Roz Carroll

It takes a village to raise a child, and an evolving community of trainers, peers, supervisors - and many years work with clients - to make a psychotherapist. I place high value on having a plurality of relationships, experiences, theories, sources and interactions, to widen my capacity to listen deeply and carefully to what is expressed verbally and non-verbally. And to respond sensitively.

My first training as an academic was in the study of literature. I still find reading novels which take me into the inner worlds and interactions of characters is a subtle and profound way to learn about human difference and cultural complexity.

I was lucky enough to train as a Body Psychotherapist at the pioneering Chiron Centre in the early1990’s. This provided a deep foundation in working with and through the body in a psychotherapeutic context. (The history of the Centre and its teaching is described in detail here https://cdn.ahpweb.org/AHPb/self-and-society/21_03/RSEL_A_11085346_O.pdf)

In 1998 someone walked into the room with a copy of Antonio Damasio’s Descartes Error, a book which explained neuro-scientifically why the brain depends on the body to process emotion and connect a person a sense of themselves. This prompted my intensive study of neuroscience and attachment and led to my development of the Confer series Emotion and Embodiment, the first UK teaching to integrate neuroscience and an understanding of the body within a psychotherapeutic frame.

From 2005, working closely with my colleague Shoshi Asheri at The Minster Centre, the paradigm developed. We wove together an understanding of attachment, intersubjectivity, trauma, transgenerational patterns, diversity, and racialisation. Our focus with student psychotherapists was on cultivating embodied reflexivity, the capacity for moment by-moment awareness of relating.

To sustain telling the story in detail would take a while….so I will just say that I learned much from students and fellow trainers teaching at The Chiron Centre (1995-2010), The Minster Centre (2004-2020), The Bowlby Centre (2003-2012), Terapia Institute for Child Psychotherapy (2004-2014), and as a lecturer and occasional Chair for Confer (2000-2020). Jon Blend has been an inspiring co-trainer and collaborator who lives and breathes arts-based creative expressive therapeutic work. Together we developed Witnessed Improvised Diaspora Journey Enactments (WIDGE): an approach to working with therapists on embodied memories of intergenerational trauma.

I am grateful to a range of thought-and-movement-provoking supervisors, especially Nick Totton, Kathy Murphy and Yeva Feldman. Naturally my experiences of being in psychotherapy have significantly shaped my sense of the work, and have included periods with a body psychotherapist, a Tavistock-trained psychoanalytic therapist and a Jungian analyst.