Working with Dissociative Self States
Book ticketsOrganised by:
Inner Citadel Institute
Description
In this interactive and clinically focused workshop, Dr Tanya Lecchi will draw on relational psychoanalysis, attachment theory, and affective neuroscience to explore how therapists can effectively work with trauma, dissociation, and multiple self-states. Through real-world clinical examples and theoretical insight, the session will offer practical tools for engaging with complex client presentations. There will be time for questions and discussion, encouraging reflective and experiential learning.
The idea that the self is composed of multiple self-states—each with its own unique organisation of thoughts, emotions, and beliefs—was developed by psychoanalyst Philip Bromberg. In contemporary psychodynamic practice, recognising and engaging with these internal states is key to working with the effects of relational trauma, especially where dissociation is present. Rather than viewing personality as fixed, this approach understands individuals as shifting between different ‘modes of being’ in response to relational dynamics.
In the intersubjective clinical process, the therapist will experience meeting different self-states of the client, each with a specific phenomenology, and the client will meet different parts of the therapist. Increasing awareness of different self-states can help a person with self-acceptance, compassion, and adaptability.
Speaker: Dr Tanya Lecchi
Tanya Lecchi, PGCertHE, PGDip, MSc, PsyD, PhD, BPS Chartered Psychologist, Registered Counselling and Clinical Psychologist (HCPC), Constructivist Psychotherapist, Mindfulness Teacher, Senior Research Fellow.
Tanya has extensive training in a range of approaches to therapeutic work, with a focus on psychoanalytic approaches and relational models, and has more than 15 years of experience in providing psychological assessment and treatment to adults, families, children and young people in different care settings, including the hospital environment and private practice.
As well as working privately as a clinician, Tanya is a clinical tutor on the DClinPsych at the University of Oxford and a senior research fellow within the Child Attachment and Psychological Therapies Research Unit (ChAPTRe) at the Anna Freud Centre/UCL. Her main interests include relational mindfulness, brain-to-brain synchrony, developmental trauma, and therapeutic presence.
In 2022 she founded the Inner Citadel Institute, a private clinic and training centre in Oxford, offering CPD and qualifying training courses in integrative psychotherapy.
