This self-access class examines how identity, intersectionality, and social polarisation influence people’s internal experiences and the difficulties they bring into therapy. Dr Dwight Turner explores how wider cultural and political tensions — including divisions linked to Brexit, COVID-19, lockdowns, community fragmentation, and ideological conflict — can echo within the emotional struggles Service Users experience.
The presentation highlights how privilege, marginalisation, and internal conflicts may appear within therapy, emphasising thoughtful reflection and awareness of the external pressures shaping people’s emotional worlds.
This presentation from the conference is now offered as a COSRT self-access class and is a recording from COSRT’s Winter Conference 2025.
Learning Outcomes
- Describe how political and social division influences people’s internal experiences.
- Understand intersectional ideas relevant to therapeutic work.
- Recognise how identity-based tensions, privilege, and marginalisation may appear in therapy.
- Reflect on the therapist’s own position and responses.
- Consider ways of supporting Service Users navigating internal and external conflict.
Presentation Structure
- The Polarised Social Context
- Internal Conflicts and External Tensions
- Intersectionality in Therapeutic Work
- Clinical Reflections and Emotional Processes
- Supporting Integration and Understanding
About the Trainer
Dr Dwight Turner
Dr Dwight Turner is Course Leader on the Humanistic Psychotherapy Course at the University of Brighton, and a psychotherapist and supervisor in private practice.
Dr Turner is the author of Decolonising Counselling and Psychotherapy: Depoliticised pathways towards intersectional practice (2025), The Psychology of Supremacy (2023), and Intersections of Privilege and Otherness in Counselling and Psychotherapy (2021). All are published by Routledge.
