Decolonising Psychotherapy: 1. Welcome and Introduction, Del Loewenthal

There is with decolonising psychotherapy the vital opportunity to consider what it means for all people to be regarded as equal. This involves concerns about attentiveness, not only to how a client’s culture, practices and experiences may differ from the practitioner’s, but also, crucially, the assumptions the practitioner may hold about notions such as culture, superiority and civilisation. Is it possible to think about these sorts of complex experiences, assumptions and notions, even if they may unsettle and disorientate? Is it essential to at least consider that being trained as a psychotherapist often leads us to overvalue the theories we have been taught, taking them as objective and scientific, without thinking of them as products of Western Europe in the time of colonialism, empires and population shifts, and therefore in need of careful thought? Yet to achieve this, won’t we first as psychotherapists have to reflect on our own colonial mindsets which we can wrongly normalise? How can we and our clients do this whilst exploring the complexities of pride in our different heritages? How then do we work in a postcolonial way with our clients? This conference invites clinicians, theoreticians and researchers to consider the many ways decolonising psychotherapy can influence psychotherapeutic practices, theories and research also stemming from such further questions as: Can psychotherapists and clients identify with European cultures without being colonial? What are the challenges when working with clients from non-European backgrounds if our psychotherapeutic theories are Eurocentric? Are all European psychotherapeutic cultures colonial and all colonial psychotherapeutic cultures European? What can we learn as psychotherapists of diverse racial and cultural backgrounds from other academic disciplines that have been exploring issues of post-colonialism? As psychotherapists how does our pride, and/or shame, regarding our personal and psychotherapeutic histories help and hinder our clients/patients? What would it mean to decolonise our and our clients’/patients’ lives? What are postcolonial methodologies? To what extent should we, must we, and can we, decolonise psychotherapy trainings? The idea of this conference is that there will not only be speakers reporting on the cutting edge of such questions regarding ‘decolonising psychotherapy and empires of the mind’; but, there will be space where participants can explore in small groups how this may be experienced both as opportunities and challenges by psychotherapists as well as their clients/patients. Prof Del Loewenthal Conference Chair Critical Psychotherapy Network & Southern Association of Psychotherapy and Counselling