Annual Jafar Kareem Memorial Lecture: Interpreting Lennox Thomas

Annual Jafar Kareem Memorial Lecture: Interpreting Lennox Thomas — Securing a Sense of Identity

🗓 Thursday 4th December | 🕖 7.00–8.30 pm (Online)
🎤 Speaker: Charles Brown

Lennox Thomas was a central figure in the development of Nafsiyat Intercultural Therapy Centre, building on the vision of Jafar Kareem while expanding the conceptual reach of intercultural therapy. His leadership and teaching shaped the work of many therapists who passed through Nafsiyat and other settings. He held the post of Clinical Director and was instrumental in integrating psychoanalytic approaches with intercultural frameworks.

This presentation offers participants an opportunity to bring their clinical insights to reflections on the work of Lennox Thomas, who brought critical perspectives to bear on a profession where ‘whiteness’ dominated the space and people of colour could not exist and be ‘normal’ within the psychotherapy agenda.Having observed how social and attitudinal factors impacted the lives of people who do not identify as white, and the effect that these differences could have on their psychological development in a society where they were treated as outsiders. He recognised that these individuals followed different development pathways compared to the ‘standard orthodox child’ often referenced in textbooks and child development schemas.

Charles Brown will explore Thomas’s concept of ‘identification by proxy’ (1995), which attends to the social context inhabited by people of colour within a discriminatory society. The proxy self formulation opens a discussion that foregrounds the importance of identity and intercultural understanding and leaves an inclusive legacy for future generations of psychoanalytic and psychodynamic intercultural therapists.

About Nafsiyat:

Nafsiyat Intercultural Therapy Centre is a pioneering organisation dedicated to providing psychotherapy that recognises and responds to the social and cultural contexts in which people live. With a particular commitment to supporting people of colour and marginalised communities, Nafsiyat foregrounds issues of identity, belonging, and systemic inequality. Its intercultural approach has created an inclusive legacy within psychoanalytic and psychodynamic practice, shaping future generations of therapists to work with cultural awareness and sensitivity. (www.nafsiyat.org.uk)

About the Speaker:
Charles Brown is a Fellow at the UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP) and the British Association for Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Supervisors (BAPPS). A psychoanalytic psychotherapist, trainer, and supervisor, his work focuses on identity and addiction. A Nafsiyat workshop leader, he is also a member of the Guild of Psychotherapists and the College of Psychoanalysts UK, and maintains an independent practice in South London.