This year the theme of the Tavistock Relationships Clinic Summer School was ‘The Couple’s Projective System’.  The workshop was four intensive days of lectures, seminars, case-study presentations and small clinical discussion groups.

On December 5th 2015 I attended the Commemorative Conference on John Bowlby’s 25 Anniversary.   The conference was a homage to psychoanalyst, psychologist and child psychiatrist John Bowlby the founder of Attachment Theory.  In essence Bowlby’s research provided the evidence base for how the kind of love, or lack of love, we received in our early childhoods continues to affect the kind of relationships we are able to form in later life.  It was Bowlby who realised the importance of a secure base, and how we resort to defensive strategies when we feel that our secure base is under threat.  His work has been a hugely important influence for me in my work as a psychotherapist.

Cherry Potter