Alliance Bridge Program

The Alliance Bridge Program

Supporting the community through psychoanalytic consultation

The Bridge Program is a partnership between the Northwest Alliance for Psychoanalytic Study and local community health organizations. This partnership strives to reach diverse therapist and client populations, widening the reach of psychoanalytic ideas into places where clients have traditionally lacked access to long-term, depth-oriented treatment. Seasoned clinicians bring their area of expertise to consultation and offer a framework for thinking analytically and conceptualizing experiences between therapists and clients. In the service of understanding psychological phenomenon and process within a larger psychosocial context, a secondary objective of the Bridge Program is to hold in mind issues of race, class and intersectional identities while considering treatment plans, objectives, and goals.

The Bridge Program provides up to ten hours of psychoanalytic consultation per year, per organization, as determined between the consultant and the agency. Participants will also have the opportunity to earn continuing education for each hour of consultation provided. The Program is made possible through an Alliance Special Initiatives Grant, and seeks to uphold the following objectives:

To collectively deepen the understanding of psychoanalytic concepts and their practical usefulness in a variety of settings
To promote therapists’ reﬂective capacity to improve resilience, communication, and treatment effectiveness
To inﬂuence the overall culture in healthcare settings to support thoughtful, trauma-informed treatment that considers intersecting identities and the larger sociopolitical context
To address issues of race and racism in psychoanalytic education and treatment, responding to the need for greater equity and inclusion in historically white-dominant therapeutic spaces

The Bridge Program offers a variety of in-service consultation topics as a starting place for conversation and psychoanalytic framework. Additional topics may be arranged with individual consultants to meet the needs and interests of the agency.

Email Bridge@nwaps.org for more information about the Alliance Bridge Program and to hold a pre-consultation conversation.

Current Alliance Consultants

Danny Gellersen MSW, LICSW

AVAILABLE IN-SERVICE TOPICS:

Dismantling Clinician Anxieties Treating “Personality Disordered” Clients
The Basic Tenants of Brief Dynamic Therapy

AVAILABLE FOR CONSULTATION?

Yes

Katherine Knowlton PhD

AVAILABLE IN-SERVICE TOPICS:

Reaching an “Other”: Growing Therapeutic Relationships and The Use Balint Groups
Loosening Up The Therapist and The Therapeutic Relationship Without Stretching Boundaries
Remoralizing a Demoralized Situation:
How to Do Some Good For Yourself and Others