Dear Colleagues and Friends of Therapists Café,
Thank you for signing up to our newsletter and for the interest and enthusiasm you are expressing for our project. If I have not responded to an email, please do email again.
After receiving a sincerely interested response from colleagues, our task is now for Therapists Café to actually become a ‘thing’, i.e. to develop the project into the direction of its vision.
What is Therapists Café? We are a small group of therapists who have founded this initiative to better connect our profession.
Our Vision: to create a non-profit platform for our profession to support each other, feel less lonely and isolated and to help each other grow. We also want to collaborate to find solutions for the challenges we face in the political, social and economic realm.
Our Mission: to organise a warm hearted, creative, open-minded ‘Salon-culture’ for our profession to meet authentically, at relational depth, to practice what is at the core of our work: the art of relationship. We will use participatory leadership methods such as The Art of Hosing (AoH) to use our unique personal development and reflective skills to support each other personally and professionally. We also aim to use these methods to develop our collective agency to advance our profession politically, societally and economically.
Inspiration:
We are inspired by the culture of the ‘Intellectual Salon’ and by the initiative of www.deathcafe.com. We seek to use collaborative and participatory relational leadership methods such as the Art of Hosting (AoH) to facilitate the emergence of our collective intelligence and potential as a group. Another inspiration is the book The Listening Society by Hanzi Freinacht (a pseudonym for a group of sociologists and philosophers), describing how Meta-modernism and stage theories of developmental psychology can be applied to societal analysis and political process. Another inspiration is the The Political Mind Series at the Institute of Psychoanalysis organised by David Morgan.
Collaboration:
We seek to collaborate with other organisations and individuals who advocate for the advancement of our profession and for us to have the societal and economic spaces to practice good quality, ethically sound psychotherapy.
UPCOMING EVENTS:
ONLINE Open Meeting: What would you like?
ONLINE open meeting for anyone interested in this project on Sunday, 25th of January, at 1pm. Just drop in on this link TC open meeting
Psychoanalysis Café – Café/Salon meeting for psychodynamically/analytically trained colleagues
We held the second Psychoanalysis Café on the 16th of January and it was, again, a great success. A diverse group of colleagues from different psychodynamic and -analytic practice settings came together for an interesting reflective space and a lively networking meeting with coffee and cake. More info on how exactly these meetings work is on our website, www.therapists.cafe, how the meetings work and CPD.
The next Psychoanalysis Café will be on Friday, 13th of February, 6-9pm, near Bond Street tube.
Action: please email therapists.cafe@protonmail.com to book a space.
Ticket price: £15.
NB: last time, to my surprise, this booked out very quickly, and I felt sad that there were many colleagues who expressed interest, who were then not able to come. Please know that your interest is very valued and appreciated, and please do book again.
Pluralistic Therapists Café – Café/Salon meeting for therapists of all orientations, not exclusively psychodynamic
Due to the strong demand, we’ll put on another Café/Salon, for therapist colleagues of all orientations, not exclusively psychodynamic – although psychodynamic colleagues are, of course, welcome. This will also entail a reflective space, followed by networking with coffee and cake. Info on how exactly these meetings work is on our website, www.therapists.cafe, how the meetings work.
Date: TBC – a Sunday afternoon in February.
Action: please wait for email announcement coming shortly.
Therapists Ethical Business Development Salon (ONLINE) – monthly Salon meeting for discussion and planning of ethical business projects, including private practice
This group starts this month and will be part of our Ethical Business Skills for Therapists program (below). It is part of the political mission of this project, aiming to help therapists expand the market for good quality, ethical therapeutic products from private practice, CPD events, to larger-scale projects in the non-profit or for-profit sector.
This meeting will be Salon-style: after a check-in round there will be one or two ‘presentation slots’ where colleagues can present a particular project they are thinking of (‘idea stage’) or already working on, and colleagues then give their input in form of reflection, critical questioning, encouragement, and sharing of practical experience and advice.
The next Business Development Salon (ONLINE) will be on Sunday, 25th of January, 2pm – 3.30pm.
Dates after this will be: Sunday, 22nd of February and Sunday, 22nd of March, 2pm-3.30pm.
Action: to book a space please email therapists.cafe@protonmail.com
Ticket price: £15 – free for colleagues who have attended the marketing workshop before Christmas.
Ethical Business Skills for Therapists Program
This is a key element of our project and part of its political mission – please see our website and the last newsletter for more information. The aim is to embolden therapists to take a stronger presence societally, politically and economically by pushing the market for good quality, ethical therapeutic products. Consciousness development is an upward spiral – everyone wants good therapy; they just don’t know it yet.
Also, precisely because therapy and ‘mental health’ has been discovered as a market, all kinds of for-profit agents (venture capital, platformization, AI, individual for-profit stakeholders) are swooping in, who, often, dreadfully compromise on ethics and exploit staff and even clients. We as therapists need to organise to stop this from happening, and to protect the spaces in which we practice. If we don’t control ‘the thing’, ‘the thing’ will control us.
Some people who inspired me here are Joseph Stiglitz who wrote The Price of Inequality, Karma Capital, the Berlin Hub for Regenerative Business and Global Society for Good Leadership, Megan Cornish, Barclays Eagle Labs and many others.
The next event in this series will likely be in February 2026, date tbc, and will focus on Service Management in the Mental Health Sector – what you need to know and which steps to take to become a service manager – e.g. psychodynamics of management, how to manage your team to perform to targets while delivering quality clinical work, how to navigate various stakeholders, etc. Training will be given by Marta Banet, Head of Psychological Services at Riverside UK, and Kelly McMinn, former Head of Mental Health Strategy at One Housing Group, now training on Tavistock MA in Organisational Leadership.
The training will lead to the opportunity to apply to open Service Manager roles at Riverside.
Inspiring projects offered by colleagues:
Megan Cornish with her brilliant, US-based initiative, The Fit Check – ‘A place to say what no-one’s saying out loud’ – ‘glass-door with community support’ for Therapists. Please follow her on LinkedIn and sign up to her initiative – please include your UK registration body and number to make it easier for her to navigate our systems.
Elizabeth Cotton has extensively researched the trend of platformization of therapy with very worrying findings, published in her book Uber Therapy and leading to campaigning for better protection for therapists on The Future of Therapy
Carol Martin-Sperry, psychodynamic therapist with 40 years of experience who has published 3 books on sex and relationship therapy, has been featured in the Guardian and has worked as a media consultant for many years is aiming to start a case discussion group in Kensal Rise Library, NW London. If interested, please email her on carolmartinsperry@gmail.com
Jenny Nemko – not a therapist but facilitating the much-needed initiative Talk Matters – Jews and Arabs talk together – umbrella initiative for Jewish/Arab collaboration directly between Israel and Palestine, including business ventures like 50:50 Start-ups. https://talkmatters.info/ – please follow their socials to spread awareness of their campaign
Reading Therapies Group – where I am on the committee – has been organising monthly good-quality, very low-cost CPD for therapists for 40 years
Union for Counsellors and Psychotherapists – Union for Counsellors and Psychotherapists –
Spiral Dynamics Integral Live and Spiral Dynamics Integral Explorations
weekly US based Salons discussing developmental stage theories – want to join a group of massively geeky people from diverse professional backgrounds discussing stage theories of adult development? That’s the place. Sometimes you won’t have a clue what’s going on, but it doesn’t matter, as they’re very kind towards clueless people. Recommended.