Keynote Speaker

Jeremy Holmes

MA MD FRCPsych MRCP BPC

Jeremy Holmes has an illustrious career history, ranging across Visiting Professor of Psychological Therapies, University of Exeter, UK., Consultant Psychiatrist and Senior Lecturer in Psychiatry at University College London, Consultant Psychiatrist in Psychotherapy in the West of England UK, and co-leader of the psychodynamic stream of post-graduate programmes in Psychological Therapies at the University of Exeter. He is a practicing psychoanalytic psychotherapist and former member of the Guild of Psychotherapists and former Chair of the Psychotherapy Faculty at the Royal College of Psychiatrists, among many others.

He is author or co-author of over 100 papers and book chapters, and 14 books in the field of psychotherapy and attachment theory. These include The Good Mood Guide (with Ros Holmes, 1993), John Bowlby and Attachment Theory (Routledge 1993), Attachment, Intimacy, Autonomy (Aronson 1997), Introduction to Psychoanalysis (with A Bateman, Routledge 1996) The Search for the Secure Base: Attachment Theory and Psychotherapy (Routledge 2001), Integration in Psychotherapy: Models and Methods (edited with A Bateman, Oxford University Press 2002), and The Oxford Textbook of Psychotherapy (ed. With G Gabbard & J Beck, Oxford, 2005).

He has lectured, taught, and supervised widely in the UK and throughout the world (USA, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Spain) on Attachment Theory and Psychotherapy, his latest book Exploring in Security: attachment, mentalising, and psychodynamic psychotherapy is due to appear late in 2009.

Keynote Address Abstract by Jeremy Holmes

“ ‘Attachment’ may have first evolved as a way of ensuring infants' survival in a hostile savannah, but physical proximity lead onto emotional closeness and from that has flowed much of what we value about being human. Attachment provides descriptive accounts of intimate relationships from the outside consistent with the interior narratives that are the essence of psychoanalysis. Attachment Theory started from Bowlby's insistence that security was a basic psychobiological force equal to, and perhaps preceding sexuality and aggression. With current interest in mentalisation, attachment has now moved its focus from security to the very heart of intimate relationships. It is these we shall now follow…”

Workshop Session Abstract by Jeremy Holmes

Title: Power, empowerment, in the psychotherapy relationship

‘Parents are in a position of power over their children; so too, at least at a symbolic level, therapists inescapably wield power over their patients. The analyst sets the terms of the relationship, prepares the room, dictates—albeit by negotiation and contract—the frequency and duration of meetings, and decides how best to intervene, or not, in the client's life. Theoretically the patient can dispute the contract, or walk away from therapy at any time in ways that a baby cannot. But, unconsciously or otherwise, being a patient means laying one's vulnerability and powerlessness at the feet (or in the lap) of the analyst's knowledge and strength.”

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