Glasgow Irreverence and Resistance: Place, Positioning and Therapeutic Identity

This workshop invites participants to explore how place, lived experience, and collective histories shape therapeutic identity and stance. Rooted in Glasgow, a city known for humour, people‑power and acts of resistance, the workshop uses place‑based stories as relational mirrors rather than historical instruction.

Through participatory, experiential methods, the workshop examines how irreverence and resistance show up in therapy rooms, teams and services, and how these can be understood as relational information rather than opposition or non‑compliance. The focus is on helping participants generate transferable ways of thinking about their own contexts, identities and relationships to power, authority and systems.

The workshop is designed for practitioners across settings (including CAMHS, inpatient and multi‑agency contexts) and prioritises safety, consent, and reflexivity throughout.

Abstract

This workshop is hosted by two family and systemic psychotherapists on behalf of their team of Family and Systemic Psychotherapists from NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde. Building on the conference theme Come As You Are, the workshop explores how place, identity, humour and collective resistance become part of self‑of‑the‑therapist and shape therapeutic stance, language and ethical positioning.

Using Glasgow‑based stories of civic resistance and everyday irreverence as practice metaphors, participants are invited to reflect on what they bring into the therapy room, often unintentionally, including accent, class, humour, power and relationship to authority. The focus is not on teaching local history but on using stories of “people and systems” to surface transferable questions about resistance, care, accountability and relational ethics.

The session is highly participatory and includes reflective mapping, small‑group dialogue, triad practice and live reflecting‑team conversations. Resistance is framed as relational communication with protective intent, and irreverence as an ethical stance used with consent to soften hierarchy, increase safety and expand relational possibilities.

Participants leave with practical stance statements, questions and micro‑practices that travel into clinical work, supervision, training and service conversations across diverse cultural contexts.