Noelle trained at Somerset Counselling Centre before continuing her training at BCPC. She works in private practice and the NHS as well as teaching on diploma courses in Totnes. Why are we ambivalent about the things that are most important to us? Ambivalence is a paradox. Its presence means something is in transition and yet its quivering presence keeps us hovering. We are stuck and in motion. The double-sided nature of ambivalence means we are protected and hurt simultaneously. These are some of the themes Noelle hopes to think about and share further.

Richard Mizen is a member of the Society of Analytical Psychology.  His experience spans adult mental health, forensic psychiatry and child protection.  He is co-author of the book On Aggression & Violence (Palgrave Macmillan 2003).  His talk will address the common confusion between the two terms and will consider how failure to integrate aggression, as part of the ordinary affective repertoire, can result in violence, both psychological and behavioural.

Edith Hargreaves is a Training Analyst of the British Psychoanalytic Society with a particular interest in teaching psychoanalytic ideas and supervising clinical work. Edith will be exploring her work with highly educated and successful people who have difficulty experiencing joy and forming intimate relationships. Edith will relate this to bearing separateness and mourning loss, and being unable to transform painful anxieties and conflicts symbolically into creative and sustaining sublimations.

Ben Fox is the father of two boys and his anxiety to be a good Dad led him to research parenting and men's issues. In 2004 he set up his own group for men and established a website www.Manhood.org.uk to encourage a national interest in such groups. He found that psychodynamic therapy was enormously useful. Ben is the governor of a local primary school and a partner in a local business.