Dr Music will examine how early experiences, secure attachments, and safe environments can lead to more altruistic, prosocial, and empathic ways of acting while stress, trauma, and neglect can lead to more aggression, callousness, and antisocial behaviour. He will examine what current research and clinical understandings can teach us about living a Good Life. Why might we, and the children or adults, act selfishly and antisocially? Are we born selfish or cooperative and what might sway us in either direction? How do both stress-inducing family contexts and competitive social and economic environments undermine our capacity to feel safe, experience well-being, or care much for ourselves or others? How does a consumerist, materialist ethos, as well as the challenges posed by the cyber-age and increasingly speeded up lives have an impact? This talk will draw on lessons from developmental science, neurobiology, psychoanalysis, and mindfulness to examine the links between feeling good and being good, and generally ponder the Good Life.

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Dr Graham Music, PhD is a Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist at the Tavistock Centre and an adult Psychotherapist in private practice. Formerly Associate Clinical Director of the Tavistock Clinic’s Child and Family Department, he works at the Portman as a forensic psychotherapist, and his clinical experience has for decades been mainly with trauma. He has developed and managed a range of services working with the aftermath of child maltreatment and neglect. He supervises and teaches nationally and internationally, and has a particular interest in linking cutting-edge developmental findings with therapeutic practice. His publications include Nurturing Children: From Trauma to Hope (2019), Nurturing Natures: (2016, 2010), Affect and Emotion (2001), The Good Life: (2014) and the forthcoming Resparking (2022), as well as co-editing From Trauma to Harming Others (2021), and shortly his new book Resparking will come out shortly.