Depathologising ‘mental health’ and reclaiming therapy with James Barnes

Depathologising ‘mental health’ and reclaiming therapy with psychotherapist, and activist James Barnes

The biomedical revolution of the 1980s relegated psychotherapy and counselling to a supporting role in mental health work.

The widely recognised failure of the biomedical paradigm calls us to re-examine & reclaim those lost philosophies and practices as central.

James Barnes advocates for nonpathologising alternatives and in this workshop will describe how the philosophies of Carl Rogers & his person-centred approach, developmental psychology and the ‘relational turn’ in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy come together to form the basis of a powerful and necessary challenge to medical model thinking in the modern day.

James will build on his previous writing on Donald Winnicott and relational psychotherapy.