Seminar RECORDING - Cleo Van Velsen

Service Description

A criminal act is a consequence of a state of mind with conscious and unconscious components. Using theory and clinical material I will argue that forensic psychotherapy explores the importance of the meaning of the act, which involves affective as well as cognitive understanding. Such work requires acknowledgement of the wider context, for example the criminal justice system and thus the therapeutic relationship is triadic rather than dyadic which can affect approach and technique. Cleo Van Velsen is a Consultant Psychiatrist in Forensic Psychotherapy. She is currently an adult psychiatrist, with the Family Trauma Team, at the Anna Freud Centre in London. Previously, until April 2017, she worked in the Forensic Personality Disorder Service in East London. She is co-editor of a textbook of Forensic Psychotherapy and a section editor of the Edinburgh International Encyclopaedia of Psychoanalysis. Dr van Velsen is a member of Forensic Psychiatry Chambers - a group of experienced psychiatrists providing psychiatric advice and reports to the legal profession. She is a Member of the British Institute of Psychoanalysis and secretary of the International Association for Forensic Psychotherapy.