As this academic year has progressed, the faculty and staff at 天美视频 have been in a season of preparation regarding how learning in graduate programs will be delivered post-pandemic. Over the next few months, we will be publishing updates regarding changes to the graduate programs as we move into the future. Two important updates at this stage are:

1. Formation is one of our core values. Much of the relational and formative experience of our students is inherent in on-campus student life and academic study. We have also come to value our learning being accessible and have been energized by new students who reside outside of the Seattle area able to access education at 天美视频 for the first time. Among the work that we have been doing is reviewing options for our graduate programs that align with our commitments to both formation and accessibility.
2. We will be filing a petition by April 1 with ATS (Association of Theological Schools), our national accrediting body, for approval to provide distance education post-pandemic and will hear word on their approval of our application by mid-to-late June. Approval of this petition will give us the opportunity to offer education to those who do not live within commuting distance in the Seattle area. We have received approval from NWCCU (Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities), our regional accreditors, to provide distance education post-pandemic. While we have not yet finalized how our programs will be offered to students learning at a distance, filing this petition to ATS is an important step in the process.

鈥淎t the core of our pedagogy, our practice, and our hope is a G-d that is with us. I believe we have been called to such a time as this, even as we face change and unknown. As we make space for gratitude in the midst of our grief, we focus in on our calling and resist losing our mission to the despair of our times. I believe there is still work for us to do鈥攅specially in this time of polarizing energies鈥攍oving G-d and neighbor through transforming relationships.鈥� said President J. Derek McNeil in a communication to students, faculty, staff, and alumni.

Departments from across the institution have worked diligently this year to make distance education and student life accessible for all. The Library staff is ensuring students are able to access resources necessary for coursework, and the IT department is available via an online help desk for students in need of technical support. Members of the Office of Students & Alumni continue providing a variety of opportunities for students and alumni to connect virtually, maintaining the school鈥檚 emphasis on building relationships and vocational formation.

鈥淚 have been grateful and inspired by the courage of our faculty and our students as we shifted to online learning out of necessity due to COVID-19. It has confirmed for us that we’re able to provide good, quality remote learning that aligns with our mission. Our values for relationships and for the integration of psychology and theology remain at the heart of this endeavor.鈥� said Dr. Misty Anne Winzenried, Associate Dean of Teaching and Learning.

The school continues to follow guidance from Washington State and King County, which has not yet provided a clear date to be able to re-open campus.

The post Update on Learning at 天美视频 Post-Pandemic appeared first on 天美视频 of Theology & Psychology.

Here, Dr. Barsness takes a deep-dive into the origins and elements of Relationally Focused Psychodynamic Therapy, its core foundations, its connection to interpersonal neurobiology, and the specific practices of relationally focused therapists.

is a method of treatment grounded in depth psychology (particularly contemporary relational psychoanalysis), interpersonal neurobiology, the dialogical philosophy of , and the sacredness of the person and of the therapeutic act.

RFPT is also an evidenced-based psychotherapy modality focused on transformational change through relationship. We hold to an understanding that we are conceived in relationship, formed in relationship, harmed in relationship, and transformed through relationship. The treatment method is designed to deepen a psychotherapist鈥檚 capacity to work directly within the therapeutic relationship as the primary means of change and to develop theoretical and practical skills in the delivery of a relationally-focused treatment.

Origins of Relationally-Focused Psychodynamic Therapy

Relationally Focused Psychodynamic Therapy is as much a meta-theory or method as it is a model, evolving from a wide range of psychoanalytic ideas and theories while offering structure and flexibility in practice.

Relational Psychoanalysis is a movement that began in the 1980s. At that time, a group of psychoanalysts from the NYU post-doctoral program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis ¹ launched what they termed a 鈥渞adical alternative鈥� to the one-person drive theory posited by earlier theoreticians (Freud, Klein, Winnicott, Kernberg, Kohut) to a two-person psychology that emphasized the dyadic, dynamic flow of the therapeutic relationship.

With the understanding that we are shaped interpersonally and that psychopathology is characterized by maladaptive, relational configurations, fundamental to relational psychoanalysis is the power of working 鈥� that is directly within the experience of the therapist/patient relationship. Relational psychoanalyst鈥檚 basic premise is that human beings are born with a primary need of relatedness and that relatedness is necessary for survival. Relatedness is the primary organizer of mental life. RFPT practices are based on relational psychoanalytic theories and on a qualitative research study conducted in 2017 that resulted in seven core disciplines. ² These seven disciplines are representative of common practices among relational analysts in conducting a psychodynamic treatment.

The Connection Between RFPT and Interpersonal Neurobiology

Working from a relationally psychodynamic perspective is also informed by research that explores the effect that relationships (including therapeutic) has on the brain and affect regulation. Researcher Alan Schore states that 鈥渞egulation theory dictates that in 鈥榟eightened鈥� affective moments, the patient鈥檚 unconscious internal working model of attachment, whether secure or insecure, is reactivated in right-lateralized implicitly-procedural memory and re-enacted in the psychotherapeutic relationships.鈥� ³

Disruptions to the continuity, presence, and availability of primary caregivers plays a central role in psychoneuropathogenesis. Thus, interpersonal relations are the building blocks of the mind, determining our attitudes, perceptions, reactions, our feelings, essentially what we might call 鈥渙ur-selves.鈥� Affective states between the right-brains of the patient and the therapist are best described as intersubjectivity. Right brain processes are reciprocally activated within the therapeutic alliance, are most often unconscious and are 鈥渇elt鈥� before they are thought.

Working from this perspective creates relational conflict/dissonance and it is the working through of the inevitable ruptures, interlocks, and enactments that shifts the chemistry of the brain. Alan Schore says, 鈥淓motions are deepened in intensity and sustained in time when they are intersubjectively shared [occurring] in moments of deep contact.鈥� ⁴ Strachey鈥檚 translation of Freud鈥檚 die seele (soul) to mind, removed the essence of Freud鈥檚 intent. The translation sucked the 鈥渟oul鈥� out of psychology, replacing it with an emphasis on the intellect/the mind.

What has been lost is an understanding of the soul as the spirit of life, the energy that animates us toward the other, the fervor in which we approach our lives. Jungian analyst James Hillman 4 describes the soul as that aspect of the human person which makes meaning possible, [deepens] events into experiences, is communicated in love, and has a religious concern. Perhaps Hillmans鈥� reference to religious concerns is a nod to the steadfast discernment of the soul as the central moral force embedded deep within a person. Though religion has done its own violence to the meaning of the soul, ultimately both psychodynamic therapy and religion have a shared teleology. Psychodynamic therapies, laboring in the realm of the soul, (whether it is acknowledged or not), are always bumping up against the sacred. Both seek meaning, depth, and purpose. Both in their own forms of confession, forgiveness, and reconciliation, seek to transform the barriers blocking a vital life of love and care for oneself and of the other.

Interpersonal neurobiology can now 鈥渢rack鈥� the power of the human connection and the transformation that occurs when two lives intersect with the other. This intersection is transacted 鈥漺hen people enter dynamic solidarity with one another鈥nd this deep bonding is contained neither in one, nor the other, nor in the sum of both, but becomes present between them鈥hrough directness and wholeness, will and grace, and the presence of mutuality.鈥� ⁵ , a well-known systematic theologian, refers to this meeting as the 鈥渋ntimate indwelling and complete interpenetration of the persons in one another鈥nd that by their eternal love, the divine person exists so intimately with one another, for one another and in one another that they constitute themselves in their unique, incomparable and complete unity.鈥� ⁶

Practices of a Relationally Focused Therapist

In these deep moments of psychological contact, we are on the threshold of the sacred. Relational psychoanalysis, current research conducted in interpersonal neurobiology, the sacred texts of religion and the philosophy of Martin Buber, direct the RFPT mind towards the potency of assisting our patients towards health and well-being. Each advances the notion of therapeutic change through the act of authenticity. By paying attention to affective states, unconscious arousals, and replications within the therapeutic encounter, the patient’s internal world is reexperienced and reimagined.

No two therapists work in the same fashion and, given the uniqueness of each relationship and the working through of what happens in that relationship, it must be so. These are universal practices that can serve as a helpful 鈥渕ap鈥� for conducting our practices while acknowledging and appreciating the intuitive, organic nature of our work, including:

• How we position ourselves (therapeutic intent and therapeutic stance)
• How we reflect (deep listening)
• Attending to the there and then/here and now (patterning/linking)
• How we engage (repetition/working through and courageous speech/disciplined spontaneity)

These primary influencers of relationally-focused psychodynamic work are intended to deepen a psychotherapist鈥檚 capacity to work directly within the therapeutic dyad, understanding the therapeutic relationship as the primary instrument towards change.

Learn more about the Relationally-Focused Psychodynamic Therapy Post-Graduate Certificate here.

References

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