One-Year Introductory Program
in Relational Studies
2023-2024
OFFERED ONLINE
We are no longer accepting applications for 2023-24.
EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM
The One-Year Introductory Program in Relational Studies is the first of its kind. We provide a unique opportunity to learn the fundamentals of relational theory and clinical practice from internationally recognized faculty, the founding, leading, and emerging voices in Relational Psychoanalysis.
In our program, we critically examine the shift from Freud's "blank screen" to the mutative impact of the relational matrix and the analytic relationship, interrogating race, class, gender, sexuality and the sociopolitical.
Our fall semester traces the historical precursors and current developments in contemporary Relational theory. We review central theoretical contributions from Freud and Ferenczi, Object Relations, Interpersonal Psychoanalysis, Self Psychology and Intersubjectivity, as well as feminist, queer theory and critical race theory.
Our spring semester focuses on important topics in clinical practice. Faculty present different conceptualizations of the therapeutic relationship and therapeutic action; intersubjectivity and the analytic third; enactment and impasse; race, class, and identity; shame; community psychoanalysis; mother-infant interaction and implications for the analytic relationship; the intergenerational transmission of trauma; Black embodiment; the analyst's self-care; psychoanalytic and Caribbean perspectives on relationality; gender; sexuality; and termination.
Throughout the year, faculty share clinical vignettes, and encourage students to bring in material from their own clinical work to illustrate the topics we are exploring.
Classes meet on Thursdays, 7-9:15pm USA EST, September 2023 through May 2024. The program is open to licensed and license-eligible mental health professionals. Classes are designed to meet the educational needs of recent postgraduates as well as more experienced clinicians who want to be introduced to the foundations of relational psychotherapy. The program is well-suited for individuals who may be considering future analytic training.
CLINICAL CONSULTATION AND MENTORING
Opportunities are available for pro bono professional mentoring and low-fee clinical consultation with faculty members from The Stephen Mitchell Relational Study Center.
The application cycle for 2023-2024 is now closed. Please consider applying next year for our 2024-25 cohort. We run open houses in the spring of each year prior to the start of the academic year and it is highly recommended that all applicants attend an open house prior to submitting their application. Application materials include a 1-2 page personal statement, your CV, an official graduate school transcript and a $25 application fee, which can be paid below.
A certificate of completion will be awarded upon successful participation in the program. Enrollment is limited, and is for the full year only. We cannot refund tuition once the year has begun.
We encourage interested folks to attend both the open house for the Introductory Program in Relational Studies and the info session for our other yearlong program, Relational Studies in Clinical Practice, in order to learn more about the differences between the two programs. Applicants may apply to only one program.
One-Year Introductory Program in Relational Studies
Scholarship Application for 2023-2024
In concert with ongoing, public, demands for naming racism, and racist attitudes in society at large, and for the implementation of racial justice in established social structures, the Stephen Mitchell Relational Study Center hopes to create more diverse, equitable, and inclusive educational opportunities that will attract and encourage students representing the BIPoC community. We hope to deepen the interests of these students in the promise of relational psychoanalysis to interrogate and to transform the systematic racism that has plagued and limited both the theoretical and clinical contributions of our profession, thereby narrowing our racial diversity both in our professional community and in our patient population. In these critical moments of our lives, the Michell Center strives toward establishing an anti-racist psychoanalytic community.
In establishing this scholarship, we, at the Mitchell Center, openly invite BIPoC-identified candidates to bring their diverse voices to our theory and practice. We anticipate benefitting from the unique understandings of human experience that these students will bring to our program and to the field in general, enabling relational psychoanalysis to play a broader and more useful role in addressing personal and interpersonal experiences of race, racism, Otherness, and the human struggles inflicted by these social constructs.
As part of your application to the Introductory Program, please include a 1-2 page statement describing why you are interested in this project and what professional and/or personal experiences play a part in this interest. In addition, in keeping with the areas of interest described above, please include the goals you hold for the future of relational psychoanalysis and for your participation in it.
For further inquiries about the scholarship and the program, contact Anita Herron, PhD and Lauren Levine, PhD. All Application materials should be submitted to Anita Herron and Lauren Levine.
Weeks 1 & 2: Introductions and Overview of Relational Concepts
Lauren Levine, PhD and Anita Herron, PhD
Week 3: Sigmund Freud
Jill Salberg, PhD
Week 4: Sandor Ferenczi
Tony Bass, PhD
Week 5: Kleinian Theory & Clinical Applications
Tom Johnson, PhD
Week 6: Winnicott & Clinical Applications
Joyce Slochower, PhD
Week 7: American Interpersonal Psychoanalysis
Margaret Black Mitchell, LCSW
Week 8: Fairbairn & Clinical Applications
Amy Schwartz Cooney, PhD
Week 9: Contemporary Self-Psychology & Intersubjectivity
Barry Magid, MD
Week 10: Inhabiting Implication
Rachel Kabasakalian-McKay, PhD
Week 11: Gender in Relational Perspectives
Stephen Hartman, PhD
Week 12: Looking Back & Looking Forward: Integration & Clinical Implications of Preceding Material
Anita Herron, PhD, & Lauren Levine, PhD
Weeks 13 & 14: Multiplicity & Dissociation in Trauma
Jody Davies, PhD
Weeks 15 & 16: Race, Class, and Identity
Melanie Suchet, PhD & Kirkland Vaughans, PhD
Week 17: Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma
Jill Salberg, PhD
Week 18: On Relationality:
Psychoanalysis & Caribbean Perspectives
Michelle Stephens, PhD
Weeks 19 & 20: Intersubjectivity & The Analytic Third
Jessica Benjamin, PhD
Week 21: Impasse and Enactment
Janine de Peyer, LCSW
Week 22: Community Psychoanalysis
Rossanna Echegoyén, LCSW
Week 23: Shame & its Clinical Implications
Lauren Levine, PhD and Anita Herron, PhD
Week 24: The Question of Verbal or Nonverbal Modes
in the Treatment of Serious Disorder
Lisa Director, PhD
Week 25: The Analytic Relationship
Tony Bass, PhD
Week 26: The Analyst's Self-Care
Adrienne Harris, PhD
Week 27: Mother-Infant Communication and the Origins of Attachment:
Implications for Adult Treatment
Beatrice Beebe, PhD
Week 28: Gender
Sandy Silverman, LCSW
Week 29: Sexuality
Avgi Saketopoulou, PhD
Week 30: Termination
Lauren Levine, PhD and Anita Herron, PhD
-The Stephen Mitchell Relational Study Center, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers #SW-0261. Total Available CE Hours for NYS-Licensed Social Workers for 2021-2022 is 64. Total Available CE Hours for NYS-Licensed Social Workers for 2022-2023 will be 72.
-CE approval for NYS-psychoanalysts was secured on 11/8/21: The Stephen Mitchell Relational Study Center, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychoanalysts #P-0055. Total available CE Hours for NYS-Licensed Psychoanalysts for 2021-22 is 50. Total available CE hours for NYS-Licensed Psychoanalysts for 2022-23 will be 72.
-CE approval for NYS-psychologists was secured on 1/7/22: The Stephen Mitchell Relational Study Center, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Psychology as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychologists #PSY-0152. Total available CE Hours for NYS-Licensed Psychologists for 2021-22 is 40. Total available CE Hours for NYS-Licensed Psychologists for 2022-23 will be 72.
Full attendance is required for CE credit. Certificates will be sent by email within 2 weeks of conclusion of the program.
EVALUATION FORM
For more information, email mrcinfo@mitchellrelationalcenter.org
A complete list of the Mitchell Center Faculty can be found here:
Faculty Information