This workshop shall examine the limitations of contemporary Psychosexual and Relationship Therapy (PRT/RT) practice. It focuses specifically on the clinical and ethical challenges that arise when practitioners are trained within homogeneous training and supervision environments, where a tacit “one size fits all” model continues to dominate.
Such environments are frequently characterised by the systemic absence of men, Black and other minoritised colleagues, and voices from non-Global North communities and cultures. This absence is not neutral. As highlighted by Mamood Ahmad (2025), these conditions significantly increase the likelihood of chronic and enduring empathic failure within therapeutic profession —failure that is structural rather than individual and therefore cannot be resolved through goodwill alone.
Session outline:
1. Re-thinking the Architecture of Therapy
Participants will explore the urgent need for a fundamentally new therapeutic architecture, including within PRT and RT. This section examines inherited models, assumptions, and power dynamics, asking what must be dismantled, redesigned, or newly built for therapy to remain relevant, ethical, and genuinely responsive in a pluralistic world.
2. Reviewing the Current Skill Set
The second part critically examines the existing skills practitioners are trained to use (in line with Scoped tier C) Rather than adding superficial “diversity tools”, this section asks harder questions: Which skills are no longer fit for purpose? Which are missing entirely? Participants will be supported to identify gaps between intention and impact, and to consider what meaningful clinical competence looks like in contexts shaped by difference, marginalisation, and historical inequity.
This workshop does not offer comfort. It offers clarity, challenge, and direction—inviting practitioners to move beyond inherited sameness and towards a practice capable of meeting the complexity of the clients and communities they serve.
About the Trainer
Bernd Leygraf is a Consultant Psychotherapist specialising in sex and relationship therapy with 40 years experience in the field.
International trainer in sex and relationships in SE Asia, India, ME, Africa and many countries touched by colonialism. He is course director of a Middlesex University accredited PRT, the longest established in the UK and CEO of the Naos Institute
Bernd runs one of only two COSRT accredited trainings in Relationship Therapy and the only psychosexual and relationship training in the UK leading directly to the Accredited Register (PSA).