Presenter: Valerie Sinason, PhD
Presenter Bio: Valerie Sinason PhD is President of the Institute for Psychotherapy and Disability and Founder, Patron/Past Director of the Clinic for Dissociative Studies in London, U.K. 

She has four decades of experience in the trauma and disability field in the UK Posts have included consultant psychotherapist at the Tavistock Clinic (1979-99) and St George’s Hospital Medical School (1993-2006) and for two decades she was a visiting Hon Consultant Psychoanalyst at the Cape Town Child Guidance Clinic, 1990-2020. She has maintained an international profile with her lectures and writing and in 1998 was made Life Member of POMS, for services to Swedish Intellectual Disability  Services. She has published , edited and co-edited 25 books and several hundred papers and chapters on trauma and disability . She is a London University post graduate with a literature degree and a double distinction in her teaching diploma  (1969).

She is a member of the Association of Child Psychotherapists (retired), the UKCP ( United Kingdom  Council on Psychotherapy), Institute of Psychoanalysis, Bowlby Centre and ESTD. She is a Fellow of the Institute for Psychotherapy and Disability, where she was awarded the first Valerie Sinason award , a Fellow of the ISSTD where she was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award (2016) and a Frank W Putnam award (2022) . She was the recipient of a Festschrift( 2019), Intellectual Disability and Psychotherapy; The Theories, Practice and Influence of Valerie Sinason edited by Alan Corbett,  Routledge, London and a member of the British Psychoanalytic Council where she was a recipient of the Excellence and Innovation award (2021).

She is trained in teaching,(1969) in child and adolescent psychotherapy (1983) and adult Psychoanalysis (1999) and maintains a strong interest in organized extreme abuse, disability and dissociation and writing poetry and novels.