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Autumn Talk and AGM 2013

Autumn Talk and AGM 2013

Autumn Talk and AGM 2013

The Buzz Trap: Speeded up lives, Distractedness, Impulsivity and Less Empathy

Many are remarking on the frantic pace of 21st century western lives. This talk will extend the lessons learnt from understandings of abuse and trauma to think about the psychological and neurobiological effects of stressful experiences in both childhood and adult life. It will link psychoanalytic insights about manic and other defensive states, evolutionary ideas of lifehistory theory and new understandings of our autonomic nervous systems.This helps to make sense of why such speeded up, less regulated lives might be adaptive to some environments but have devastating long-term consequences. Just as too often real trauma and abuse remain unnoticed and too little theorised, while victims are blamed for being bad and delinquent, we might also take seriously the hidden stress and anxieties of much contemporary life, and the costs of this.

Graham Music is Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist at the Tavistock and Portman Clinics and an adult psychotherapist in private practice. Formerly Associate Clinical Director of the Tavistock’s child and family department, he worked in the
Tavistock’s Fostering, Adoption and Kinship Care Team for over twelve years, managed a range of services concerned with the aftermath of child maltreatment and neglect and organised community based therapy services, particularly in schools. and in GP practices alongside health visitors. He now works at the Portman clinic seeing forensic cases. He organises trainings for therapists in CAMHS, leads on teaching on attachment, the brain and child development, and teaches and supervises on the Tavistock Child Psychotherapy Training and other psychotherapy trainings in Britain and abroad. Publications include Nurturing Natures, Attachment and Children’s Emotional, Sociocultural and Brain Development (2010) and Affect and Emotion, and he has a particular interest in exploring the interface between developmental findings and clinical work. In 2014 he publishes a new book, The Good, The Bad and the Stressed, about altruism, morality and the effects of stressful experiences on being prosocial.

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