This seminar is led by three outstanding experts in the theory and application of this work: Hilary Kennedy, a psychologist and a leading developer of Video Interaction Guidance in the UK is the author of a book on VIG, subtitled A Relationship-Based Intervention to Promote Attunement, Empathy and Wellbeing; Professor Colwyn Trevarthen at Edinburgh University has provided the central theoretical core of VIG (Primary and Secondary Intersubjectivity and Mediated learning); Dr Felicity de Zulueta is an expert in the field of interpersonal trauma and its treatment, and she will make the case for this new, more direct, therapeutic approach in the treatment of PTSD, developmental trauma and borderline personality disorder.

The psychodynamic treatment of survivors of childhood abuse and neglect usually requires some form of exposure to their past traumas, is both lengthy and costly and very painful for both patient and therapist. This presentation will outline how the experience of childhood abuse and neglect affects the developing child's attachment and results specifically in a limited capacity to attune and mentalise. This, in turn, leads to symptoms of conditions diagnosed as Developmental Trauma, Complex PTSD and Borderline Personality Disorder. She will outline how an approach that focuses on these specific deficits in inter-subjective functioning can be of the utmost therapeutic importance for healing survivors of abuse, not through a trauma focused therapy, but through the development of increasingly attuned attachments to their children, partners and parents. This is the special form of treatment and care that VIG offers.

Hilary Kennedy will follow with an introduction to Video Interaction Guidance or VIG, a therapy that promotes interactive attunement and thoughtful well-being. With the help of a video camera focusing on the good moments of human interaction, however limited they may be, its practitioners empower their clients or patients, bring a smile of delight to their faces and achieve real positive changes in themselves and in their children and their partners. Not only is this approach accessible to all those who wish to train under close supervision, but it is also evidence based, cost effective, rapid and cross culturally applicable.

In this presentation Professor ColwynTrevarthen will show how the micro-analysis of film and video to trace the expressions of intimate sympathy of feelings and playful invention of games and tasks in natural communication between affectionate parents and their infants has led to understanding of the intentions and emotional regulations of human companionship, and how they grow. The work has also demonstrated the immediate suffering of affectionless detachment, and the shame of meaninglessness in a very young child when a parent fails to respond in 'felt immediacy'. Work with a skilled Musician, Stephen Malloch, has clarified the intense motor attunement of primary communication without words, and how it contributes to shared narratives of vitality and well-being. This supports the practice of therapy by VIG