Symposium 2
Compassion, Attachment and Therapy
Graham Music and Jeremy Holmes
Bio: Dr Graham Music (PHD) is Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist at the Tavistock and
Portman Clinics and an adult psychotherapist in private practice. His publications include Nurturing
Natures (2011), Affect and Emotion (2001), and The Good Life (2014). He has a particular interest in
exploring the interface between developmental science and clinical work. Formerly Associate Clinical
Director of the Tavistock’s child and family department, he has managed a range of services working
with the aftermath of child maltreatment and neglect. He currently works clinically with forensic cases
at The Portman Clinic. He teaches, lectures and supervises on a range of trainings in Britain and abroad.
Bio: Professor Jeremy Holmes (MD FRCPsych BPC) was Consultant Psychiatrist and Psychotherapist at
UCL and N Devon. He set up and teaches on the Masters/Doctoral Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy
Training and Research Programme at Exeter University where he is visiting Professor. He has written 200
+ peer reviewed papers and chapters. His books include John Bowlby and Attachment Theory (2013
2nd Edition), The Oxford Textbook of Psychotherapy (2005), Storr’s The Art of Psychotherapy (2012),
Exploring In Security: Towards an Attachment-informed Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (2010, winner of
the 2010 Canadian Psychological Association Goethe Award), The Therapeutic Imagination: Using
Literature to Deepen Psychodynamic Understanding and Enhance Empathy (2014), & Attachments:
Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, Psychoanalysis (2014) . He was recipient of the 2009 New York Attachment
Consortium Bowlby-Ainsworth Founders Award, and the 2013 BJP Rozsika Parker Prize.
Abstracts:
GM: The Good Life: Empathy, compassion and some roots of prosocial and antisocial behaviour
Using video, I describe research illustrating the inborn human potential to be altruistic, compassionate
and prosocial. I look at how this can go wrong and why, and link this to research emanating from
attachment theory, neurobiology and understandings of trauma and neglect. The importance of
empathy is discussed, and feeling safe. I also think about why a non-compassionate mind-state might be
adaptive and the challenges this presents. I will think briefly about how these issues play out in clinical
practice with both children and adults.
JH: Compassion and anti-compassion: can psychosocial interventions shift the balance?
Building on Graham’s presentation, I shall review Feldman and EO Wilson’s research on the evolutionary
and biobehavioural underpinnings of empathy and attachment, and suggest that both Attachmentinformed social measures and clinical interventions can foster compassion, while contextualising and
limiting the reach of the inescapable forces of anti-compassion.