What Needs to Happen in a Therapeutic Relationship for People to Heal?

A 1-day online conference with Dr Bruce Ecker, Dee Bamford, Dr Margot Sunderland, Dr Adah Sachs and Dr Malcolm Parlett.

Research shows that it is the quality of the therapeutic relationship that determines whether transformational change occurs.

But what needs to happen within that relationship for healing to take place?

How does the experience of being deeply understood, authentically met and empowered to process painful life experiences, bring about real change?

This conference brings together five top clinicians and theorists to explore the relational conditions that move therapy beyond coping strategies and symptom management – into profound long-term change.

Dr Bruce Ecker

Pioneer of memory reconsolidation: evidence-based mechanism of therapeutic change. Co-founder of Coherence Therapy. Author many books/articles including Unlocking the Emotional Brain. Bruce will discuss how specific relational experiences in therapy can unlock and permanently update the emotional learnings that drive anxiety, depression, trauma responses and lifelong patterns of distress.

Dee Bamford

Senior Integrative Arts Psychotherapist Cert in CBT skills, CATT (Children’s Accelerated Trauma treatment). Over 20 years, Dee has provided intensive psychotherapeutic work for families and individuals from diverse backgrounds. Dee and her adopted daughter Cassandra share a lived perspective on the therapeutic relationship, showing how safety, attunement and emotional regulation within a parent￾child bond can foster healing from early relational trauma.

Dr Margot Sunderland

Founding Director of the institute for Arts in Therapy and Education. Author of over 25 books in mental health. Neuroscience scholar. Within an Emotion-Focused Therapy framework, Dr Sunderland will explore how working with metaphor, art image and unstoried emotions to access core pain can lead to transformational change.

Dr Adah Sachs

Attachment-based psychoanalytic psychotherapist. Worked for decades with adults/teenagers in psychiatric care. Former consultant at the Clinic for Dissociative Studies. Author/co-editor of many publications, including Forensic Aspects of DID and The Abused and the Abuser. Dr Sachs presentation entitled ‘There were no words for it: the healing power of responding to projective identification’ addresses the complexities of working relationally with deeply troubled clients.

Dr Malcolm Parlett

Pioneer of Gestalt psychotherapy in the UK, Co-founder of the Gestalt Psychotherapy Training Institute, Founding Editor of the British Gestalt Journal, and author of Future Sense. From a Gestalt Psychotherapy perspective, Malcolm reflects on how change arises through authentic meeting – where therapist and client engage in a moment-to-moment relational process that supports new ways of experiencing self and other (recorded interview).

Refunds: We regret we cannot offer refunds for non-attendance to our events.