THERAPEUTIC ALLIANCE
10 seminars on Wednesday evenings
The working alliance considered from a range of contemporary theoretical and clinical approaches.
The working alliance considered from a range of contemporary theoretical and clinical approaches.
FULL SEMINAR PROGRAMME
WEDNESDAY APRIL 9 2008
Once More with Feeling? The therapeutic alliance in the light of relational psychoanalysis
Joseph Schwartz
Joseph Schwartz
I want to explore whether the concept of the therapeutic alliance, most centrally formulated by the Los Angeles classical psychoanalyst Ralph Greenson in the 1960s and taken up by the Sandlers in the UK, can be usefully recycled in light of the developments of relational psychoanalysis and attachment theory over the past two decades. In particular I will address whether the idea of the therapeutic alliance inevitably retains unhelpful aspects of the traditional one-person psychology of classical psychoanalysis.
WEDNESDAY APRIL 16 2008
Compassion in therapeutic relationships
Paul Gilbert
Paul Gilbert
Mammals and especially human beings have evolved complex attachment systems. These attachment systems are activated through caring interactions. This talk will explore some of the systems by which caring behaviour can soothe the recipients. We will then look at how these mechanisms are played out in the therapeutic relationship and form the basis for a compassionate relationship.
WEDNESDAY APRIL 23 2008
An invitation to look into the mind of the Other
Jane Haberlin
Jane Haberlin
In my paper I will discuss therapeutic alliance in terms of the mutual attempt to co-construct the 'analytic third', that intersubjective mental space that emerges from our capacity to surrender, not in submission or compliance, but rather in a letting go of self and the ability to take in the other's point of view or reality. Co-construction of this third between the two analytic subjectivities allows for mutual recognition, respect, compassion and search for truth. The inevitability and clinical usefulness of ruptures in the therapeutic alliance will also be explored.
WEDNESDAY APRIL 30 2008
It's all about you and nothing to do with you: the risks and benefits of threats to the therapeutic alliance
Diana Shmukler
Diana Shmukler
The presentation will focus on the inevitability of enactments and their subsequent threats to the therapy, while they also present opportunities for transformational change. Genuine mistakes, clashes and ruptures cause great upset and distress and can even put viable, ongoing and well functioning work at risk of surviving. I will argue by means of case material and from an integrative/relational perspective how these moments can be capitalised to great benefi t in the work. I will also consider the parameters and conditions necessary to avert the negative consequences.
WEDNESDAY MAY 7 2008
Change in the consulting-room: neuroscience, attachment, trauma and the therapeutic alliance
Margaret Wilkinson
Margaret Wilkinson
How does therapeutic change occur in the brain-mind? What insight does neuroscience offer to our understanding of this process? From a clinical perspective I explore the interactive experience that occurs in the successful therapeutic alliance and enables the development of the emotional scaffolding of mind. I emphasise the primitive levels at which relational development needs to occur for patients with early relational trauma to experience a change in underlying patterns of feeling, being and behaving that persist.
WEDNESDAY MAY 14 2008
Relatedness and the therapeutic alliance
Ernesto Spinelli
Ernesto Spinelli
In practising existential psychotherapy we think of the therapeutic alliance as an expression of a broader intersubjective, foundational "grounding" of world-relatedness. Within this context, the alliance can be discussed from the perspective of three distinct phases, each one of which has practical issues and implications for the maintenance and development of the alliance. This seminar will focus upon a descriptive exploration of these three phases.
WEDNESDAY MAY 21 2008
It's a Real Relationship: attachment perspectives on therapeutic alliances
Kate White
Kate White
How does an understanding of the attachment states of mind of both the therapist and client help us think about our mutual engagement in the therapeutic relationship? How are our therapeutic alliances forged and sustained in the midst of insecurity and fear? We will explore the cycles of rupture and repair that characterise the risk of connection and the fear of being known which lie at the heart of therapeutic relationships.
WEDNESDAY MAY 28 2008
Rupture and repair in supervision
Mike Worrall
Mike Worrall
Like any relationship, supervision is prone to rupture. We'll look this evening at how rupture is inevitable in relationship, and at how, if we are willing to embrace the process, inevitable rupture offers the potential for repair, growth and transformation. We'll look at the cost to the supervisor of working with these processes, and at the benefi ts to supervisor, supervisee and clients.
WEDNESDAY JUNE 4 2008
Trust, uncertainty, and therapeutic alliance in trauma-centred treatment
Doris Brothers will discuss the reason that trust is essential in the analytic process: namely, that treatment occurs in a world in which nothing, least of all the endurance of selfhood, is certain. She finds that efforts to come to terms with this existential uncertainty, which is experienced as unendurable in the context of trauma, shapes much that occurs between patients and analysts.
WEDNESDAY JUNE 11 2008
The Analyst and the Working Alliance
Heinrich Deserno
Heinrich Deserno
I will argue that the analyst forms the working alliance with no-one other than himself. Thus runs the central tenet in my critique of Ralph Greenson's classical alliance concept. This is of course in no sense an attempt to foreground the person of the analyst as such. Rather, the therapeutic alliance contains the conventional aspects of psychoanalytic therapy like contract, technique, and others. My radical view of the psychoanalytic working alliance tries to open up and strengthen the necessary dialectical relation between method and technique for the progression of the psychoanalytic process.
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