EVENTS | the-pa

EVENTS 2026

‘Buried Alive in the Blues: Psychotherapy and the Anthropocene’

A one-day conference organised by

The Philadelphia Association

As it is human action that is the biggest contributor to the ecological devastation we face, our planetary age has been called the Anthropocene, even the Capitalocene, situating our species as central to the forces that are decimating it, as an ‘organon of extinction’, to borrow Ray Brassier’s haunting phrase.

We are facing a ‘polycrisis’ so multifaceted that to get our bearings at all seems to be an impossible demand. It consists of the rise of technofeudalism, protests quashed through forceful government denials, anxiety levels rising faster than the ocean, which also rises and may yet drown our sorrows. As Franco Berardi puts it, the psychosphere is plunging into geopsychosis, a massive dehiscence between the human world and the still living Earth, from which, ecologically, we cannot separate ourselves.

One aspect is the huge rise in people receiving psychiatric diagnoses and seeking some form of care, mostly met with an ever-escalating use of largely discredited psychiatric drugs, which carry their own problems.

We are asking how we respond to this in our practice, our thinking, our community spaces and our creative endeavours. We are inviting contributors from multiple disciplines, including philosophy, psychotherapy, the arts and the Critical Psychiatry Network, with a focus on psychotherapeutic practices and mental health provision.

This conference aims to bring people together to foster links of solidarity, to reflect, discuss and try to find a way through - or even out - when we’re Buried Alive in the Blues.

Speakers

We are very pleased to welcome:

Timothy Morton

Anouchka Grose

Graham Stevens

Maria Grazia Turri

Robbie Lockwood

Gustavo Machado

Artemis Christinaki

Iain Strong

Del Loewenthal

Anastasios Gaitanidis