John Southgate and Elizabeth London are offering week-end workshops that combine the insights of Lacan and John Bowlby

The goal of the workshops is to help practitioners of any orientation to add to her or his repertoire a technique developed by Lacan called the Variable Session [sometimes wrongly alled ³short sessions².} The skill is timing an intervention in the patient or clients discourse where she or he has said something significant about themselves which could soon be lost in further associations. The therapist can say something like, ³you¹ve really said something important about your self - lets pause so you can reflect upon what you have just said.²
It is much easier to teach this experientially where members of the course practice in pairs and then report back to the whole group for discussion. Another way to learn how to use this technique is to do a short analysis for a few months with (1) someone with a Lacanian background plus (2) also an Attachment analyst. This may be hard to find as Lacanians and Attachment Analysts do not talk to each other very much!

The key Lacanian concepts are Needs, Wants, Demands and, crucially, Desire. The key Attachment concepts are Secure V Insecure Attachments (anxious avoidant, anxious resistant, anxious disorganised.] We would like people to form small Self-organising cells of 4 - 6 persons to continue to practice together after the workshop. Lacanians call these ³Cartels² which unfortunately in English sounds like multi nationals controlling markets. We would avoid forming any bureaucratic organisation as this would be not learning from experience! It is perfectly possible to organise conferences etc. by a delegate system.

It might also be useful to join the independent group of Psychotherapists if
people so wished. If you are interested please send us your names and
addresses. We will be happy to correspond or to discuss online or by
telephone.