Working with Dissociative Self States
with Dr Tanya Lecchi
Key Info
DATE
Sat 31 MAY 2025
14.00 – 16.00 GMT
FORMAT
Live Webinar
Recorded
LOCATION
On-Line
Zoom
FEE
Standard £45
Trainee £35
Overview
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.
Seminar Content
- Healthy multiplicity of self and dissociated personality organisation
- Attachment experiences and relational trauma
- Personal identity: “me” and “not-me” states
- Therapeutic interventions: a safe enough interpersonal environment
- Moving from dissociation to conflict
- The fusion of past, present, and future
- Clinical vignettes
Who is this training for?
This webinar is for qualified and trainee psychotherapists, counsellors and mental health professionals interested in gaining a deeper understanding of how to work with trauma, dissociation and self states in clinical practice.
Learning Objectives
- To gain an understanding of how trauma may lead to dissociative processes in the mind
- To explore the concept of Self States as a way for thinking about and working with dissociative processes
- To think about the application of Self States in clinical practice.
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.