The Pull of the Patient (In Person)

Organised by:

Tavistock Relationships

Description

Projective identification, valency, and role responsiveness in clinical work

With Avi Shmueli & Perrine Moran (Chair)

Joseph Sandler’s concept of Role Responsiveness is deceptively familiar yet continues to reveal new depth in clinical practice. It describes the therapist’s unconscious, often involuntary tendency to respond to a patient’s projections by inhabiting a role, expressing the patient’s internal world in lived form within the analytic dyad. Sandler (1976, 1983) framed this as a way of understanding countertransference not as error, but as information: the therapist’s feelings and behaviours become a tool for discerning the patient’s unconscious communications.

A core focus of the day is role responsiveness in action. Through case material and video illustrations, participants will explore forms of role induction and how therapists navigate the tension between identification and reflective stance. Questions addressed include: How does the therapist recognise being drawn into an unconscious role? How can these experiences be used therapeutically without losing observing capacity? Special attention is given to scenarios where therapists are pulled into multiple, conflicting roles, and to manifestations of role responsiveness beyond the consulting room, including supervision.

This seminar also revisits role responsiveness as a living clinical concept, exploring its development in Sandler’s work on role, identity, and internal object relations, and its intersections with projective identification (Klein, 1946), valency (Bion, 1961), and contemporary ideas of enactment and mutual influence. While originating in individual analysis, role responsiveness is particularly relevant in couple therapy, where interlocking projections create complex unconscious fields that the therapist experiences and negotiates.

This seminar is designed for individual and couple therapists seeking to understand how their own emotional and behavioural responses emerge in the analytic encounter and how to transform these unconscious enactments into therapeutic insight.

For more information about this event, please visit https://trtogether.com/events/the-pull-of-the-patient

For more information about Tavistock Relationships, please visit https://tavistockrelationships.org

There is also an online version of this event. Please see the TR Together website for details.

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