Cultural Encounters: Reflecting Psychoanalytically on the Psychological Nourishment Provided by Our Experiences with the Arts and Culture

We are fed at the breast of culture, not wholly but to differing degrees. What happens to us when we listen to a song, watch a film, encounter an art object or read a piece of literature? Noreen Giffney introduced the culture-breast, a new clinical psychoanalytic concept in her book, The Culture-Breast in Psychoanalysis: Cultural Experiences and the Clinic (Routledge 2021). She developed this concept to help psychoanalysts and psychotherapists to think about the formative and enduring unconscious impact of the arts and cultural experiences on our developing subjectivities and throughout our lives. The culture-breast foregrounds the particularity of our emotional and unconscious experiences with cultural objects (e.g., film, art, literature, music); how they become interwoven with the psychological textures of our personality. While we might be aware of the short-term impact of a cultural object – how it makes us think or feel in the moment – we are usually unaware of how the ephemeral aspect of this experience stays with us and becomes part of us; the unconscious aspect of the experience, in other words.

This event invites us to talk about our experiences with cultural objects, both recent and from earlier points in our lives. We will reflect together as a group on what our encounters with, attachments to, and psychological uses of cultural objects might tell us about ourselves, and how that knowledge might inform our clinical work. The event will feature a private screening of Cultural Encounters, a new animated short film about the emotional and psychological nourishment provided by our experiences with the arts and culture. The film is underpinned by psychoanalytic thinking and is directed by Noreen Giffney, a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and writer, and Allen Fatimaharan, an illustrator and animator. Noreen and Allen will also be joined by a panel of clinical practitioners and writers who will share an important cultural experience from their own lives and reflect on its importance from psychoanalytic perspectives.

 

Cultural Encounters (2026, 5 mins 10 secs, English language) [animated short film]. Directed by Noreen Giffney and Allen Fatimaharan. Written, produced, and voiceover by Noreen Giffney. Illustrated and animated by Allen Fatimaharan. Music and sound design by Lauren Doss. Edited and produced by Nicole Murray. Funding provided by Ulster University.

Schedule
5.30 pm – 6.00 pm: Registration
6.00 pm – 6.15 pm: Welcome & opening remarks
6.15 pm – 7.30 pm: Brief informal reflections from invited panel of speakers & small-group conversations about our cultural experiences
7.30 pm – 8.00 pm: Tea & coffee break
8.00 pm – 9.00 pm: Screening & discussion of Cultural Encounters
9.00 pm: Thanks & closing remarks

 

Recommended Preparatory Reading
Noreen Giffney, ‘The Culture-Breast: A New Clinical Concept’, New Associations 35 (2021): 22–23.
https://www.bpc.org.uk/download/4788/NA-35-Autumn_2021_landscape_v1.pdf

 

Makers of the film

Dr Noreen Giffney is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist based in County Donegal on the northwest coast of Ireland. She is the author of the book, The Culture-Breast in Psychoanalysis: Cultural Experiences and the Clinic (Routledge 2021), and the author and/or editor of additional articles and books on psychoanalysis, psychosocial studies, and the arts, culture, and mental health. She is the Joint Editor-in-Chief (with Emmanuelle Smith) of New Associations psychoanalytic magazine (British Psychoanalytic Council). She is a member of the creative team (led by Jill Bennett) for World Comes Alive (fEEL 2025), the first virtual reality experience underpinned by psychoanalytic thinking. She is the Director of ‘Psychoanalysis +’ (2013– ), an international, interdisciplinary initiative that brings together clinical, theoretical, and artistic approaches to, and applications of, psychoanalysis. She lectures and conducts research at Ulster University, Belfast. In her spare time, Noreen takes opera singing lessons.
https://www.ulster.ac.uk/staff/n-giffney

Allen Fatimaharan is an award-winning illustrator and animator, based in Oxfordshire, working mainly in children’s books, editorial illustration, and educational animation, as well as comics, motion graphics, and storyboards. A recent World Book Day Illustrator, he has illustrated a number of books, including My Hair written by Hannah Lee, A Dinosaur Ate My Sister written by Pooja Puri, and Llama Out Loud written by Annabelle Sami. Some of the literary festivals he has been invited to speak/draw at include the Hay Festival, Edinburgh International Book Festival, Cheltenham Literature Festival, Discovery Children's Story Centre, and a series of events for Southbank Centre’s ‘Imagine a Story’. He has worked with museums, magazines, journals, libraries, and universities. He has been the illustrator for the British Psychoanalytic Council’s New Associations psychoanalytic magazine since 2018. In his spare time, Allen loves reading and going on long walks rambling around the countryside.
https://allenfatimaharan.com/

Nicole Murray CPsychol PsSI, CPsychol AFBPsS is a chartered counselling psychologist with twenty years’ experience working in primary care settings. She has additional training in clinical leadership and Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM). She has been working with young adults in the Student Counselling Service at Atlantic Technological University, Donegal in Ireland since 2015. She has a particular clinical interest in the influence of the body and the nervous system in clinical presentations, most notably in anxiety and depression. She has served on the Executive Committee of the Psychological Counsellors in Higher Education Ireland (PCHEI), was formerly a director of MABS North Donegal, and is a member of Connecting for Life Donegal and the HSE Partner Agency Psychosocial Group.  

Invited Speakers

Maxine Dennis is a psychoanalyst and consultant clinical psychologist who works with individuals, groups, and organisations. She is one of the original founding members of 10 Windsor Walk (psychoanalysis, psychotherapy and training in South London) and a founder/member of Black Psychoanalysts Speak. She is also a speaker and lecturer for various psychology, counselling and psychotherapy organisations in the UK and abroad and a training analyst for child psychotherapy and various adult psychotherapy trainings. She has directed and staffed on numerous Group Relations Conferences (GRCs). Maxine has a longstanding interest in art, psychoanalysis across the life span and its accessibility to a range of communities, and her clinical practice is in South London.

Helen Morgan is a Fellow of the British Psychotherapy Foundation and a training analyst and supervisor for the British Jungian Analytic Association within the BPF. Her background is in therapeutic communities with adolescents and in adult mental health. Her roles within the profession have included chairing the British Association of Psychotherapy (now part of the BPF) and the British Psychoanalytic Council, as well as being a previous editor of New Associations. She has published a number of papers and her book, The Work of Whiteness. A Psychoanalytic Perspective, was published by Routledge in May 2021.

Dr Poul Rohleder is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice in central London. For many years he was also an academic and researcher, and has published widely on topics of sexuality, marginalised identities, and mental health. He was the recipient of the British Psychoanalytic Council’s Bernard Ratigan Award for Diversity in Psychoanalysis in 2021. He has an honorary academic position at the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Essex. He is also a member of the BPC Scholars Network. His recent publications include The Oedipus Complex: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge 2025), and A Clinical Guide to Psychodynamic Psychotherapy (co-authored with Deborah Abrahams and published by Routledge in 2021). He is a senior member of the British Psychotherapy Foundation (BPF), and Chair of the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Association within the BPF.

Emmanuelle Smith is a BPC registered psychodynamic psychotherapist in private practice, working in English and French. Emmanuelle was previously a journalist, including six years at the Financial Times. She has also worked in cinemas, both front of house and as a 35mm cinema projectionist. Emmanuelle holds a BA Philosophy from the University of Southampton; an MA Journalism from Goldsmiths, University of London; Qualified Teacher Status (Canterbury Christ Church University) and a PgDip in Psychodynamic Theory and Practice from WPF Therapy, accredited by the University of Roehampton. She is the Joint Editor-in-Chief, together with Noreen Giffney, of New Associations, the magazine of the British Psychoanalytic Council.

Candida Yates is Professor Emerita at Bournemouth University and a Visiting Professor at the University of the West of England. She works with academics, clinicians, and cultural organisations to apply a psychosocial approach to culture, politics and society and has published extensively in that field. She sits on the Executive Board of the Association for Psychosocial Studies, is a Founding Scholar of the British Psychoanalytic Council and its steering group, and an Inaugural Academic Research Associate at the Freud Museum. She is Joint-Editor of the Routledge book series: Psychoanalysis and Popular Culture, and Contributing Editor on the journals Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society, and The Journal of Psychosocial Studies and an editorial board member of New Associations. Her books include Media and the Inner World, Psycho-Cultural Approaches to Emotion, Media and Popular Culture (Palgrave 2014) and The Play of Political Culture, Emotion and Identity (Palgrave 2015).

 

*If you are a psychotherapist or counsellor residing in an active conflict zone, you are eligible to attend this event free of charge (regardless of whether you are a bpf member or not). Please email events@bpf-psychotherapy to enquire about a ticket.