BPC event – The wisdom of sunset: retirement and ageing in the profession
Book ticketsOrganised by:
The British Psychoanalytic Council
Description
The wisdom of sunset: retirement and ageing in the profession
Date: Friday, 18 September 2026
Time: 14:00 – 16:00
Price: Registrant – £40, Trainee member – £30
Online, Zoom Meetings
This event is for BPC Registrants and Trainee members
This online event will help us to explore ethical concerns and considerations in the profession as we age, and how we can work towards a safe retirement.
Retiring, ageing or Ill health can create many challenges and opportunities. How do we grapple with these realities and navigate this important transitional time in our lives?
As per our Standards of Conduct, Practice and Ethics, a central part of providing psychoanalytic treatment is upholding public confidence in the profession and ensuring our patients remain the primary concern. This event offers us a chance to think about what retirement involves. We’re encouraged to start thinking about this well in advance of retirement so to ensure safe practice.
Salman Akhtar will help us to explore key areas and offer psychoanalytic insights, drawing upon his own experience. He’ll bring into conversation the concept of humility, our own sense of mortality and ageing as a developmental stage of life.
Salman will be joined in conversation with Christie Platt who has written on these themes, reflecting on her own experience of retiring from the profession. There will then be an opportunity for questions and reflections from the audience.
The first part of the event will be recorded and will be available to Registrants for 14 days. For trainee members the recording will be available as a free resource. It is however an invaluable experience attending the event live and participating in the reflections and Q & A.
Programme:
| 14:00 | Event opens and welcome |
| 14:05 | Presentation by Salman |
| 14:55 | Conversation with Salman and Christie |
| 15:25 | Q & A and reflections |
| 15:55 | Closing statement |
| 16:00 | Close |
About the speakers
Salman Akhtar, MD is an internationally known psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, writer, and poet based in the United States. He has published 122 authored or edited books and given lectures and workshops in over 40 countries. Dr. Akhtar has served on the editorial boards of the three most important journals of our field, namely Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, International Journal of Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Quarterly. His books have been translated in many languages, and he has received numerous professional honors, including the highly prestigious Sigourney Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychoanalysis. Recently a 10-volume set of his Selected Papers was released at a festive ceremony at the Freud House & Museum in London. Dr. Akhtar has published 19 collections of poetry and serves as a Scholar-in-Residence at the Inter-Act Thater Company in Philadelphia.
Christie Platt, PhD became a psychotherapist and psychoanalyst after searching for a meaningful profession and way of life for more than a decade. Her search led her to hitchhike from Cape Town to Cairo in her twenties, work for the Santa Fe Opera, develop a Vipassana meditation practice, and pursue a master’s degree in Holistic Studies in San Francisco. When she entered a traditional psychoanalysis, she was surprised to find that it offered the deepest understanding of herself she had encountered: she had found her profession.
She practiced psychoanalysis in Washington, DC, for more than thirty-five years, published several essays and reviews, and later joined the faculty of the New Directions writing program. When she decided to retire at the end of 2023, one phrase kept reverberating in her mind: “I don’t only want to interpret other people’s lives—I want to think my own thoughts.” Retirement has given her the freedom to read, write, travel, and dawdle, following her curiosity at her own pace.
