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European positive psychology conference in Copenhagen: arriving, opening speeches & reception (first post)

I flew into Copenhagen yesterday afternoon.  I have a low key good feeling about the place.  Nice.  Clean.  Small enough not to feel overwhelmed.  Friendly.  How appropriate that Denmark, the hosts of this "5th European conference on positive psychology", have so often been ranked top in the world on life satisfaction.  See for example Christensen et al's paper "Why Danes are smug: comparative study of life satisfaction in the European Union."  I walked from Central Station to register at the conferenc

BABCP spring meeting: the conference - a highlight (fifth post)

In yesterday's post I talked generally about the presentations at the BABCP spring conference.  Today I'd like to look more closely at what for me was the day's highlight - Willem Kuyken's talk on "Compassion in mindfulness-based cognitive therapy: therapist embodiment and client change".  One reason I liked the talk a lot was that it was a good example of how painstaking research gradually adds stepping stones of knowledge across the swamp of our ignorance.  There's so much to learn.  As Ralph Sockman put it "The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder".  And it's true.  The more I know, the more questions come up about what I realize I still don't know.

BABCP spring meeting: the conference - an overview (fourth post)

Friday was the "conference" day.  A real old fruit salad of presentations.  Nearly always I find it hard to stay awake and focused during this kind of "educational event".  It does however allow a lot of speakers to throw a lot of information at the audience!  The 2007 Marinopoulos et al review on the "Effectiveness of Continuing Medical Education" commented that " ...

BABCP spring meeting: collaborative case conceptualization - cross-sectional & longitudinal (second post)

Yesterday, in "BABCP spring meeting, first post", I described my initial thoughts arriving at the "Collaborative case conceptualization" workshop.  Well, now it's Friday morning.  A very social time yesterday evening after the workshop.  Slept on a friend's couch.  It's fairly bright and early now and their kids haven't yet emerged.  How was yesterday's workshop?

BABCP spring meeting: collaborative case conceptualization - introduction (first post)

So here I am sitting in a cafe at Euston station.  I came in on the sleeper half an hour or so ago.  I slept well, which was a blessing.  I love it.  A full day's work yesterday, travel while asleep, well set up for a full day today.  Sleepers don't always work out so well, but my old tricks of aiming to be pretty tired when I get on board and using earplugs seemed effective this time.  I didn't even resort to the further favourite of having a good slug of whisky before tucking in to the rather narrow bunk.

Exeter conference day 3: positive psychology, imagery symposium, compassion lecture, & closing remarks

Third and last day of the full conference.  In fact we finish at lunch time today.  Up, then an interesting conversation about bipolar disorder at breakfast.  It's fun how I can chat with almost any of the well over 1,000 conference participants and almost certainly we'll have a whole lot of helpful shared experiences and insights to explore.  Then off to an in-conference workshop on Positive psychology based interventions.  Sadly there's a notice on the seminar room door saying the workshop has been cancelled due to illness.  Oh dear, I hope the would-be presenter Ilona Boniwell (or any ill members of her family) get well soon.  What a pity.  It's been a feature of this year's BABCP conference that a number of research papers on positive psychology interventions have begun to emerge.  So, flipping through the conference programme, presentations that appear to overlap into this area include: Developing the role of psychological wellbeing practitioners; If it feels go

Exeter conference day 1: resistant depression, thought suppression, self-help, & rumination from the horse's mouth

So we're past yesterday's workshops and into the first day of the conference proper.  Two and a half days now involving about 51 symposia, 5 panel debates, 8 open paper sessions, 2 poster sessions, and 17 keynote addresses.  I really like this Exeter campus with it's trees and little paths.  Easy to get lost, but lovely.  I also really like the many casual conversations - in coffee queues, at breakfast, with whoever's sitting beside you in a lecture.  Lots of interactions.  The conference attenders are almost universally friendly and easy to strike up chats with.  We all have the shared interest of psychotherapy, so it's very straightforward to hit the ground running when talking to complete strangers.  At the same time, I sometimes find these conferences quite lonely - great for social integration, not so great for social intima

Exeter pre-conference workshop: Ed Watkins on CBT treatment for anxious & depressive rumination

Exeter.  I really like the way that the British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies (BABCP) conferences rotate around a whole series of UK university towns.  This is the 37th BABCP Annual Conference, and I guess I've been to a dozen or more of them over the years.  They tend to follow a similar pattern - beginning with a choice of optional one day workshops, followed by two and a half days or so of conference proper.  There are about 20 one day workshops to choose from this year, and I've plumped for Ed Watkins's "CBT to treat anxious and depressive rumination" (click on the workshop title for a fuller description).

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