🕑 Date and time
[1] Thursday 19th November 2026
6pm – 9pm
[2] Monday 23rd November 2026
6pm – 9pm

📍 Venue
[1] MayDay Rooms

[2] Freud Museum London

In the first part of the workshop, we will explore the origins of the psychoanalytically informed therapeutic communities in the UK. We will work with pamphlets outlining the approach called Planned Environment Therapy, developed by the British psychoanalyst Marjorie Franklin and her collaborators in the interwar period in the UK. Together, we will think about other organisations and therapeutic communities where such methods were implemented historically, as well as about ways in which they might be implemented in the future. A common trait that the Planned Environment Therapy approach shared with the DIY psychoanalytic methods outlined in the second part of the workshop is the questioning of the hierarchical relationship between the members and staff/therapists and patients, as well as the stressing of mutual influence and responsibility. Participants will have an opportunity to engage in the discussion about different ways of practising psychoanalysis in a non-hierarchical fashion in various settings and contexts.

In the second part of the workshop, we will explore DIY psychoanalytic movements in the 1970s in the UK, including the Barefoot Psychoanalyst, the Red Collective, and Red Therapy. Feminist and liberatory social movements of the time critiqued traditional psychoanalysis and implemented new DIY psy practices that addressed how power is maintained through capitalism and political oppression. This history showcases a horizontally structured psychoanalysis that is both a clinical and political exercise, organised in a very particular manner: the hierarchy between patient and analyst is consistently challenged, reassessed, and modified. DIY methods and self-help in this framework imply mutuality and a horizontal relationship based on the exchange of skills, knowledge, and resources rather than hierarchy. In this session, we will grasp historically both hope and despair: examples of activism, psychoanalysis, and mutual care as a collective practice of experimentation.

Number of participants

Up to 25 participants

Who is it for?

Community practitioners, clinicians, trainees, researchers, organisers, activists.

How to book?

Free of charge, subject to registration via a the FREEPSY website, in October 2026.