HPSY.RU / .. / .. / Forum - presented by Martina Leeven "Fleeing in the Face of It: thoughts and dialogue on our inescapable reminder of being toward death - our changing appearance"

What do you see when you look in the mirror? Do you dare to engage with the meaning of your changing appearance or do you 'flee in the face of it'?

What looks back at us, changing day by day, is our very own existential limitation - the embodied manifestation of our being-towards-death as reflected in our ageing appearance. Today's appearance and youth obsessed western society pushes this reality away at all cost, and existential writing has had surprisingly little to say about it. What is our collective fleeing from ageing about? Does an acceptance of ageing hold an opportunity for a more authentic being?

Martina is an existential counselling psychologist, trained at Regents College. She began her training with a strong interest in older people, but has since been working in the area of appearance and in particular, disfigurement. She is currently a therapist at the national charity, Changing Faces. She wrote her dissertation on women's ageing appearance, and is a member of the Centre for Appearance Research based at the University of the West of England in Bristol.

This Forum will be at the October Gallery, 24 Old Gloucester Street, London, WC1N. Forum begins at 7pm.