CC22 Workshop 09 - Queering the Developmental Model: (De)constructing Identities, Experience, and Building Resilience in Relational Therapy - Joseph Winn, MSW, LICSW, CST-S

The Developmental Model, or DM, is a sophisticated orientation to understanding intimate partner relationships. Organizing relational processes through the lenses of attachment theory, developmental and neuropsychology, and family systems theory the DM maintains a nonpsychopathologizing perspective while fostering interconnection through the process of differentiation. However, The DM, like many models of relational therapy, was not designed to explore the complexities and lived experiences of those with multiple intersecting identities or queer identity formation as areas of consideration and exploration in clinical practice. Building on Bader and Pearson’s work, this workshop will explore how the incorporation of intersectionality, queer, and critical theory can be woven seamlessly into the process of joining, assessment, formulation, treatment planning and intervention to expand the DM into larger and more diverse styles and structures of intimate partner relationship in clinical practice.

Learning Objectives:

1. Frame how relational therapies inadvertently, reinforce, maintain, and propagate systems of racism, heteronormativity, sexism, ageism, and ableism.

2. Have a foundational understanding of queer theory and its application to relational psychotherapy via adaptations to The Developmental Model of Relational Therapy.

3. Understand how a ‘queer ’exploration of the self of the therapist, personal and professional sexological worldviews, can expand how to better join with non-heteronormative and diverse relational systems.