St Petersburg: A case study in the influence of external and internal factors in psychic development.

Speaker: Sheila Ernst

Sheila Ernst has been a part of an innovative initiative, providing a clinical training in Group Analysis to Russians in St Petersburg. Her talk will draw on this experience.

She says:

Training Group Analysts in St Petersburg brings up questions which are of specific and general interest. After three years of participating in this programme, I am left wondering if anything that I do or teach, can in any way counteract the experiences of living under a totalitarian communist regime that these students, or their parents and grandparents have had. I wonder whether I should be attempting to counteract the legacy of these experiences, or whether I should limit myself to exploring them.

My talk will be focussed around the following question:

What are the influences of external and internal factors on psychic development? I will draw on experiences of the work in St. Petersburg to develop my arguments and illustrate the issues that they throw up.

Sheila Ernst is a training group analyst and psychotherapist. She trained with the Institute of Group Analysis as well as The London Centre for Psychotherapy.

She is well known as an early contributor and staff member of the Women’s Therapy Centre in London. Her books include “Living with the Sphinx: Papers from the Women's Therapy Centre”; “In Our Own Hands: a Book of Self-Help Therapy”, and latterly, “An Introduction to Groupwork: A Group-analytic Perspective (Basic Texts in Counselling and Psychotherapy”