UKCP Annual Conference 2026 - Threads Across the Divide

CPD

Speaker

Dr Catherine Knibbs Related seminars and products

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Dr Catherine Knibbs is a child and adult trauma psychotherapist, researcher and pioneer of cybertrauma theory, with over 20 years‘ experience at the intersection of child development, trauma and technology. She is a TEDx speaker, CEO of Children and Tech, and author of multiple books, including titles with Routledge and the British Psychological Society. Dr Knibbs runs a clinical practice that specialises in online harms and is a leading authority on cyber-enabled trauma and online safeguarding. 

Dr Dwight Turner Related seminars and products

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Dr Dwight Turner is course leader in humanistic psychotherapy at the University of Brighton, as well as a UKCP psychotherapist and supervisor. He is the author of three Routledge books and is an experienced conference speaker, specialising in intersectional practice. 

Geoff Hopping Related seminars and products

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Geoff Hopping is a senior partner at The Link Centre and an experienced UKCP psychotherapist with qualifications in transactional analysis and psychoanalysis, having trained at the Society for Analytical Psychology. He has decades of experience across NHS, the social work sector, and psychotherapy settings including specialist work with complex trauma in high security prisons. He has a keen interest in bereavement, loss and the spiritual dimension of psychotherapy.

Jeremy Holmes Related seminars and products

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Jeremy Holmes MD FRCPsych is Honorary Professor at the University of Exeter and was for 35 years medical psychotherapist and consultant psychiatrist at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH) and then in North Devon. He was chair of the medical psychotherapy faculty of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (1998-2002) and set up the Exeter Psychoanalytic Studies programme. Author of over 250 papers and book chapters, his books include The Oxford textbook of psychotherapy (2008) and The brain has a mind of its own (2020). He is recipient of the Bowlby-Ainsworth foundation award and the Canadian Clinical Psychology Goethe Prize. 

Julie Stone Related seminars and products

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Julie Stone is the UKCP’s independent ethics lead and chair of its Ethics Committee. An academic healthcare lawyer and ethicist by background, Julie has directly influenced healthcare regulatory strategy, policy development and professional standards for over 30 years, advising regulators, professional associations and the government. She is an advocate of research-informed practice, and co-production with experts by experience. She is a former non-executive director of an NHS mental health/community provider and a commissioner trust, and has promoted trauma-informed practice, Freedom to Speak Up, and staff wellbeing initiatives. She has a particular expertise in professional boundaries and moral courage. 

Karen Rawden Related seminars and products

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Karen Rawden is a UKCP psychotherapist specialising in psychosynthesis and neuroaffirmative therapy. She is a certified ADHD clinical provider, a member of the UKCP DiverseMinds special interest group, and has served on the board of the European Psychosynthesis Association (EPA). She also tutors neurodivergent students and delivers programs to therapists on creating supportive and transformational therapeutic spaces for people who identify as neurodivergent. 

Dr Linda Finlay Related seminars and products

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Dr Linda Finlay is a relational-centred, existentially oriented integrative UKCP psychotherapist, supervisor and academic. She teaches psychology/counselling at the Open University and mentors master's and doctoral students across the UK and Europe. Her research interests include the application of relational, reflexive, hermeneutic phenomenological approaches to exploring the lived experience of disability and trauma. She is also a widely published author. 

Mamood Ahmad Related seminars and products

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Mamood Ahmad is a UKCP psychotherapist, tutor, speaker and published author. He has close to two decades of experience in private practice with specialisms in trauma, multicultural competence and social change. His current primary focus is on driving professional standards change. 

Myira Khan Related seminars and products

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Myira Khan is a UKCP counsellor, supervisor, coach, trainer and published author, with over 16 years of clinical experience. She is the founder of the Muslim Counsellor and Psychotherapist Network (MCAPN), which supports Muslim practitioners through CPD, community and visibility. A regular international keynote speaker, Myira is a visibly Muslim, neurodivergent practitioner committed to advancing anti-oppressive and culturally attuned practice. 

Paul Hoggett Related seminars and products

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Paul Hoggett is emeritus professor of social policy at The University of the West of England, Bristol. He is a retired psychoanalytic psychotherapist who is active in the Climate Psychology Alliance (CPA), which he co-founded in 2012, and continues to edit its online magazine, Explorations in Climate Psychology. He also serves on the Steering Group of Psychoanalytic Voices for Palestine. 

Dr Paula Hall Related seminars and products

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Dr Paula Hall is a UKCP sexual and relationship psychotherapist specialising in compulsive sexual behaviours and problematic pornography use. She is the founder of The Laurel Centre, the UK’s largest therapy service supporting individuals in addressing unwanted sexual behaviours. She also established Pivotal Recovery, a not-for-profit organisation offering affordable, anonymous resources for those seeking change. 

Sheetal Amin Related seminars and products

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Sheetal Amin is a UKCP psychotherapist with 25 years of experience working with children, young people, adults, families, organisations and communities. Sheetal has led NHS services that provide therapeutic care for looked after children (LAC) including adoption, fostering and unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC). She is a trainer, educator and supervisor and has worked in multi-agency rapid response services (MARRS). Sheetal is currently responsible for supporting partnerships between health, education and social care. 

Susie Orbach Related seminars and products

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Susie Orbach is a psychotherapist and the author of numerous influential books – her seminal work, Fat is a feminist issue was published in 1978 and has remained relevant throughout the decades. She has also held a long-running column in The Guardian. Susie has a visiting professorship at the London School of Economics, co-founded The Women's Therapy Centre in London (1976) and in New York (1981), and has spent fifty years linking psychotherapy, psychoanalysis and social structure through her writing and lectures. 

Objectives

Viewers will gain practical insights and contemporary perspectives on connection, difference and therapeutic practice from selected presentations recorded at the UKCP Conference 2026.

The learning objectives are to:

1. Examine how fragmentation and disconnection manifest in individuals, relationships and wider society.
2. Explore the impact of identity, culture and intersectionality on therapeutic practice.
3. Apply ethical thinking in increasingly complex and polarised contexts.
4. Understand the effects of digital life, cyber trauma and online harms on mental health and relationships.
5. Evaluate approaches to strengthening therapeutic engagement and relational connection.
6. Consider how psychotherapists can work effectively across differences in experience, values and worldviews.

Outline

DAY 1

The theme of day one of UKCP Conference 2026 is ‘Threads across the fragmented world of psychotherapy’.  

It explores the ways in which we become disconnected from others, and how this manifests both in society and within the therapy room. 

Paradise lost? The estranged self and the longing for the ideal – Paul Hoggett 

Paul examines the modern self's longing for an ideal world and pathways towards repair across cultural and political divides. Paul is emeritus professor of social policy at UWE Bristol and co-founder of the Climate Psychology Alliance. 

Ethical fixity and flexibility: whither ethics in a fractured world? – Julie Stone 

Julie considers whether ethical principles can remain consistent in a fractured world – and how a reflective ethical approach supports practice across divides. Julie is UKCP's independent ethics lead and chair of UKCP's Ethics Committee. 

'I belong here. I belong': existential explorations of our intersectional identities in counselling and psychotherapy – Dr Dwight Turner  

Dwight uses creativity and poetry to explore how practitioners hold clients' complex, layered identities while also reckoning with their own. Dwight is course leader on the humanistic psychotherapy course at the University of Brighton and a psychotherapist and supervisor in private practice. 

Bridging the relational divide: sameness, difference, and the wholeness solution – Mamood Ahmad and Sheetal Amin  

Joint session. Mamood explores the concept of 'Relational Scope' and a 'Relationship v2.0' framework for fostering connection, repair, and unity across fragmented and polarised relational landscapes. Sheetal examines why diverse representation of therapists, modalities, cultures and theoretical perspectives matters at every level of the profession. 

Fragmentation, (internal and external) and the move towards inter-connectivity – Geoff Hopping  

This session explores psychological fragmentation and the internal disconnection, alienation and anxiety that can blur the boundary between inner experience and outer reality. Drawing on Winnicott, Jung, Klein and Francis Weller, it examines how intrapsychic phenomena such as objectification and devaluation connect to broader societal, political and cultural divisions. 

Panel discussion – Dwight Turner, Karen Rawden, Paul Hoggett and Will Daniel-Braham (panel chair and UKCP vice chair) 
Panel discussion title: Fragmented identities: navigating selfhood in a chaotic world

DAY 2

The theme of day two is ‘Threads across a fragmented world: overcoming what separates us’.  

It examines the divides emerging across a fragmented world, exploring how neuroscience, digital life and evolving perspectives on human experience are reshaping intimacy, relationships and psychotherapy. 

Bringing threads together through joint action: engagement as the secret of successful psychotherapies – Jeremy Holmes 

Psychotherapy research confirms the ‘dodo bird verdict’ that there are few significant differences in outcomes between the divided species of psychotherapy. But in contrast to psychotherapies, psychotherapists vary greatly in their effectiveness. So, what is the decisive contrast between ‘good’ and not-so-good therapists? Jeremy Holmes suggests the key theme is engagement – the capacity to create a collaborative, ‘we-mode' culture in which therapist and client work actively together on the client’s difficulties. This weaving of connections contrasts with both silent-passive, and ‘one who knows' or ‘life-coach’ approaches. Holmes justifies this with evidence threads from mother-infant attachment and neuroscience research, and illustrative 'case reports' from novels including Chimamanda Adichie’s Dream Count and Bronte’s Jane Eyre. He will conclude by arguing that effective therapy entails disambiguating ‘bottom-up’ uncertainty and division, leading to less fragmented, more complex ‘top down’ mentalised models of self and others. 

Cyber trauma/online harm and its impact on human connections – Dr Catherine Knibbs 

Catherine explores the risks of AI to client wellbeing, the role of technology in assessments and why working with children demands a deeper engagement with digital spaces. Catherine is a child and adult trauma psychotherapist, researcher and pioneer of cybertrauma theory, and CEO of Children and Tech. 

Oral presentations 

• Across the divide: the C.H.A.R.E. framework for weaving connection in a fragmented world – Dr Adaku Thelma Olatise
   
• Is it safe to talk? Creating space for difficult conversations in an increasingly polarised world – Dr Donna Gaywood and Keith Oulton
   
• Cheeky little murderous monkeys: understanding fragmentation, power and play in supervision through a developmental lens – Dr Magda Raczynska 

The challenges of working relationally – Dr Linda Finlay 

Linda’s session explores what relational psychotherapy looks like in practice, using case studies to examine the pivotal and potentially transformative moments that arise when the therapeutic relationship is used as the primary tool of therapy, while acknowledging when a non-relational approach may be more appropriate. 

The illusion of intimacy: how pornography fractures and fosters connection – Dr Paula Hall 

Paula examines the paradox of pornography and online sexual services, exploring how they are often sought as a remedy for loneliness yet frequently deepen isolation and damage relationships. She also explores whether emerging forms of digital connection, such as OnlyFans, might, in some cases, legitimately fulfil unmet intimacy needs. 

Panel discussion – Geoff Hopping, Linda Finlay, Myira Khan, Paula Hall, Pippa Donovan (panel chair and UKCP chair) and Susie Orbach
Panel discussion title: Therapy across the divide: meeting clients whose worlds look very different

Target Audience

• Psychotherapists 
• Psychotherapeutic counsellors 
• Counsellors 
• Other psychotherapeutic professionals from other professional bodies 
• Those working in mental health, supervision, ethics, neuroscience or psychology