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Such has been Dickens’ popularity, that we see today evidence of the activity of his readers all around us. This is the read text of the Dickens-World, inexact and distinctive. What is it like and how did it come to be? Dickens’ public readings encapsulate a number of important themes. The model, or exemplar, that can take these themes forward is that of the Heritage, a term here used to describe both the physical evidence of the ‘national past’ and a treatment of it. The ‘truth’ of Heritage lies in the animated projection of the self into the arena of history, creating a performance that convinces by an affective adjacency. A Heritage Dickens brand has been growing in North Kent for some years. It is expressed through the built environment, in museums and visitor attractions, and in events such as the Charles Dickens Festivals. With its mix-and-match approach to the novels, and its cavalier attitude towards history, its rationality is not immediately apparent. However, the peculiar coherence asserted by Dickens’ work, additionally promoted by serial publication and the presence of illustrations, means that his novels are being continually spun out into the space of the world where they can grow. And be read again. The Dickens Fellowship has celebrated this kind of reading for many years. In this radical openness of the Dickens-World, each reader is compelled to seek sense in the performance of reading. This is a dynamic in which the individual is both participant and observer at the same time, ethically engaged but aesthetically active. The pleasure of encountering the determinate world of fiction in the fluid unknown of the lived life is held in joyful tension with the revelation of seeing the self fixed in the world of art.

This paper offers a preview of a forthcoming article on the world's first, universal free-to-access, evidence-based talking therapies programme to treat depression: Improving Access to Psychological Therapies. It was pioneered not in the USA, but the UK, in 2007. At one time it could have been led by psychoanalysts, but it wasn't. It was a New Deal, in fact, for CBT. But did this New Deal in 2007 also offer psychoanalysis an opportunity to renew its vitality as a discipline, after decades of being eroded by our long-term retreat into private practice? Illustrated in the film From Here to Eternity, through characters played by Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift and Frank Sinatra, this Preview shows how applied psychoanalysis can once again aspire to become a universal, genuinely popular, relevant professional discipline. How would we engage ethically with psychiatric casualties of war, for example, within an evidence-based practice framework today? A novel, brief psychoanalytic treatment for depression, Dynamic Interpersonal Therapy, was developed for use in the UK's Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme. It is recommended by NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) as cost-effective for treating depression. By engaging with evidence-based practice in this way—as Street Level Bureaucrats—we can reclaim our position at the centre of contemporary publicly funded mental health services.

Epistemic injustice has rapidly become a powerful tool for analysis of otherwise hidden social harms. Yet empirical research into how resistance to knowing and understanding can be generated and replicated in social programmes is limited. We have identified a range of subtle and not-so-subtle inflections of epistemic injustice as they play out in an intervention for people with chronic depression in receipt of disability benefits. This article describes the different ‘species’ of epistemic injustice observed and reveals how these are unintentionally produced at frontline, management, commissioning and policy levels. Most notably, there remains a privileging of clinical knowledge over other forms of knowledge, producing a ‘pathocentric epistemic complex’. This, combined with the failure of different agencies with competing ideologies to adequately understand each other, and a vicious policy context, added to the injustices already faced by people with mental health issues, generating multiple harms. This has important implications for a range of integrated care and welfare interventions – not least by drawing attention to their unintended potential for replicating epistemic injustice as an institutionalised complex. Careful evaluation and design of such programmes, applying the philosophical and epistemic resources illustrated here, can help mitigate this outcome. Further, by raising awareness of epistemic injustice among programme participants, we can generate epistemic structures that secure programme integrity locally, and promote better policy.

The performance culture of the health service means that the psychological wellbeing of staff is becoming paramount in maintaining the workforce and in sustaining psychological health and morale. A Charter for Psychological Staff Wellbeing and Resilience is introduced which puts the onus on us and on employers to make the necessary adjustments to their workplace cultures and encourage professionals – us – to break through the barrier of stigma.