"How do we live and how, where, and with whom can that living be done? These are among the questions Foluke Taylor asks, and in a form redolent of so-called ‘free jazz,’ she offers a finely textured and discordant, yet melodic and evocative consideration of how spaces for living might be crafted even in the face of the horrors of normative rule. It is a stunning offering! This book will rapidly become essential reading for therapeutic trainings; for professionals in other fields of health and care; for Black Feminist (and Women of Color) and Black Studies scholarship; and for all of us who need to find more ‘living room'.”             - Gail Lewis

Book to Life - this gathering, hosted by BAATN and The Relational School, will welcome into this living room Foluke Taylor's new book, Unruly Therapeutic - Black Feminist Writings and Practices in Living Room. (Cover art work by Asili Taylor). 

Foluke Taylor will be in dialogue with  host Lara Sheehi and a panel of therapeutic thinkers and practitioners in response to her recently published book (Norton 2023).   

Foluke Taylor is a therapist*writer, working with an asterisk to signal black feminist modes of creation, space-making, and care. She is interested in facilitating emergence – in the what-is-not-yet-but-is-coming-to-be and the therapeutics that usher it in to being. Foluke is the author of How the Hiding Seek (2018) an experiment with the intermediary agency of creative writing to counter hierarchy, categorical difference, and separation. She is a troubler of borders including, but not limited to, those erected between mind/body, human/ ‘nature’, now/then, and fiction/non-fiction. After spending several years doing some adult growing up in The Gambia, Foluke returned, with her partner and children, to the city of London where she is now based.
Her forthcoming book, Unruly Therapeutic: Black Feminist Writings and Practices in Living Room, published by W.W. Norton, will be released in London and New York on February 28th 2023.

To order Unruly Therapeutic in the UK at a special member discount please follow the link below and add the code WN918 when prompted at the checkout.
UK: Unruly Therapeutic - Black Feminist Writings and Practices in Living Room

To order Unruly Therapeutic in the US at a special member discount please follow the link below and add the code WN866 when prompted at the checkout.
US: Unruly Therapeutic - Black Feminist Writings and Practices in Living Room.

The panel of speakers who will be responding to the text in conversation, in quiet contemplation, with some tunes are:

Deborah Malmud, is a Vice President at W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. and Publishing Director of Norton Professional Books imprint.

Lara Sheehi, PsyD (she/hers) teaches decolonial, liberatory and anti-oppressive theories and approaches to clinical treatment, case conceptualization, and community consultation. She is the president-elect of the Society for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology (APA Division 39), and the chair of the Teachers' Academy of the American Psychoanalytic Association. She is co-editor of Studies in Gender and Sexuality; co-editor of CounterSpace in Psychoanalysis, Culture, and Society and on the editorial board for the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. Lara is on the advisory board to the USA–Palestine Mental Health Network and Psychoanalysis for Pride. She is co-author with Stephen Sheehi of the book Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine (Routledge, 2022). Dr. Sheehi is the founding faculty director of The Psychoanalysis and the Arab World Lab.

Eugene Ellis is the author of The Race Conversation and the Director and founder of the Black, African and Asian Therapy Network, the UK’s largest independent organisation to specialise in working therapeutically with Black, African, Caribbean and South Asian people. He is also a psychotherapist with a special interest in body-orientated therapies and facilitating a dialogue around race and mental wellbeing through articles, podcasts and blog posts as well as within organisations and psychotherapy training.  BAATN’s 20th Anniversary is being celebrated this year in a 2-day Conference. 

Anthea Benjamin is a UKCP registered Integrative Arts Psychotherapist, Play Therapist, Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy Practitioner, Group Analyst and Supervisor. Anthea has worked extensively with children, adolescents, adults, families, couples, and groups for over 15 years in various settings including schools, community projects and within the NHS. She works as a therapist delivering training and consultancy in a range of professional and educational contexts. Anthea also offers therapeutic services such as self-reflective groups and team supervision both in organizations and within her private practice in south London. Anthea has a special interest in racial trauma, particularly working with racial trauma in the body.

Natasha Holmes  Founder and CEO of And Still We Rise, LLC, Dr. Holmes is a licensed psychologist, consultant, and life coach. Dr. Holmes is a psychoanalytically and trauma informed black feminist and womanist psychologist with training in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, and biofeedback-informed interventions. She works with adults providing both therapy and life coaching. Dr. Holmes serves on the steering committee for the Boston chapter of Reflective Spaces/Material Places. She has published and presented on the topics of race, class, gender, sexuality, intersectionality, intergenerational trauma, and engaging in difficult dialogues. Dr. Holmes is a recipient of the 2015 Pacific University Community Service Award and was a Multicultural Concerns Committee Scholar for the American Psychological Association’s Society for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology (2019-2020). Her favorite past times include traveling to countries in the African diaspora, trying locally-owned restaurants, and spending time with her dog (Abebi).

Elizabeth Kita, PhD, LCSW, is a clinical social worker in public/private practice in San Francisco, California. In her private practice, she works primarily with people contending with the effects of complex posttraumatic stress and vicarious traumatization; her work in a public clinic is with people who are returning to the community following lengthy periods of incarceration. She obtained her MSW from UC Berkeley and her PhD from Smith College, School for Social Work. In addition to her clinical work, Beth teaches in the MSW program at UC Berkeley, and is the Co-Chair of the Coalition for Clinical Social Work at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis. She thinks, writes, presents and consults on the intersections of race/racism, trauma, violence, incarceration and psychodynamic social work praxis in the United States.

Carnella Gordon-Brown is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with an Independent Practice in San Francisco, where she is also Adjunct Faculty in the School of Community Mental Health, California Institute of Integral Studies; as well as, an Adjunct Faculty in the School of Social Work, Smith College. She had the privilege of gaining professional experience within the San Francisco Department of Public Health’s, Community Behavioral Health Service, for almost a decade prior to her Independent Practice. Serving consumers, both as a Social Work psychotherapist, and as a Clinical Program Manager at a richly diverse Behavioral Health Non-Profit in contract with the CCSF. Ms. Gordon-Brown gravitated to membership in Division 39, and Section 9 because of her curiosity and interest in developing a deeper understanding of the analytic relationships within her therapeutic practice; as well as, in exploring and developing social justice collaborations within psychoanalytic communities. Ms. Gordon-Brown just completed serving her 2^nd year as Secretary of Div39S9. She is currently the Section 9 Representative on the Division 39 Board of Directors.

Robert Downes practices as psychotherapist, supervisor, teacher and student engaged in critical psychological study and practice drawing from a range of traditions: queer theory, black studies, critical theory, intersectional feminisms, relational psychoanalysis alongside the spiritual teachings and practices of the Diamond Approach and a 23-year long dialogue and extensive hedge school study with friend and collaborator, Foluke Taylor, with their project Otherwise. Robert is currently chair of The Relational School in London and has taught on trauma at the NAOS institute, psychotherapy trainings at Metanoia and body psychotherapy at the Minster Centre. Published work includes Listening in Colour: Creating a Meeting Place with Young People Robert Downes, Sue Lee, Foluke Taylor-Muhammad (Young People in Focus 2002); Reimagining the Space for a Therapeutic Curriculum – a Sketch, (co-authored with Foluke Taylor in Black Identities and White Therapies: Race Respect and Diversity. PCCS 2021); Queer Shame: notes on becoming an all-embracing mind in Queering Psychotherapy, Edited by Chance Czyzselska, Confer Books 2022.  

Lynne Layton, Ph.D. is a graduate and has taught and supervised at the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis. She taught Social Psychoanalysis at Pacifica Graduate Institute from 2015-2021. She is the author of Who’s That Girl? Who’s That Boy? Clinical Practice Meets Postmodern Gender Theory, and co-editor of Bringing the Plague: Toward a Postmodern Psychoanalysis and of Psychoanalysis, Class and Politics: Encounters in the Clinical Setting. From 2004-2017, she was co-editor of the journal Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society and she is currently an associate editor of Psychoanalytic Dialogues. She is a past-President of Section IX, Psychoanalysis for Social Responsibility of Division 39, APA, and on the steering committee of Reflective Spaces/Material Places-Boston, a group of psychodynamic therapists committed to community mental health and social justice. Lynne is on the organizing committee of the Grassroots Reparations Campaign and the MIP Racial Equity Task Force. She is the author of Toward a Social Psychoanalysis: Culture, Character, and Normative Unconscious Processes, winner of a 2021 book award from the American Academy and Board of Psychoanalysis.

You might also be interested in this event: Unruly Therapeutic: Black Feminist Space-Making And Living The Change We Want To Be

Lara and Stephen Sheehi’s book: Psychoanalysis Under Occupation -Practicing Resistance in Palestine

Psychoanalytic Spaces, Implicated Places – By Carnella Gordon-Brown, Natasha Holmes, Beth Kita, Lynne Layton

Anthea Benjamin and Robert Downes contributed to Queering Psychotherapy Editor : Jane C. Czyzselska

Book purchases are possible here: 

To order Unruly Therapeutic in the UK at a special member discount please follow the link below and add the code WN918 when prompted at the checkout.
UK: Unruly Therapeutic - Black Feminist Writings and Practices in Living Room

To order Unruly Therapeutic in the US at a special member discount please follow the link below and add the code WN866 when prompted at the checkout.
US: Unruly Therapeutic - Black Feminist Writings and Practices in Living Room.

If you would like to make a donation to BAATN's mentoring scheme please go to the BAATN website.  

Art work: Asili Taylor