Relational Depths: Complexity and Contradiction in Clinical Practice
Instructor
Dr. Michelle Harwell
Date & Time
Six consecutive Tuesdays,
February 24–March 31, 2026
12:00–1:30pm PST
Location
Hybrid Course, offered both In-Person and Zoom
In-Person at
The Alamo Psychotherapy & Training
6401 Ruby St.
Los Angeles, CA 90042
Zoom link shared to registrants before first class
CEs
9 CEs offered for qualifying professionals.
Course fee
$275 for licensed therapists
$200 for pre-licensed and students
Having grasped the fundamental shift the relational turn represents, this course invites you to slow down and dwell in the most generative and challenging concepts relational theory offers. We'll move beyond understanding that the therapeutic relationship is central to exploring how it actually works in all its messy, contradictory complexity. This course tackles questions that relational work raises but doesn't resolve: How do we theorize the analyst's desire and its impact on treatment? What happens when we fail our patients through hatred, boundary violations, or simple coasting? How has relational theory's development within predominantly white, middle-class contexts created theoretical blind spots about race and privilege? We'll examine gender and sexuality as "soft assemblies" rather than fixed categories, explore the analyst's "secret delinquencies," and grapple with moral dimensions of psychoanalytic work including guilt, responsibility, and atonement.
This course moves beyond technique into the messier territory of what actually happens in the consulting room when theory meets human complexity. We'll read closely with authors who refuse easy answers: Adrienne Harris, Muriel Dimen, Adam Phillips, Joyce Slochower, Irwin Hirsch, Jody Davies, and others—examining clinical violations and analytic failures not as occasions for shame but as sites for developing more honest theories of accountability and repair.
Expect rigorous engagement with challenging texts, sustained exploration of clinical complexity, and the kind of thinking that questions itself even as it deepens. This is for clinicians ready to examine not just their patients' conflicts but their own participation in what goes wrong and occasionally right, in treatment.
Readings will be provided by instructor prior to the start of the course.
Learning Objectives
Differentiate various forms of transference and countertransference within relational frameworks, understanding the analyst's subjective experiences as co-constructed phenomena rather than distortions.
Critically examine the analyst's use of self, distinguishing when self-disclosure, confrontation, and affective engagement serve the treatment versus the analyst's defensive needs.
Recognize and work with enactments and impasses as potentially meaningful communications and opportunities for relational repair rather than simply failures.
Understand gender and sexuality as "soft assemblies"—fluid, multiply determined, and culturally constructed—moving beyond essentialist frameworks.
Identify the analyst's "secret delinquencies," coasting behaviors, and conflicts of self-interest, developing capacity for honest self-examination about how analysts betray the work.
Grapple with moral dimensions of psychoanalytic work, including guilt, responsibility, atonement, and the tension between determinism and freedom to choose.
Critically examine race, privilege, and the implicit whiteness of relational theory, exploring how racialized gazes and "gated communities of the mind" limit relational thinking.
Understand how unconscious processes, boundaries, and the analytic frame are reconceptualized within two-person psychology.
Distinguish mutuality from symmetry, understanding mutual influence and recognition while maintaining necessary analytic asymmetry.
Theorize the encounter with otherness and difference, examining how analysts work with what remains unknown or non-relational.
Instructor Credentials
Michelle Harwell, LMFT, PsyD, is the founder of The Alamo Psychotherapy and Training. She is an expert trainer, respected speaker, and licensed therapist in trauma, development, and attachment. She is noted for her specialization in areas of development, attachment, trauma, and neuroscience, and her ability to communicate complex topics with clarity and humor. Michelle completed her doctorate in Psychoanalysis from The Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles. She received her BA in English Literature from University of Oklahoma, MA in Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary, and MS in Marriage and Family Therapy from the Fuller Graduate School of Psychology.
For more information or questions contact us at thealamoprograms@gmail.com
Refund policy: Participants seeking a refund can email us at thealamoprograms@gmail.com at least 15 days before the first meeting. Refunds requested 15 days or earlier will receive 100% refund. 14-7 days prior, participants are eligible for a 50% refund. No refund will be provided 6 days prior or less.
Course meets the qualifications for 9 hours of continuing education credit for PhD, LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCs, and/or LEPs as required by the American Psychological Association and the California Board of Behavioral Sciences.
Please note: Attendance at all class meetings is required for continuing education credits.
Course certificates awarded at the end of the course upon receipt of completed evaluation form.
The Alamo Psychotherapy and Training is a dba of Michelle Harwell Therapy. Michelle Harwell Therapy is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists and many licensed clinicians. Michelle Harwell Therapy maintains responsibility for this program and its content.
No known conflict of interest or commercial support for Michelle Harwell Therapy, The Alamo Psychotherapy and Training, or the instructor.
To request accommodations for special needs, obtain the grievance policy, report a grievance, request a refund, request more information about the course, or if you have general questions, please email us at thealamoprograms@gmail.com