Newsletter Winter 2025
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As we move towards the end of 2025 and into a new year, it feels important to honour the many textures that make up our APPCIOS community. We are a group held together not by sameness, but by connection, by the willingness to meet one another with curiosity, even when there are differences, disagreements, or moments of discomfort.
Across webinars, gatherings, and conversations, what APPCIOS offers is not perfection, but companionship. A place where people can arrive with their thoughts, their uncertainties, their differences, and be met with warmth. A place where difficult feelings have room, and where relationships can grow because we stay in them, not despite their complexity.
In these winter months, that warmth becomes even more precious.
It brings light into darker days and reminds us that community is a living thing, sometimes tidy, sometimes tangled, but always worth tending.
As the year turns, may there be rest, gentleness, and moments of unexpected connection.
And may we in 2026 continue to walk alongside one another with generosity, courage, and care holding space for the whole range of who we are, together.
An Invitation to Contribute to Our Next Newsletter
We would love to open the next APPCIOS newsletter to the voices, thoughts, and experiences of our community. If something in your work or your week has moved you, puzzled you, or stayed quietly in your mind, this could be a gentle place to share it.
You might offer:
- An experience that taught you something or surprised you
- A reflection that has been slowly gathering shape
- A review of a book, paper, group, or webinar that touched your thinking
- An idea that feels worth wondering about together
There is no right way to contribute. It can be a paragraph, a page, a question, or even just a fragment of thought. What matters is the sense of connection and shared curiosity.
If something stirs as you read this, even the smallest spark we would be so glad to hear from you. Please feel warmly welcomed to get in touch here.
Community Meeting
Hosted by Jenny Sprince & Emma Higgs
Next Meeting: Sunday 8th February
Our second community meeting will take place on Sunday 8th February, continuing the new rhythm of termly gatherings that invite the APPCIOS community to come together and think.
These meetings offer a gentle collective pause — a space where what is stirring can be named, and where silence, difference, and dialogue all have room. They hold the hope that when we meet with openness, something unthought may begin to find its shape.
Everyone is warmly welcome. Look out for the zoom link on the community site.
Library Additions
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Check out the APPCIOS Library as we are always updating the shelves with great papers, articles and videos of interest.
Just recently, we have added:-
Video: The Healthy Organisation by Philip Stokoe
Audio: Confronting Racism, Discrimination and Othering - M. Fakhry Davids
Article: Digital Wellbeing as a Dynamic Construct (from Oxford Academic) by Mariek M P Vanden Abeele
Paper: Fear and decision-making in narcissistic personality disorder—a link between psychoanalysis and neuroscience by Elsa Ronningstam and Arielle R Baskin-Sommers
Paper: Truth and lies: psychoanalytic perspectives by Caron Harrang
Scharff Award Lecture – September 2025
Alessandra Lemma - At the Meniscus of Reflection: Rethinking the Examined Life in an Age of Artificial Intelligence
Paper: ”I’m a fish!” Deepening receptivity to neurodiversity: a neuroscientifically informed integration of psychoanalytic psychotherapy, reciprocal prediction, and mindfulness – by Michelle van den Engh
Book: A GUILTY VICTIM by Toby Ingham (early chapters from this book with a link to where book can be purchased). A Guilty Victim tells the true story of one man’s recovery from childhood trauma, grooming, and sexual abuse at a Catholic boarding school. This contemporary account of psychotherapy with an adult survivor is written with the client’s full consent. It includes nine moving and powerful illustrations created by the client to tell his life story.
Book: "Not Acceptable: an Exploration of Workplace Bullying" by Marijke T. Moerman (Preface and Chapter from her newly released book)
Find them here: https://psychodynamicthinking.info/group/library
Enjoy!
Free Discussion Groups
A Space to Think – Paul Terry
A simple invitation to pause and wonder to bring life’s experiences into conversation and find meaning through collective thought.
Film Discussion Group – Jackie Horsburgh & Susan McIver
Film as a creative mirror for the unconscious a place where stories on screen stir stories within.
Psychoanalytic Reading Group – Annie Pesskin
A reflective rhythm of reading and discussion not to master a text, but to let it work on us, deepening our shared understanding of psychoanalytic ideas.
The author of the chosen book is invited to join the group, bringing an added depth and immediacy to the conversation, and reminding us that psychoanalytic thinking is always a living exchange.
Reflective Practice Group – Tony Burch
Ongoing companionship in thinking about the emotional currents of practice a space of continuity, honesty, and shared reflection.
Gathering Threads – Aly Thompson & Trudy Darien
A home for Senior Associate Members to think about the unfolding of professional identity a place of companionship and shared reflection within the training journey.
In Development
Many members will have attended Annie Pesskin’s Psychoanalytic Reading Group and found it an inspiring and enlivening experience. We are now hoping to set up a group on similar principles to discuss how other charities engage with the increasingly problematic dynamics of our world - political and societal. We are exploring the possibility of a monthly forum to which we could invite the leaders of such charities; where we could learn about them, and they about us, and share the insights we derive from our different perspectives.
We are hoping to form a small Steering Committee to take this idea forward. If you are interested in joining this committee, please contact Jeremy Gunson: jeremygunson1@gmail.com
Webinars
Open to subscribing members, each webinar offers more than information: it invites learning that is both intellectual and emotional, grounded in the lived realities of practice. They form part of accredited CPD accepted by a range of registering bodies and part of the portfolio of training opportunities towards becoming an APPCIOS Psychodynamic Organisational Therapist.
These gatherings hold space for participants to think with others, to test ideas against experience, and to allow new understanding to emerge quietly, collaboratively, and in depth.
Work Discussion Group – Emma Higgs & Mark Waddington
A steady, containing space to bring one’s working life into thought.
Through shared reflection, participants learn from the emotional texture of their work discovering how meaning and insight grow in company with others.
Understanding Race from a Psychodynamic Perspective – Trudy Darien & Devika Dhar
A learning space that invites honesty and depth in exploring race, identity, and difference.
It offers an opportunity to notice what is spoken and unspoken, to sit with discomfort, and to develop the reflective capacity needed in the world.
Infant Observation – Devika Dhar & Phil Faulkner
A discipline of deep learning through observation to see, feel, and think about the beginnings of relationship.
Participants learn to bear emotional experience and to find language for the earliest forms of communication. We are in the process of developing this space into a psychoanalytic studies webinar, please refer to the community site for updated information.
Bion: The individual in the group and the group in the individual – Andrew Briggs
A reflective space returning to Bion’s ideas of thinking, group life, and containment, continuing our shared enquiry into how thought is formed, held, and transformed. Starting Thursday evenings, from:
Thursday 15th January to Thursday 19th March 2026, 8.00–9.15pm (UK time)
If you feel drawn to any of these learning opportunities, you are welcome to email admin@appcios.info
Expressions of Interest
We currently collecting expressions of interest in the following:
Two-Year Theory Webinar (Starting January 2026)
Andrew Briggs will be offering a new two-year theory webinar beginning in January. Meeting on Tuesday evenings, this group will offer a steady, reflective space to explore key psychoanalytic papers and ideas.
It can be taken as stand-alone CPD or counted towards the PPT training pathway. Timings and costings will be confirmed shortly.
There are four places available.
If this sparks interest, please feel free to get in touch here
An Exploration of Psychodynamic Supervision with Veronica O’Hare & Jeremy Gunson
Potential Start: February 2026
Following the huge success of the first course, offered earlier this term, there is another opportunity for members to engage in this experiential learning space that approaches supervision as a living relationship. Through shared reading, reflection, and discussion, participants explore how curiosity, containment, and compassion sustain both supervisee and supervisor.
Observing Organisations – Andrew Briggs
A place to learn about the emotional life of organisations by noticing patterns, projections, and defences at work.
Participants develop a felt understanding of how group dynamics shape leadership, belonging, and the capacity to think together.
APPCIOS Top-Up Training – New Cohort
We are gathering interest for the next Top-Up Training leading to BPC registration as a Psychodynamic Psychotherapist.
This pathway offers experienced practitioners a deepening of practice and a widening of psychoanalytic presence across diverse clinical and organisational settings.
If this training or any of the other learning opportunities are something you might wish to consider, please do get in touch here.
Call for help
In APPCIOS we are dependent upon and grateful for a pool of volunteers to act as mentors to support our membership. We have had a large increase in membership this year and are seeking more mentors to offer vital support. If this is of interest to you or you would like to find out more, please contact our mentor lead Veronica O’Hare here.
CPD
As we move into 2026, we are looking ahead to the new subscription year and annual CPD returns due by the end of March 2026. Please keep a look out for emails regarding your CPD return at the beginning of February. Your annual subscription and BPC registration is dependent upon completion of relevant CPD activity.
Reflections on the Autumn Term
Annual Conference 2025 – “How Reality Happens” (Wednesday 19th November)
This year’s annual conference was somewhat of an experiment; an experiential day inviting reflection on how reality is experienced, resisted, and co-created. We used CGI imagery, observed conversation and live image making to explore ideas, posing questions of engagement, passivity and ownership. It proved an interesting and successful day. Below is an extract from one of our members Maria Williamson who wrote a review along with some images created on the day by members Gareth Woollam-Smith and Mel Bates (shared with permission).
The emphasis throughout was on authenticity, spontaneity, and a deliberate resistance to premature conceptualisation. We were invited to encounter reality not as an intellectual idea but as something emerging in the immediacy of emotional presence, in the live field between participants…
…Attention was given to the role of sensory engagement in how reality is formed. Throughout the conference, Mel Bates and Gareth Woollam-Smith offered “alternative viewpoints” through the creation of their artwork. The compelling imagery they produced drew attention to the fragmentation and reconstruction inherent in perception and reality. The highly textured, shadow-like figures, with obscured featured and blocked orifices, evoked the limitations of digital perception in observing and engaging with the world.
…Hearing from the artists themselves was particularly illuminating. They spoke about the experience of being observed while making art and how this introduced a performative, self-conscious quality into the creative process. They described grappling with abstraction and waiting for something to emerge in its own time. Their reflections raised an intriguing question about how observation, including sensory observation, alters reality by offering an alternative perspective. It left me wondering whether this process becomes more precarious in the digital world, where our sensory experience is fractured, and reality can feel increasingly unanchored.
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A Poem shared on the day by member Andrew Davies
Who really respects the earthworm, the farmworker far under the grass in the soil.
He keeps the earth always changing.
He works entirely full of soil,
Speechless with soil, and blind.
He is the underneath farmer, the underground one.
Where the fields are getting on their harvest clothes.
Who really respects him,
This deep and calm earth-worker,
The deathless, grey, tiny farmer in this planet’s soil.
Harry Martinson, The Earthworm
A Closing Reflection
The thinking life of APPCIOS is not a programme; it is a presence.
It flows through conversations, through silences, and through the steady companionship of those who meet online to think together.
It is what allows the organisation to stay awake to itself responsive, curious, and humane.
To nurture this thinking life is to care for the soul of APPCIOS:
its capacity to wonder, to reflect, and to grow through relationship.
Wishing you all a restful winter season and good start to 2026.