Meet our Scholars

As 'Open Space' Editor for the journal Psychodynamic Practice I invite contact from scholars who would like to contribute to this popular feature where psychoanalytic thinking can be considered in relation to art and culture, and where subjective reflection on any aspect of professional practice or theory is welcomed. My own research interests lie in the relationship between psychodynamic thinking and poetry. I am currently Clinical Director of Catalyst Counselling (CIC) in Lowestoft, Suffolk. My other professional affiliations are BACP (Accredited member); Birkbeck Counselling Association (Full member); Association for Psychodynamic Practice and Counselling in Organisational Settings (Full member); East Anglian Psychotherapy Network.

Harriet (she/her) is a PhD researcher and Assistant Lecturer in the department of psychosocial and psychoanalytic studies at the University of Essex. Her work explores the phenomenon of erotic transference and countertransference between women in psychotherapy from a historical and contemporary perspective. Harriet enjoys networking with other researchers in similar fields, and is co-founder of the Queer Encounters research network for psychosocial researchers in gender and sexuality (www.queerencounters.org) and a member of the Association for Psychosocial Studies ECR sub-committee. She has presented papers based on her early research at conferences by the British Association for Psychotherapy and Counselling, the Association for Psychosocial Studies, and the CHASE Feminist Network, and her work is published in UK and international journals. She has volunteered for Opening Doors London, Maytree, and Mind in Tower Hamlets. She is also Research & Development Officer in the Centre for Anthropological Mental Health Research in Action in the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.

Michael O’Loughlin, is professor in the College of Education and Health Sciences and in Derner School of Psychology at Adelphi University. He is co-editor of the journal Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society. He published The Subject of Childhood in 2009 and edited Imagining Children Otherwise: Theoretical and Critical Perspectives on Childhood Subjectivity with Richard Johnson in 2010. He is co-editor with Cora Smith and Glenys Lobban of Psychodynamic Psychotherapy in Contemporary South Africa: Contexts, Theories, and Applications (2013), and in 2013 he also edited two books on children’s emotions: The uses of psychoanalysis in working with children’s emotional lives and Psychodynamic perspectives on working with children, families and schools. He edited The ethics of remembering and the consequences of forgetting: Essays on trauma, history and memory, in 2015, as well as a companion volume, co-edited with Marilyn Charles, Fragments of trauma and the social production of suffering. In 2018 he edited and wrote the introduction to Lillian Muofhe and Ndanganeni Phaswana’s book, And we forgave them: Stories from the struggle against apartheid in Venda, South Africa. His newest book (with Secil Arac-Orhun and Montana Queler) is Lives interrupted: Psychiatric narratives of struggle and resilience, to be published in 2019. He also edits a book series, Psychoanalytic Studies: Clinical, Social, and Cultural Contexts, and he is co-editor with Awad Ibrahim, Gabrielle Ivinson and Marek Tesar of a second book series, Critical Childhood & Youth Studies: Clinical, Educational, Social and Cultural Inquiry, both with Lexington Books. He has a private practice for psychotherapy and psychoanalysis on Long Island, New York. Website: michaeloloughlinphd.com Profile page: https://www.adelphi.edu/faculty/profiles/profile.php?PID=0064

Barry Richards is Professor of Political Psychology at Bournemouth University, UK. After training and working in clinical psychology he undertook a PhD in sociology and began an academic career. Prior to moving to Bournemouth in 2001, he was Professor and Head of the Department of Human Relations at the University of East London. His books include Images of Freud: Cultural Responses to Psychoanalysis (Dent, 1989), Disciplines of Delight: The Psychoanalysis of Popular Culture (Free Association Books, 1994), The Dynamics of Advertising (with I. MacRury & J. Botterill, Harwood, 2000), Emotional Governance: Politics, Media and Terror (Palgrave, 2007), What Holds us Together: Popular Culture and Social Cohesion (Karnac, 2018) and The Psychology of Politics (Routledge, 2019). He was a founding co-editor of the Sage journal Media, War and Conflict, and of the interdisciplinary online journal Free Associations. His interests are in the psychosocial dynamics of contemporary politics, especially concerning polarisation and extremism, and the broader dimensions of cultural change.

Poul Rohleder is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalytic psychotherapist, and an academic for many years. He is primarily a qualitative and inter-disciplinary researcher, in the areas of sexuality, sexual health and minoritised and stigmatised identities, and has published a number of papers in this area. He is also interested in psychotherapy research. He is on the editorial boards of the British Journal of Psychotherapy; Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy; and Psychology & Sexuality. He was the recipient of the BPC Bernard Ratigan Award for Diversity in Psychoanalysis in 2021.

I'm a historian of sixteenth-century Germany. I have written a biography of the religious reformer Martin Luther and a number of works on witchcraft in German speaking lands between 1500 and 1800. Together with the psychanalyst Daniel Pick I edited a book on Dreams and History. My work has been strongly influenced by psychoanalytic ideas.

I am a philosopher with a particular interest in topics surrounding death, mourning and eulogy, which led me into engaging with psychoanalysis. I have recently worked on psychoanalysis in relation to film, friendship, narcissism, environmental catastrophe and vitalist thought.

I work where psychoanalysis, psychosocial studies, anthropology and the medical humanities meet, at the threshold where inner life touches the social world and two people shape a third thing between them. This opened for me in research on ethnography and autoethnography in psychotherapy (Siddique, 2011), held by one idea: standing between two methods, or two versions of oneself, opens an understanding neither reaches alone. My training runs through clinical practice and anthropology, and I taught as an Associate Professor of Psychoanalytic Anthropology in Human Development in New England, USA. Since then I have written about Western culture and selfhood (2019), about a professional frame too small for the person before me (2016), and about what screens do to our presence (2024). Fact and fiction rub together on purpose, so something closer to the truth forms in the gap between us, and healing starts there. The same unease shapes how I meet difference: intersectionality as lived experience, not a stack of labels, and the question of what right any of us has to hand another a category we would not live inside ourselves. The Scottish Human Rights Defenders Fellowship gives the question weight. I support referral pathways and psychosocial care for defenders and for people at risk because they protect others, where a wrong label carries real danger and care with words becomes safety. Intercultural and intergenerational trauma travel long after the first wound, and ecocide cuts people off from land, memory and future. Healing justice asks how a person recovers and how the conditions behind the harm might change. My part lies less in restoring what was lost and more in walking beside someone as something new takes shape. Third Space Practice grew from this, a consultancy I co-founded alongside a small practice in therapy, supervision and consultancy. The third space names the ground formed between patient and therapist, and speaks too to diaspora and hybridity, to a self built from more than one culture. I chair the Values Group for the European Journal for Qualitative Research in Psychotherapy at its twentieth anniversary, and sit on the International Advisory Board for Murmurations. As an external examiner and supervisor across different academic awards, I walk with students into unmapped territory. References Siddique, S. (2024). Observing and consulting in the digital aquarium: Exploring the shifting waterscapes of online therapy. In C. Moutsou (Ed.), Dialogues between psychoanalysis and architecture: The relational space of the consulting room through the senses (pp. 162-175). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003346845 Siddique, S. (preparing for publication, 2026). What we cannot yet say: Inclusive language, epistemic humility, and the slow work of EJQRP’s Values Group. Paper written for the 20th-anniversary celebration of the European Journal for Qualitative Research in Psychotherapy. https://ejqrp.org/ Siddique, S. (forthcoming, 2027). Attachment is unfinished in the institutions we inherit. In L. Greenspan (Eds.), Supporting connection: Attachment and autism. Kanac Books, The Bowlby Centre. https://thebowlbycentre.org.uk/

Mark Stein PhD is Professor Emeritus of Leadership and Management at the University of Leicester, an Associate Lecturer in Consultation and Organisation at the Tavistock Clinic, a Career Consultant at Careers in Depth, and an executive coach and organisational consultant. He is also a founding scholar of the BPC, and has also been an Adjunct Professor and Visiting Scholar at INSEAD, Fontainebleau. He has been awarded the European Academy of Management’s iLab Prize for innovative scholarship; an Emerald Citation of Excellence; the ‘Group & Organization Management’ best paper prize; the Gavin Macfadyen Memorial Essay Prize; and the Richard Normann Prize.