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Session One: An Introduction to Relational Psychoanalysis: Foundations and Fresh Perspectives with Courtney Slater, PhD
Tuesday, March 31, 7:00 – 8:45 PM EST
This first session will provide a basic overview of the fundamental theoretical and clinical perspectives that make a relational approach distinct from other psychoanalytic perspectives. One element that will be prioritized is a discussion of the inevitable presence of the analyst’s subjectivity and its impact and usefulness in clinical process – yet not at the expense of clients’ subjectivities.
Learning Objectives:
By the end of the session, participants will be able to:
- 1) List and describe two distinctive characteristics of relational psychoanalysis
- 2) Define the “therapist’s subjectivity” and describe its importance in relational psychoanalysis
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Courtney Slater grew up in upstate New York with her mother and two sisters. As a kid she was interested in the ultimate questions in life and found sanctuary in religion and spirituality--specifically at that time her mother took her to a local American Baptist church with a great youth group. In college she was drawn to psychoanalytic ways of thinking and she found a psychoanalytic program for graduate school in clinical psychology. She graduated from the Rosemead School of Psychology, where she studied the intersection of Christian theology and clinical psychology from professors who were mostly trained in Classical Psychoanalysis and Object Relations theories. She is interested in the lived experiences of people, especially those who feel like they don't belong or are on the margins. Over the years, she has come to appreciate the margins - not only as painful places, but also as important places of perspective, creativity, and vitality. Currently, Courtney teaches at Widener University as an Associate Professor at the Institute for Graduate Clinical Psychology and she has a private practice. Outside of work Courtney enjoys being with her family, engaging in spiritual practices, weightlifting, and dancing.
Session Two: Operationalizing the Implicit: Relational Psychoanalysis and Infancy Research with Sebastian Wheeler, LCSW
Tuesday, April 7, 7:00 – 8:45 PM EST
The impact of early development has always been a central focus of psychoanalysis, yet Freud and his contemporaries were disinterested in the direct study and treatment of children. Building on the contributions of both child analysis and the study of attachment, the last 45 years of infancy research has provided fundamental corrections and expansions to our understanding of relational development; shedding new light on how the out-of-awareness relational processes shape our patients, our clinical relationships, and ourselves.
Learning Objectives:
By the end of the session, participants will be able to:
- 1) List 3 stages of infancy development described within psychoanalysis
- 2) List at least 3 core themes of infancy research that relate to relational psychotherapy and psychoanalysis throughout the lifespan
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Sebastian Wheeler, LCSW is a clinician and supervisor at GKSW/Crystal Group Associates. He works with children, adolescents, adults, and families and uses a mix of family systems and psychoanalytic approaches with particular attention to development throughout the lifespan. Previously, he provided in-home family therapy to families in crisis as a family-based provider. He is a candidate in both the child and family and adult analytic training programs at IRPP and in 2025 completed a 6 month course in early relational health from the UMass Chan Medical School.
Session Three: Relational Conceptions of the Unconscious and Clinical Enactment with Michael Long, PsyD
Tuesday, April 14, 7:00 – 8:45 PM EST
This session will examines how relational psychoanalysis rethinks the unconscious as an emergent, co-constructed, and contextually embedded process rather than a repository of repressed contents. Emphasis will be placed on unformulated experience, dissociation understood as shifts in self-experience, and enactment as a central mode through which unconscious life is expressed within the analytic relationship. The unit will explore how these perspectives reshape clinical listening, interpretation, and the analyst’s participation in the therapeutic process.
Learning Objectives:
By the end of this session, participants will be able to:
- 1) List at least one difference each between classical and relational conceptions of the unconscious regarding repression, unformulated experience and dissociation
- 2) Define the concept of enactment and describe how enactments can be utilized in an analytic treatment
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Michael T. Long, PsyD, is a licensed psychologist in Philadelphia. He works with adults from varied backgrounds and provides psychoanalytically informed psychotherapy. He also facilitates a harm reduction psychotherapy group. His clinical experience includes work with trauma, substance use, LGBTQIA+ individuals, and people navigating health-related challenges.
Session Four: On the Analyst’s Subjectivity and Self Disclosures with David Harvey, LCSW
Tuesday, April 21, 7:00 – 8:45 PM EST
Relational theory and technique are distinguished from the Classical in part by its emphasis on the analyst's subjectivity and its impact within the therapeutic dyad. This section will explore what is meant by the analyst's subjectivity. We will also explore how the relational attentiveness to the analyst's subjectivity underscores the potential harms of "neutralizing" the analyst's self. Our discussion of subjectivity will focus itself on the analyst's self-disclosures. We will explore the varied types of self-disclosure that the analyst might make, attending to the potential clinical utilities and injuries of its practice.
Learning Objectives:
By the end of the session, participants will be able to:
- 1) List and describe at least one harm attendant in therapists’ “neutralizing” their subjectivity
- 2) List at least two forms of therapist self-disclosure and their potential benefit in a relational treatment
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David Harvey, LCSW, MSS, MA is a licensed clinical social worker and therapist in private practice. He previously worked with various agencies in Philadelphia, focusing on the interconnected issues of addiction, harm reduction, and LGBTQ+ mental health. Harvey's scholarly work on identity, sexuality, and media has been published in multiple peer-reviewed journals and he teaches at the Bryn Mawr Graduate School of Social Work and Research. Currently, Harvey is an advanced psychoanalytic candidate at the Institute of Relational Psychoanalysis of Philadelphia and serves on the board of the Philadelphia Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology.
Session Five: Sociopolitical Relationality: There Is No Such Thing As A Dyad with Aleisa Myles, PsyD
Tuesday, April 28, 7:00 – 8:45 PM EST
Our experiences of trust/betrayal, intimacy/disconnection, and comradeship/alienation - intersubjectivity itself - dwell with us in a sociopolitical "field". In this unit, we will explore together how the sociopolitical lives always within and between us, patterning our subjectivities and relationships, and being patterned by them. Participants will be invited to share case material, through which we will welcome what is sociopolitically unconscious to become more conscious and movable. Through our readings, we will highlight sociopolitical orientation, or the posture that each of us holds in relation to our existing and possible world/s, as an essential dimension of analytic practice; and also consider sociopolitical friction and disorientation as an active edge of changemaking.
Learning Objectives:
By the end of the session, participants will be able to:
- 1) Describe at least one limit and one potential in the way we perceive and approach the “presenting problem”
- 2) Identify at least two ways of recognizing sociopolitical orientation and disorientation in a therapeutic dyad
Aleisa Myles, PsyD, is a psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist in private practice on the Lenape land now called Philadelphia. She completed adult and child/family analytic training at the Institute for Relational Psychoanalysis of Philadelphia. Her writings have focused on the typically unrecognized oppression of children and young people, known as childism, and the power structure of magnarchy based on distance from vulnerability. She is serving as president of the Philadelphia Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology from 2024-26 and has previously engaged for over a decade as a grassroots environmental and social justice community organizer.
Peer-reviewed scholarship that supports the content of this program:
Session One References
Barsness, R. E. (2021). Therapeutic practices in relational psychoanalysis: A qualitative study. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 38(1), 22–30. https://doi.org/10.1037/pap0000319
Conci, M., & Cassullo, G. (2023). From psychoanalytic ego psychology to relational psychoanalysis: A historical and clinical perspective. International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 32(1), 1–3. https://doi.org/10.1080/0803706X.2023.2186002
Safran, J. D. (2018). Relational psychoanalysis: Key principles, assumptions, and the mechanism of change. Issues in Psychoanalytic Psychology, 40, 23–28.
Session Two References
Boldrini, T., Nazzaro, M. P., Damiani, R., Genova, F., Gazzillo, F., & Lingiardi, V. (2018). Mentalization as a predictor of psychoanalytic outcome: An empirical study of transcribed psychoanalytic sessions through computerized text analysis of reflective functioning. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 35(2), 196–204.
Reck, C., Hagl, M., & Ohlrich, R. (2023). From interactive regulation in infancy to relationship-focused interventions. Psychopathology, 56(1–2), 64–74. https://doi.org/10.1159/000525679
Wachtel, P. L. (2017). The relationality of everyday life: The unfinished journey of relational psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 27(5), 503–521. https://doi.org/10.1080/10481885.2017.1355673
Session Three References
Allen, J. G. (2024). What we do unwittingly. Psychiatry: Interpersonal and Biological Processes, 87(3), 211–215. https://doi.org/10.1080/00332747.2024.2385085
Plakun, E. M. (2025). Psychodynamic therapy and the “difficult” patient. Psychiatric Times, 42(7), SR12–SR14.
Stern, D. B. (2019). Unformulated experience and the relational turn. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 39(2), 127–135. https://doi.org/10.1080/07351690.2019.1561090
Session Four References
Kuchuck, S. (2018). The analyst’s subjectivity: On the impact of inadvertent, deliberate, and silent disclosure. Psychoanalytic Perspectives, 15(3), 265–274. https://doi.org/10.1080/1551806X.2018.1498228
McGleughlin, J. (2020). The analyst’s necessary nonsovereignty and the generative power of the negative. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 30(2), 123–138. https://doi.org/10.1080/10481885.2020.1727185
Ziv-Beiman, S., & Golan, S. (2016). Therapeutic self-disclosure in integrative psychotherapy: When is this a clinical error? Psychotherapy, 53(3), 273–277. https://doi.org/10.1037/pst0000077
Session Five References
Aibel, M. (2018). The personal is political is psychoanalytic: Politics in the consulting room. Psychoanalytic Perspectives, 15(1), 64–101. https://doi.org/10.1080/1551806X.2018.1396130
Gaztambide, D. J. (2026). The meaning of a home: Decolonizing the therapeutic dyad in developmental theory, research, and clinical practice. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 43(1), 51–63. https://doi.org/10.1037/pap0000553
Gaztambide, D. J. (2025). Un(thinking) race, resisting knowing, restoring the social third. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 35(6), 779–789. https://doi.org/10.1080/10481885.2025.2574573
Solomonov, N., & Barber, J. P. (2019). Conducting psychotherapy in the Trump era: Therapists’ perspectives on political self-disclosure, the therapeutic alliance, and politics in the therapy room. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 75(9), 1508–1518. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.22801
Soreanu, R., & Minozzo, A. (2024). Manifesto for infrastructural thinking: Living with psychoanalysis in a glitch. Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society, 29(3), 323–342. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41282-024-00444-6
