Saturday 20th September 2008 (9.30am-5.00pm)
INTERNATIONAL GUEST SPEAKER DR BESSEL VAN DER KOLK
TRAUMA: BRAIN SCIENCE, TREATMENT AND UNDERSTANDING)
Cost: £145 (includes a complimentary buffet lunch)

Dr Bessel van der Kolk will explore in easily accessible language the latest brain science of trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder. Delegates will take away a far clearer understanding of what is happening in the brain and body under acute and chronic stress states and why the traumatised individual can suffer such ongoing emotional torment and major disruption to their ability to think, reflect, learn, relate and function effectively.

The body is one of the theatres where the memory of trauma is re-enacted in all manner of stress related symptoms, sleep disorders, illness and hyperaroused states. Traditional counselling and talking therapies have approached the resolution of trauma as something that needs to be understood, worked through and put into the larger perspective of one’s life. However, from the emerging understanding about the neurobiology of trauma, it is now clear that physical action is necessary to initiate new ways of perceiving reality and to promote new behaviour patterns. This lecture day will therefore present a variety of programmes that demonstrate how physical action, theatre and imagination can powerfully help overcome traumatic repetition and continued flight / fight and freeze responses..

• Learn to recognise signs and symptoms of trauma
• Gain a working knowledge about how and why people can move from trauma to violence
• Learn how to recognise when people are re-enacting key aspects of their
  traumatic experience
• Learn how theatre, bodywork and imagination have enabled traumatised people to work through and heal
• Know how to respond when trauma has resulted in chronic hyperarousal or dissociative states
• Understand how trauma can lead to conduct disorder or psychopathic behaviour
• Hear about a wealth of fascinating and effective interventions

Speaker

Dr Bessel van der Kolk
Professor at Boston University Medical School, Past President of the International Society for Traumatic Stress studies and Clinical Director of the Trauma Center at HRI Hospital in Brookline, Massachusetts. Dr van der Kolk’s work integrates developmental, neurobiological, psychodynamic and interpersonal aspects of the impact of trauma and its treatment. Dr van der Kolk has published extensively on the impact of trauma on development, such as dissociative problems, borderline personality, conduct disorders, self-mutilation and cognitive development. He was Co-Principal Investigator of the DSM IV Field Trials for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. His current research focusses on how trauma affects memory processes and brain imaging studies of PTSD.

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