Three Associating: Adventures in Relational Psychoanalytic Supervision

Gill Straker, Rachael Burton, Andrew Geeves
Three Associating: Adventures in Relational Psychoanalytic Supervision

Three Associating is a podcast that offers the listener a peek behind the closed doors of therapists working within a relational psychoanalytic model. Join Rachael and Andrew as they explore with their supervisor Gill how their own hidden feelings and motivations influence the therapeutic process and affect their patients. In each episode, a relational dilemma arising in the context of work with a fictitious patient is explored. While reasons of confidentiality and privacy mean that none of the patients we discuss are real, the relational dynamics are. www.threeassociating.com

  1. DEC 7

    Episode 7: The Sound of Silence

    In this session, Andrew is confused by why Amber, an anorexic adolescent woman, is so silent in session when she chats easily with other team members. Andrew is sidetracked both by his anxiety about his position in the team and his anxiety that he is getting it wrong.  In supervision, Andrew comes to understand that his different treatment by Amber may signal something positive including  Amber's emerging desires for male attention. He explores how safety for both him and Amber may lie in introducing material that can cut across the intensity of the therapeutic couple while, paradoxically and at the same time, detaching himself from his persecutory anxieties about the team which interfere with his focus on Amber.

    23 min

  2. NOV 24

    Episode 6: Internet Connection or Intimate Connection?

    In this episode, Andrew finds himself conflicted. His talented young patient reflects a contemporary set of values and ideas that Andrew wishes to honour, but he has a nagging sense that Jaxx is running ahead of himself. He is caught between admiring Jaxx’s resilience and wondering about the cost. But Andrew is not sure if his worry reflects a more conservative world view in himself or real potential danger for Jaxx.   In the session Andrew recognises that he needs to move to a both/and position, validating Jaxx's achievements while holding his vulnerabilities and being less cautious about moving closer.

    27 min

  3. OCT 13

    Episode 5: Trauma and Magic Powers Part II

    In this episode, Rachael⁠ revisits the complex feelings that child sexual abuse evoke in both patient and therapist. Rachael discovers that her wish for magic powers has not disappeared and has reappeared in a different form. Beyond this, Rachael contacts both the magic and the terror of the therapeutic journey itself and the loneliness this sometimes produces in the therapist. Both Gill and Rachael conclude that while trauma itself is to be regretted, the person that we emerge as in the wake of trauma is to be embraced as a crucial and valuable aspect of our autobiography.

    29 min

  4. SEP 1

    Episode 4: When Two Become One: The Seduction of Merger

    In this episode, Andrew surprises himself by the degree to which his patient has led him into dissociating from his own inner subjectivity and into merging with the patient's agenda. This agenda, in turn, reflects the patient's merged state with his partner so that “two become one”. Andrew is able to use supervision to take up a third position and to take a perspective which frees him to use his own thoughts, thereby helping the patient shape his own subjectivity independently of his partner.

    25 min

  5. JUL 14

    Episode 3: Erotic Countertransference: The Taboo of Being Turned On

    In this episode, Rachael approaches the taboo of sexual attraction in therapy and its tendency to lead to dysregulation, involuntary self-disclosure, and shame.  Rachael's feelings unduly amplify her self-consciousness, complicating the ongoing therapeutic task of understanding her and her patient's contribution to the co-construction of their relational field. After engaging Rachael in a discussion of the reality/fantasy divide and the difference between voluntary and involuntary self disclosure, Gill invites a recourse to theory both as a stabilising force in the choppy waters of the embodied and as a way of retaining the boundaries of supervision versus therapy.

    27 min

  6. JUN 4

    Episode 2: Too Good for the 'Hood

    In this episode it becomes clear that Andrew and his patient Manuela are unconsciously co-constructing a dynamic in which Manuela is under pressure to be cultured and cool in order to maintain Andrew's admiration, while Andrew is under pressure to take up a lesser position. As the supervision unfolds, Andrew becomes aware of how his envy is at the heart of this dynamic and how he is projecting certain longings onto Manuela. He becomes aware this leads to both an underplaying of Manuela’s limits and vulnerabilities and the overplaying of his own and keeps her stuck in a relational impasse. In the session, Andrew moves to a more balanced perception of Manuela’s plight and a greater recognition of his own contribution to her relational dynamic.

    25 min

  7. FEB 18

    Episode 1: The Therapist's Revenge: Trading Porn for Prayer Cards

    Rachael comes to realise that feeling provoked by the patient’s apparent self-centredness in enactments that occur in the waiting room and in the session has led to a wish to be provocative in return. She first enjoys then tussles with revenge fantasies. By talking through these fantasies and owning their pleasure, she recognises their meaning, and this opens up multiple perspectives.

    26 min

  8. 12/05/2023

    Episode 8: XOXO Gossip Girl; Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?

    In this episode, Rachael encounters a worthy adversary in the elegant and charismatic Iris. Beguiled by Iris charm and colourful stories Rachael can’t help feeling seduced.  However she also feels manipulated and is  irritated with herself and Iris.  Nevertheless she still feels the pull to captivation in the session. In the end, Rachael ⁠ realises that the most worthy adversary that she has is herself and in freeing herself contemplates helping Iris to be both her charismatic and her vulnerable self.

    30 min
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4.9
out of 5
105 Ratings

About

Three Associating is a podcast that offers the listener a peek behind the closed doors of therapists working within a relational psychoanalytic model. Join Rachael and Andrew as they explore with their supervisor Gill how their own hidden feelings and motivations influence the therapeutic process and affect their patients. In each episode, a relational dilemma arising in the context of work with a fictitious patient is explored. While reasons of confidentiality and privacy mean that none of the patients we discuss are real, the relational dynamics are. www.threeassociating.com

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