Online Seminar June

Booking details below

The Maternal Object Lost and Found

Maxine Dennis

Thursday 25th June, 8 - 9.30pm AEST

During this talk Maxine will examine how the process of racialisation impacts us within the consulting room and how we might be able to maintain our capacity to think and understand despite the powerful forces at play. ‘Race’ an empty category (Rustin 1991) a social construct and a destructive and powerful form of categorisation due to the unconscious, social and political projections and meanings. The lack of objective reality provides fertile ground for the negative projections, unconscious phantasies and stereotypes to take the centre stage of racism. We all immediately know what is being referred to. We operate often accordingly with power dynamics at play. You may read this and think I do not see ‘race’, I treat everyone the same, equally and I operate with neutrality. However, this may override noticing what subtle nuances are at play both internally and externally.

Recent findings demand a re-examination to embrace the complexity of the idea of neutrality. Where does this leave the psychoanalyst and psychotherapist clinically? Here is the starting point of Maxine’s talk to go to the heart of this complexity and to explore with clinical material this multifaceted terrain. A terrain she refers to as the transferential leap. Here she is referring to the nature of the container, the movement involved in working across (colour), within difference (culture), within groups (self -identification). Her aim is that there is a free space for thinking about what can be felt to be complicated, paralyzing, shame- based or guilt inducing. Can we establish a containing space for robust exploration? A poignant question for the consulting room and for the space between us during this presentation.

Maxine Dennis Biography

Maxine Dennis is a psychoanalyst and consultant clinical psychologists who works with individuals, groups and organisations. She is one of the original founding members of 10 Windsor Walk (providing psychoanalysis, psychotherapy and training in South London) and a founder/member of Black Psychoanalysts Speak. She is a speaker and lecturer for various psychology, counselling and psychotherapy organisations in the UK and abroad and a training analyst for child psychotherapy and various adult psychotherapy trainings. She has directed and staffed on numerous group relations conferences (GRC’s). Maxine has a long-standing interest in art, psychoanalysis across the lifespan and its accessibility to a range of communities, and her clinical practice is in South London, UK.