Maudsley Debates
The Maudsley Debates have been held at the IoP since 2000. There are three debates a year. They are all open to the public, and are well attended by service users, carers, professionals and journalists and members of the public. Topics generally focus on issues that have a direct impact on mental health services, service users and mental health professionals. Recent topics have included the role of the private sector in mental health services, the influence of the pharmaceutical industry on psychiatry, the importance of inpatient beds and putative links between creativity and mental illness.
Speakers at the Debates have included Germaine Greer, Lord David Owen, mental health tsar Louis Appleby, journalist Ben Goldacre, Baroness Mary Warnock and many others.
The Maudsley Debates are now published in the British Medical Journal (link) the week prior to each debate. They are recorded and broadcast on the IoP website, and past debates dating back to 2000 are also available as podcasts.
Events Contact
Susanna.ruparalia@kcl.ac.uk
James.Maccabe@kcl.ac.uk
Recent Maudsley Debates
Maudsley Debate: Wake up to the Unconscious?
Wednesday, 7th March 2012
Wolfson Lecture Theatre
Click here to find out more information
The Debate was the best attended of any Maudsley debate in our 12 year history. Unfortunately we had to turn away at least as many people as were able to attend, and we apologise to those who were not able to get in. This was testament to the excellent panel and also the fact that in these austere times, psychotherapy services around the country are being scaled back.
The debate opened with a striking majority in favour of psychoanalysis with 251 pro the motion, 36 abstainers and 44 against.
Prof. Peter Fonagy reviewed the evidence base for psychotherapies, noting that psychodynamic therapies fared no worse than CBT. He emphasised the convergence of psychodynamic and neuroscientific accounts of development.
Opposing the motion, Prof. Paul Salkovskis likened psychoanalytic schools to cults, criticised the absence of a symptom-based approach and some of the theories underpinning psychoanalysis.
Prof. Alessandra Lemma drew on her experience in psychoanalysis and CBT to argue for an eclectic approach, but argued that psychoanalysis provides an unrivalled framework for understanding interactional processes.
Prof Lewis Wolpert shared his personal negative experience with psychoanalysis when suffering from severe depression, and described it as a pseudoscience with no evidence to back it up. He also accused his
opponents of conflating psychodynamic therapies with psychoanalysis.
It closed with 260 in favour of the motion, 33 abstainers and 38 against.
Watch this space for more news of the Maudsley debates.