When: Monday 7th July 2025, 7:15pm – 8:45pm

Speaker: David Smith

Chaired by: Laura Chaisty

WMIP Analytic Film club are pleased to offer this event with speaker David Smith, Chair of
the Northern Ireland Institute of Human Relations, who has written a paper analysing the film The Quiet Girl.

Lyrical, compassionate, and deeply empathetic, The Quiet Girl is a keenly observed and achingly beautiful tale, which speaks to the healing potential of human relatedness that informs and underpins psychotherapy. Emotionally engaging and deeply evocative, it’s a quiet film with a lot to say about both the formative impact of neglect and the reparative possibilities associated with reliable loving care and holding. Psychologically astute in its understanding of the unspoken language of loss, the film underlines the communicative value of enactment and the nonverbal, and highlights the importance of creative resilience and the nurturing of an innate vital spark. The paper weaves together strands of diverse developmental thinking, from psychoanalysis, attachment theory, and mentalisation, drawing associatively from a deeply poetic wellspring. Consideration will be given to the fundamental importance of the provision of a facilitating environment in both therapeutic and parental contexts, reflecting on certain parallels between therapy and parenting.

DAVID SMITH
David Smith is a Belfast-based psychoanalytic psychotherapist and author, with a background in therapeutic communities. With a particular interest in the creative use of culture to inform psychoanalytic thinking and clinical practice, his published writings include essays on Michael Eigen, Marion Milner, sea swimming, and Northern Ireland, in addition to writing credits for two short  psychoanalytic films, The Clearing (2019), and The Blind Sea (2023). David has made clinical presentations in Belfast, Dublin, London, and New York City. He is Chair of the Northern Ireland Institute of Human Relations, and former Chair of the Psychoanalytic Section of the Irish Council for Psychotherapy.

FEES
£30 for Non Members
£25 for WMIP members
£20 for Students

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