After
Therapy Symposium

After Therapy is a symposium subtitled 'Suffering in the age of Big Mental Health.' James Mumford argues that losing the courage of our convictions and becoming estranged from tradition, custom and faith leaves therapy to create meaning in a vacuum, deepening despair. Sociologist Ashley Frawley examines the paradox that serious mental illness is increasingly depathologised while the medicalisation of everyday life continues. Psychotherapist and writer Mark Vernon argues that psychodynamic psychotherapies are necessary but not sufficient, looking back to William Blake to ask how therapy might be extended. The discussion also considers whether genuine illness has space in mental health discourse and Freud's distinction between neurotic despair and ordinary human misery. Tickets available at https://verdur.in/event/after-therapy/