Trust Scientific Meeting: Under Fire in the Consulting Room

Event overview

A slow match is a very slow-burning fuse presenting only a small glowing tip whereas a quick match is one - which once ignited - burns at top speed. 

In this talk, Dr. Carine Minne will present a number of clinical vignettes to illustrate situations when the therapist realised there was a sudden unexpected rise in ‘temperature’ of a patient’s mind and why this may have occurred. 

A fuse was lit but was it a slow or a quick one? She will relate this ignition to the possibility of premature interpretations, a failure to realise how anxious the patient was in the presence of the terrifying object-therapist or to patients’ unexpected responses to external interferences during a session. She will describe how these situations unfold during sessions and how, upon reflection, these could have been diffused differently. 

The emphasis will be on how best to maintain a psychoanalytic stance but also how to clinically judge when a session must be terminated in order to protect patient and therapist from 'fires' inadvertently ignited by patient or therapist. The importance of supervision and consultation with colleagues will be stressed.

This is an internal event for staff, students and alumni. Joining instructions are to follow.

Time

11:30am - 12:50pm

Speaker

Dr Carine Minne, Consultant Psychiatrist in Forensic Psychotherapy

Biography

Dr. Carine Minne is a Psychoanalyst at the British Society and a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. She trained as a forensic psychiatrist and psychotherapist, bringing these specialties together in her posting as Consultant Psychiatrist at the Portman Clinic and Broadmoor Hospital (West London NHS Trust). She is President of the International Association for Forensic Psychotherapy and chairs the IPA community committee on violence. 

Her focus for the last 25 years has been mainly on providing psychoanalytic treatments for patients who have acted violently or are troubled by sexual perversions. Many of her patients are in secure settings, psychiatric hospitals or prisons where psychoanalytically informed supervisions are provided to staff, given the strength of the reactions such patients or prisoners can provoke in those caring for them. Long term in-depth work is an important part of the overall treatment for such multiply traumatised people, given their background histories, the offenses they commit, and their discovery during treatment of being mentally disordered. Strong resistance to this work is regularly encountered, particularly by the general public that can mistake understanding with condoning. However, providing psychoanalytic approaches within relevant mental health and criminal justice organizations is often appreciated.

Chair

Francesca Hume