Space to explore:
spirituality • pastoral supervision • psychoanalysis
• spiritual direction
• pastoral supervision
• psychoanalysis
• pastoral supervision
• psychoanalysis
About
I’m Mark Argent, a member of the United Reformed Church, with a close link with the Free Community Church in Singapore. My initial training, sitting in the space between spiritual direction and psychoanalysis was at Osterley Retreats between 1997 and Osterley’s closure in 2004. That was followed by an extended period working at St Beuno’s Centre of Ignatian Spirituality 2006–2014, where I started working with psychoanalytic supervision and did a supervision training at Loyola Hall. That work involved seeing people daily for the duration of retreats including the full Ignatian Spiritual Exercises and running various themed group programmes.
Until its closure in 2016 I was co-facilitating more-or-less annual Exploring Spiritual Direction events at the URC’s Windermere Centre with David Parkin. Experiential events have included directing a working conference Exploring Spirituality in the Reformed Tradition at Westminster College, Cambridge, and another and co-directed with Fiddy Abraham looking at reactions to Marcus Borg’s The Heart of Christianity at Launde Abbey. Online experiential events include being on the consultancy team for The India Conference in 2021 (run by Sukrut in India) and a Reflective Group for People in Ministry in the context of Covid, working with Lynsey Heselgrave.
Professional development work has taken me in the direction of psychoanalytically-informed approaches to organisations and society. I’m a member of the International Society for Psychoanalytic Study of Organisation, and a Professional Partner of the Tavistock Institute for Human Relations and have significant experience in group work, coming out of the group relations world. I am currently doing further advanced training with the Site for Contemporary Psychoanalysis and am a member of the Association of Pastoral Supervisors and Educators, of Spiritual Directors International of the national URC::Spirituality core group and on the Ely Diocese list of spiritual directors.
My thinking also owes a great deal to friends from the Far East and time spent there.