Inter-Parental Conflict and its Consequences: Maintaining or Breaking Negative Intergenerational Patterns - A half day seminar with Susanna Abse

Conflict between parents both openly hostile or cold and chronic has been shown to have long term impacts for children’s development and wellbeing. When faced with poorly resolved conflict between their parents, not only are children likely to experience stress, anxiety and emotional insecurity but also to develop internal working models and unconscious attributions that affect their lives and relationships throughout childhood and in adulthood. Drawing on research and intervention studies, and using attachment and object relations frameworks, the seminar will provide opportunities to consider the practice implications of research for working with individuals, couples and families to break negative intergenerational cycles.

Susanna Abse is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, executive coach and organisational consultant working in private practice with couples, parents and individuals in London.  She was CEO of the charity Tavistock Relationships from 2006 until 2016 where she co-developed a mentalisation based therapy for separated parents, which underwent a randomised control trial funded by the DfE and was later used in a ground-breaking two-year pilot programme in partnership with the Child and Family Court Advisory Service (CAFCASS). She is a Senior Fellow of the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology, a member of the Executive Board of the British Psychoanalytic Council. She has published widely on couple therapy, parenting, and family policy and how these areas need to be at the heart of progressive welfare provision, a subject on which she lectures and teaches. 

*9.45 Registration for a 10.00 start

3 hours continuing professional development (CPD)