On Being and Becoming: Thinking Historical Trauma
Through Language and the Body

Thando Njovane (South Africa) in discussion with Peter Nevins
(The Site for Contemporary Psychoanalysis)

CHAIR:
Fiona Yaron-Field (Guild of Psychotherapists)

Saturday 22 November 2025

3:00pm – 5:30pm BST 

Online seminar £12 – £24  Book here

This is the latest in a series of seminars on Decolonising Psychoanalysis, organised by the Race and Culture Committee of the Guild of Psychotherapists. The series is intended to open up conversations about psychoanalysis by initiating dialogues between psychotherapists and academics whose work has a direct bearing on issues of racial injustice, prejudice and marginalisation. In this seminar, Thando Njovane draws on philosophy, psychoanalysis and South African literature, to analyse the persistence of destructive and entrenched patterns of Being and relating in post-Apartheid South Africa.

For further event details, speakers’ biographies and booking options please see the Event Listing. 

Bursaries available on a pay-what-you-can basis for those who would not be able to attend without financial support.

CPD certificates available on request.

Surplus income from the seminars goes to support the low-cost clinic of the Guild of Psychotherapists.

Organised by the Race and Culture Committee of the Guild of Psychotherapists, London.

Speakers’ Biographies

Dr Thando Njovane is a Senior Lecturer and Andrew Mellon scholar at Rhodes University, South Africa, where she teaches literature. She is currently working on her first monograph titled Trauma Theory and Childhoods in African Fiction, a project for which she has recently been awarded the prestigious Iso Lomso fellowship by the Stellenbosch Institute of Advanced Study (STIAS). Her current research interests include postcolonialisms, trauma theory, psychoanalysis, ghosts, and intimacy.

Njovane, who is also the early career coordinator at the Rhodes African Studies Center, has published in top international journals such as the Journal of Commonwealth Literature and Research in African Literatures, and has contributed to edited collections published by established publishers like Cambridge University Press, Brill, and Wits University Press, to name but a few.

Peter Nevins has been practising as a Psychoanalyst in private practice since 1995. He holds a Doctorate in Clinical Science (Psychotherapy) from the University of Kent and he teaches across several psychoanalytic training organisations.

Between 1988 and 2020, he worked extensively within London’s mental health services and was a founding member of the Site for Contemporary Psychoanalysis. From 2001 until December 2020, he served as Chief Executive Officer of Islington Mind, a London-based mental health charity.

In addition to his psychoanalytic work, he is an accredited Alternative Dispute Resolution Mediator with experience in both organisational mediation and the mediation of therapeutic impasses between patients and clinicians.

His current areas of interest lie at the intersection of phenomenology and psychoanalysis, with a particular focus on how the disciplines of philosophy and psychology can deepen and extend our understanding and practice of psychoanalytic work.