'Rupture and Repair and Minding the Gap: Some thoughts on Marion Milner’s work'

Marion Milner’s poem with the title ‘Minding the Gap' ends: 'But I do know that it is/ Out of the gaps/That new things grow.’ 

There are many kinds of gap and many ways of not minding them. We suffer from overwhelming feelings (for instance from unbearable loss), but also from the killing off of feelings and of gaps. Which is worse, Psychoanalyst Michael Eigen asks: ‘the fire or the death’? Through examples of Milner’s and my own work, I will discuss these two poles of experience. I will also touch on the issue of analytic technique with people who seem to lack a capacity for experiencing loss. 

Michael Brearley started his training in psychoanalysis at the Institute of Psychoanalysis in London in 1981 qualifying in 1985. He had already worked as a Nursing Assistant in a clinic for disturbed adolescents. Around this time he worked as a Psychotherapist with Camden Psychotherapy Unit. He was also a school counsellor for ten years. He is now a Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society, of which he was President from  2008 – 2010 and where he is Chair of the Section for the Application of Psychoanalysis. He has taught and written on a range of Psychoanalytic topics in various contexts.

His main work has been as a Psychoanalyst in private practice.

Before this he taught philosophy at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne for almost three years. He then captained Middlesex at cricket for twelve years and England for four years. In 1985 his book The Art of Captaincy was published. He has also worked as an occasional cricket journalist, earlier for The Observer newspaper more recently and currently for The Times. He was President of MCC in 2007-8 and will have retired in September 2017 from the position of Chair of MCC’s World Cricket Committee, a think-tank on international cricket. He has given talks on subjects such as leadership and motivation. 

His new book, On Form, is to be published by Little Brown in September 2017.

Registration and refreshments from 10:30 am, the Seminar will start at 11:00 am and end at 12:30 pm.

To book the complete CPD Seminar Series please click here.