An Advanced Workshop in Relational Self Psychology
Can listening, talking, & doing all be equally curative?
Do you believe empathy is vitally therapeutic?
Join us for an in-depth exploration of Heinz Kohut’s legacy in the Post-Modern Era
An Advanced Workshop in Relational Self Psychology
Can listening, talking, & doing all be equally curative? Do you believe empathy is vitally therapeutic?
Join us for an in-depth exploration of Heinz Kohut’s legacy in the Post-Modern Era
Heinz Kohut’s Relational Self Psychology
In 1977, with The Restoration of the Self, Kohut presented self psychology as a comprehensive psychoanalytic theory and practice. Since that time, the most significant development in the analytic environment has been the rising profile of "two body", "relational" theories of development, psychopathology and treatment.
Kohut's own practice, considered from an open-ended perspective, lays the foundation for a relational self psychology. We view empathy, the variety of selfobject transferences and the development of psychological structure as innately bi-directional. The child/patient and the parent/therapist each contribute a subjective narrative of the present and past and, together, co-create the meaning of the patient's experience in treatment and in the world.
We offer therapists and analysts familiar with Kohut's work a means of expanding his still-radical innovations into an explicitly relational theory and clinical practice. We present a relational, nonlinear theory of clinical process within a self psychological framework. Kohut's writings and practice contain an unelaborated relational theory of clinical process which we seek to make available to psychotherapists and psychoanalysts.
We offer an experiential and didactic seminar consisting of readings and discussion combined with clinical presentations and group supervision. Classes will consist not only of presentation of our conceptual framework. In each class we will share and explore our own raw clinical work through session recordings and narrative scripts. We hope to achieve an authentically experience-near learning process.
As well we fully believe that teaching demands the same collaborative ambience as practicing our style of psychotherapy. We invite and encourage participants to risk sharing their own work in a nurturing environment.
