and Bob Newhart, invitations to a new online course on play, news on trauma and other trainings, on consulting rooms and a few blog thoughts on rest and just being

Rest and just being and not trying are so much more important than our society recognise. I too often set a bad example on that front! However it is often in holidays when there is space and ease and less stress that new ideas pop up from nowhere. We all know that experience of struggling with something and putting it away and then an answer or solution bubbles up.

How often is it the case that our best ideas come when we take a rest, go for a walk, dream, stare into space? Think how a falling apple prompted physicist Isaac Newton to formulate his laws of gravity, or how Archimedes took a bath and figured out how to calculate volume and density.

Just walking similarly boosts creative inspiration (studies show that creativity significantly higher for those walking compared to those sitting!). We also all know how trying gets in the way of being, how being present in the moment gets disrupted by too much thinking.

We of course use different brain areas when we are task focused. When we stop trying or focusing, a series of brain regions called the default mode network suddenly become active, fire up and interconnect. This has been found to be linked to more creativity eg here .

This circuitry turns off when we start to actively concentrate on a task. In our world, in our schools, and in many lives, including mine, the importance of play and boredom can be under-valued. In fact they are the source of developing imagination, creativity and learning. We need more of this in a world where task oriented Executive Attention Networks are prioritised over the kind of goal-less activity seen in play, and linked to Default Mode Network activity.

So my holiday wish is that your executive networks have a really good rest and your default mode network is allowed to come online and fire happily away. Go well, rest well, be and dont do.

The other is a brief chapter from Valerie Sinason’s novel, The Orpheus Project:(perhaps not the lightest read but it is Valerie and her unflinching capacity to seek the truth))

‘Valerie Sinason’s The Orpheus Project is an engaging novel which is hard to put down, full of intrigue and mystery while addressing some very serious issues. The novel encompasses the secretive world of child abuse by the upper classes, trauma, dissociative identity disorder, disability, mind control and ritual abuse. The novel gives us an insight into the life of Lady Rose, rejected by her mother due to her disability.The way in which Valerie described how they eventually were able to find a closeness and union together, was very moving and beautifully told.

Many of us are deeply saddened to hear about the death of the great and inimitable Colwyn Trevarthen. He was a trailblazing researcher and communicator, and helped people really understand, at times viscerally, the extraordinary capacities of the infant, for connection, for vivacity, for communication. He wrote so much amazing stuff, possibly Communicative Musicality being the pinnacle. The work of child psychotherapists was so enhanced by his thinking. Anne Alvarez took her book title ‘Live Company’ from him. He really was that himself too, I can attest, having done events with him, memorably in Dartington Hall many years ago.

In 2005 when on the child psychotherapy journal editorial board I suggested a special issue on Imitation and if you click below you should be able to access his paper, and also one of mine on the same subject (his downloaded and cited infinitely more times, and deservedly!!) .

Below the papers see a video of Trevarthen talking about communicative musicality

Reverie is always despised by those do not like the broad freedom it grants us from other people’s wishes and other people’s control. Those who wish to control other’s lives and to make them conforming members of a classroom, an office or an army do not like the way reverie puts us beyond the bounds, not only of the controlling minds of others, but also beyond the part of our own mind that is easily manipulated by others.

Reverie carries the same, beautiful, half-awake, half-asleep sense in its sound as it does in its dream-like meaning. Reverie is a rare and neglected state in our times, asking us to pay attention to simultaneous inner and outer horizons: with rested bodily depth and with a broad listening amplitude. Reverie is an antidote to much of the over-focus, over-delineation and branding of our identities, most especially in an age where we are drawn like moths to a flame, burned and distracted by the Internet, from one state of narrow focus to another.

The combined state of rest and broad diffused attention that reverie implies, and the luxuriant sense the word communicates, invites us to inhabit our bodies, our intellects and our imaginations simultaneously, where neither the mind, the body, nor the imagination are given precedence yet all of them are felt and inhabited in deeper ways that are not possible when we attempt to focus on them in separation. …

3 of us currently work there, looking for anyone (nice!) wanting from half days to whole weeks (pictures above and below)
2 colleagues also have spaces.

Nearer the Tavistock/Swiss cottage, Jeanne Magana is offering a lovely, extremely quiet consulting room overlooking and having access to a beautiful large garden is available to rent everyday except Mondays and Wednesdays. The consulting room is on Fellows Road NW3. The room is rentable for £100 per day including weekends. If interested please contact me at jm@magagna.co.uk

And my friend and colleague Doron Levene runs Relational Spaces where they too have rooms, and have a lovely community, rooms in Kings Cross and Borough, check them out here

(PS these are put out as a favour with NO financial benefit to me)

The great Bob Newhart just died too, aged 94.

Here is one of his classic comedy sketches, one that many feel is a brilliant example of how not to do therapy, although Iincreasingly feel we might do more of the below!

Some upcoming events

Violence and Aggression in Children (Adoption Plus)

Days training for those working with children
Organiser: Adoption PlusLocation: online
November 23, 2024

UKCP Conference: Energy, Spark and the Body: Challenging hopelessness in therapy, life and the world

!st UKCP Conference in person since Covid
Organiser: UKCPLocation: America Square Conference Centre, London

March 1st 2025

Linking neuroscience and clinical practice: Respark

Organiser: Canadian Association of Psychoanalytic Child Therapists (CAPCT)
Location: online
March 14, 2025

Respark and clinical issues with children and young people:

Organiser: Adelphi University New York
Location: online

My other events here

And a few other amazing looking ones:
ICAPP (Institute of Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy) is hosting an evening with Dr Anne Alvarez, Sue Reid and Peter Blake who will discuss psychoanalytic psychotherapy with children and adolescents over the last 50 years of their work and practice. Sept 12th details here

September online, this Bion conference looks extraordinary details here , with people like the great Antonino Ferro and one of my real heros Michael Eigen and many more.

The great Patrick Casement is being honoured in the latest MINDinMIND legacy interview on September 18th with special guests, details here .
(as an aside, when I first qualified as a therapist 30+ years ago I vowed to read his On Learning from the Patient every year for 5 years and I did and learnt so much from each reading!)

September 21st. Amazing looking conference honouring Freud’s Standard Edition Relaunch , includes Karl Friston, Mark Solms, Daniel Pick, Jaqueline Rose and Alessandra Lemma , details here

The Tavistock trauma unit have a really exciting new course starting next year in the service led by Jo Stubley which is really at the cutting edge of trauma work details here

The Trauma unit’s monthly lectures continue and the next one is with Compassion Focused therapy trauma maestro and colleague Deborah Lee details here

A few interesting podcasts

Final tips from Michael Mosley on the Zoe podcast listen here
Extraordinary far ranging discussion on physics, time and complexity with Sarah Walker on Lex Friedman listen here.

I was reassured by this podcast with David Badiel and Sayeeda Warsi .. called a Muslim and a jew go there . this one on sexual violence , i was relieved how they can debate and even disagree but remain respectful and interested listen here.

It is one of the most sensitive and challenging books on mental health issues I’ve read in recent years, spanning psychedelics, the inadequacies of the mental health system in general, rich in personal narratives and fascinating interviews, including cross-cultural thinking and making sure that politics and society are ‘outed’ as what needs to change for better mental health.

Shorter readings and blogs

A visually and emotionally beautiful piece here from Maria Popova’s Marginalian .. so worth subscribing read here.

Interesting piece of research which challenges Western (WEIRD) ideas about language learning, comparing societies where parents talk less to children, but children learn from picking up conversations read here.

Good critique here of the often simplistic use of terms like fight flight and freeze, possibly echoing Feldman Barret , from Professor Frances Maratos of the Compassion Foundation read here.

A great piece by Aaron Ballick about the dangers of some online therapy provision, including, dare i say. Better Help read here.

Below are my books as always, with ways to buy. Hopefully my website will be revamped shortly with more possibilities.

My pregnancy/prenatal book is still in production and I hope to get it out after the summer.

‘RESPARK’ is also available in all the formats below

A ‘cheaper than Audible’ audio version of Respark is available here

The ebook version is available and there is a 25% discount with this link
Audio here and on Spotify and other platforms.

The physical book and ebook is available from amazon or psychological therapy books or Karnac here,

Please do leave a review anywhere you buy it, it really helps a lot.

Click on links below to view or buy these:
Nurturing Natures,
Affect and Emotion
Nurturing Children,
The Good Life,
From Trauma to Harming others
For other journal papers and chapters and blogs etc see here