Sports psychology Conference

This event brings one of the world’s leading sports coaches, Warren Gatland, together with psychological professionals to explore the meaning and costs of success.

Sporting success comes at high cost to sportspeople, to the coaches and staff around them and to their families. Much sports psychology draws from cognitive and behavioural perspectives, but group analysis and psychoanalysis provide distinctive ways of understanding sporting success and dealing with the difficulties it can present for individuals and teams.

This event examines:

What makes the price of success worth paying?
Where do healthy competition and rivalry end, and obsession and madness begin?
What happens if the price is too great?
What makes for sustainable success?
How can failure or retirement be survived?

This event includes:

Interview, discussion and Q& A with Warren Gatland, presentations from Ian Williamson and Martin Bhurruth, panel discussion, and large and small group discussion.

For:

Psychological therapists who work with sportspeople
Sports psychologists
Sports coaches, managers and trainers
Anyone interested in what makes sportspeople succeed

Warren Gatland is the Head Coach of the Wales Rugby Union team and the British and Irish Lions, and former New Zealand All Black. He has coached Wales to two Grand Slams and World Cup Semi-finals and also seen domestic, European and International coaching success in the UK, Ireland and New Zealand. Under him, the Welsh rugby team has gained the reputation of training harder, going to greater physical extremes, and being prepared to pay high costs in commitment to achieve its current success. His straightforward communication style and engagement with players, press and public have also won him praise off the field.

Ian Williamson is a Harley Street child and adolescent psychoanalyst. He played for and captained Blackheath Rugby Union Club for 15 years and was on the fringes of the England Team. He is the co-author of Winning at all Costs: Sporting Gods and Their Demons.

Martin Bhurruth is a group analyst employed by Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust and University of Leicester. He works in independent practice and is a racing cyclist. He is author of A Group Analytic Understanding of the Tour de France: Why the fittest rider does not necessarily win.

Don Montgomery is a group analyst and former NHS Consultant Psychiatrist in Psychotherapy. He is an enthusiastic cricketer and golfer, has played rugby in New Zealand for Otago and Auckland and was a trialist for the NZ All Blacks. Don is also a former coach for the London NZ Rugby Club and former rugby referee.

Dick Blackwell is a group analyst, family therapist and organisation consultant. He is director of the Centre for Psychotherapy and Human Rights and consultant group and family psychotherapist at the Baobab Centre for Young Survivors in Exile. He is also a former PE teacher and junior rugby league coach with a special interest in the relationship between sport and culture.