Introduction

These two special workshops are a unique opportunity to think about questions of socio-economic and sex-related disparities as they arise in the therapeutic relationship between mental health professionals and clients, with Deepak Dhananjaya, psychotherapist and Agile-Leadership-Organisation Coach. He founded AgileSattva Consulting, and Prabhava Institute of Inclusive Mental Health. Deepak is visiting us this summer from Bangalore, India.

Both workshops will be held in-person at the Tavistock Institute offices, 63 Gee Street, central London, EC1V 3RS. Numbers will be limited and these will be small groups.

Find us

Workshop One: Oppression Inside Out

A perspective of unconscious dynamics that emerge in the therapy room

This workshop for mental health professionals will be an opportunity for participants to explore their work with clients from a socio-political lens. 

As we work with individuals and groups, we try to help them find a way out of the psychological pain they are going through. We draw on many valuable theoretical models to help us understand their internal world (psyche). We work with different interventions based on our own competence in the given framework to find a ‘cure’ for the clients. 

The workshop will focus on the psychological ideas we hold of the “cure” or of “mental well-being” and its impact on clients. 

We as mental health professionals are part of the same social and political systems as our clients, which are constructed based on the patriarchy, a dominant class/caste/race or capitalist frameworks.

So it is important to explore the context of the clients/groups and our own selves as mental health professionals and our interplay in the work we do together.

 While we hold the idea of socio-political impact on clients, it is easy to create a split of “Oppressed” and “the Oppressor”, which furthers the fragmentation that is alive in the system and its introjected aspects in the internal world of clients. 

In this workshop we will explore

• ideas of “cure/mental-wellbeing”;
• the intersectional aspects of multiple identities that both client and we hold;
• the introjected-intersectional-oppression at three levels: Intrapsychic, Interpersonal and Societal. 

We will work with ideas derived from radical-relational Transactional Analysis (Karen Minikin, Keith Tudor, Bill Cornell, Claude Steiner), and from sociologists and psycho-analysts like Eric Fromm, Wilhem Reich, Frantz Fanon. 

What to expect

The workshop is an invitation to reflect and dialogue on one’s own experience as a client and a therapist, so it will be a reflective, experiential, dialogic space. 

Participants will get to explore their multiple identities that are alive internally and in their professional world, and their impact. This experimental workshop provides a contained space for one to do this exploration.

Workshop Two: Binary Identities

Understanding the world beyond binaries of a man and a woman

Society is structured primarily based on the ideas of heterosexual monogamous relationships through a structurally created institution: marriage. 

Marriage, which was created as a solution to an economical problem according to sociological studies, has had an impact on non-heterosexual non-monogamous individuals and communities. 

In this workshop for mental health professionals, we will explore the sociological evolution of society around man and woman, and its impact on the other people who became sexual and gender minorities. Through a combination of conceptual, reflective, and dialogic format, we will consider our own experience and/or the experience of queer communities. 

We all hold unconscious biases on gender, sex and sexuality, and because we live in the same society, these biases are internalised and come into play in the therapeutic setup as well with clients. 

We will draw on the work of anthropologists and mental health professionals who were socially attuned such as Gayle Rubin, Wilhem Reich, Ketki Ranade, Carol Shadbolt.

What to expect

This workshop is an invitation to reflect and dialogue on one’s own experience as a client and a therapist, so it will be a reflective, experiential, dialogic space. 

Expanding the ideas of gender, sex and sexuality, its impact on the marginalised (queer) communities, we will gain understanding of the way our mental health theories are influenced by heteronormativity. 

About Deepak Dhananjaya

Deepak Dhananjaya is a psychotherapist and Agile-Leadership-Organisation Coach. He is the co-founder of AgileSattva Consulting, an organisation development and transformation organisation in Bangalore. 

With a private clinical, teaching and supervision practice in psychotherapy, he is also the founder of Prabhava Institute of Inclusive Mental Health that focuses on inclusivity in mental health education and services negotiating the boundaries of privileges and oppression of intersections of society (patriarchy, sexuality, class, caste, religion). 

Deepak is an engineer and has a Masters in Sexuality and Sexual counselling. Engaging with the group relations framework since 2019, Deepak has been part of various group relations conferences and workshops in both member and staff roles. His work is informed by Transactional Analysis, Group Relations, and socio-cultural-political frame of reference which reflects in his writings and practice.