About Café Psychologique

Café Psychologique is a space to talk about life over a drink from a psychological perspective. It builds on the philosophy of Café Scientifique to take ideas out of universities, laboratories and clinics to make them accessible to people in everyday life. Like Café Scientifique there are trained professionals to provide a resource to the café, but no lectures or seminars. Instead, ideas are dropped into the group to stimulate thought and discussion.

Café Psychologique was created by Chris Powell and after two pilots at Greenbelt Arts festival the first ongoing UK Café Psychologique was set up in January 2011 at Seven Arts in Chapel Allerton, Leeds. We meet monthly on the last Tuesday of the month, from 8 to 10 pm. A Café Psychologique was launched in January 2013 by Group Analysis North in Manchester and another in Wolverhampton in January 2014. Cafés have run in Bournemouth and in Brighton. There is also now a Café Psychologique in Liverpool, set up in 2017. More recently Café Psychologique has gone international with cafés in Sydney and Prague.

You can read how the Cafe works here and download a guide for participants here.

A list of previous subjects covered in the Café is here.

Themes in the coming months:

Café Psychologique Leeds is currently on a break…

Chris is looking for other venues in the UK to set up more Café Psychologique events.

Cafe Psychologique news

Published 16/4/20   1:32PM

Café Psychologique during Lockdown

We have had to postpone our future cafés until we are able to meet in person again. We have looked at running the cafés online but decided we could not […]

Published 19/2/20   3:46PM

Extinction Rebellion: thinking the unthinkable. Café Psychologique, 25 February

The climate crisis is upon us and Extinction Rebellion are at the forefront of pressing all of us to respond. However, the challenges are as much psychological as practical. Extinction […]