Resource type: Podcast
In this episode of Five Minutes With… we speak to Professor of Psychosocial Studies and Critical Psychology Bruna Seu to find out what she believes the most important conversation we can be having today is. Bruna is a Professor of Psychosocial Studies and Critical Psychology at Birkbeck, University of London and the Founding Director of the Centre for Researching and Embedding Human Rights.
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Episode transcript
00:03
Professor Melissa Butcher (MB)
What are the most important conversations we need to be having today and how can young people contribute to these conversations? These are the questions we ask our guests to answer in Five Minutes With… We briefly caught up with Professor Bruna Seu, to explore the need to bring back hope and trust, both in people and systems.
00:21
MB
Bruna is Professor of Psychosocial Studies and Critical Psychology at Birkbeck, University of London and the Founding Director of the Centre for Researching and Embedding Human Rights. She has also been practising as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist for over 30 years, so now we ask what does she think the most important conversation we can be having today is?
00:38
Professor Bruna Seu (BS)
I don’t know whether conversation is the right word, but certainly for me, the most urgent issue right now is how to bring back hope and bring back trust.
00:53
BS
Trust in institutions, trust in justice, and the institutions that are there to promote justice and fairness, and I think this is a fundamental issue because it cuts across so many others.
01:13
BS
And hope is a fundamental emotion in that it allows people to do things under the most terrible circumstances and pulls them through challenges. And I think we really need that a lot at the moment. And I think the difficulty right now is that those who promote themselves as caring for hope are actually the killers of hope.
01:35
MB
And how do you think we can engage young people in these conversations around hope and trust?
01:40
BS
Well, I think first of all, we cannot use the old ways. We are paradoxically in a new world, but also in the old world in that we’re facing the very same issues that have been going around in the history of humanity.
01:57
BS
But there is something new. There are new modes of relating that actually the young people are the experts in. And so I wouldn’t be able to, I wouldn’t have the arrogance to say we need to do this or that. I would first of all ask them how they find hope in themselves and in others.
02:16
BS
How technology could be used for that, but also trust? And the thing that I think is really important to bear in mind is that trust is always interpersonal and intersubjective. It starts between people.
02:32
BS
And how young people are keeping that up, that connectedness. It’s really what we need to know. Because once we know that, then it can be applied in so many fields and how it can sort of expand like throwing a pebble in a pond.
02:52
MB
You can keep up to date with all the work of Cumberland Lodge on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, X, and Facebook @CumberlandLodge or on our website, cumberlandlodge.ac.uk. Thank you again to Bruna for joining us and thanks for listening.