There cannot be a whole complete human being without an integration of feeling with thinking and acting, provided by ‘doing’, arising spontaneously out of the fundamental experience of ‘being.’
― Harry Guntrip
COURSE DESCRIPTION:
The course will critically examine the central psychoanalytic tenets of the British and American Independent traditions. Starting with the seminal work of Ian Suttie and Sandor Ferenczi on the taboo against tenderness and the confusion of tongues, the course will move to the independent traditions’ unique approach to the early facilitating environment, revisions to general psychoanalytic praxis, the importance of counter-transference, the crucial need for regression, the ontological dimensions inherent in psychoanalytic contact, and the importance of feeling alive. Seminal writers such as Ronald Fairbairn, Christopher Bollas, Masud Khan, Margaret Little, Donald Winnicott, Nina Coltart, Neville Symington, Michael Balint, Patrick Casement, Juliet Hopkins, Michael Eigen, Harold Stewart, Thomas Ogden, Harry Guntrip, Robert Grossmark, and Michael Parsons will serve as guideposts in exploring the British and American Independent traditions.
AIMS AND KEY LEARNING:
(1) Exploring and understanding the primacy of the Real Relationship. Independents emphasize both the actual relational experience between infant and caregiver — and later analyst and patient — as much as the focus on phantasy alone. The key idea here is that psychic structure grows from lived relational environments, not just instinctual conflict. Emphasis is given to attachment, holding, recognition, and responsiveness. The analytic relationship is not just interpretive — it is environmental.
(2) Exploring the Environment as a Structuring Force: healthy development requires a facilitating environment. From Winnicott’s language we understand the following:
Holding
Handling
Object-presenting
Reliability of care
Psychopathology often reflects:
Environmental impingement
Misattunement
Developmental arrest
Forced premature adaptation
Disturbance is not only intrapsychic conflict — it is often environmental failure internalized.
(3) Object Relations Over Drive Theory: While not rejecting Freud, Independents shift the motivational center, that is, we seek objects, not discharge. This is most explicit in Fairbairn when he stated that libido is object-seeking, not pleasure-seeking. The Implications that will be explored:
The psyche organizes around relationships, not drives
Symptoms are often loyalty structures to early objects
(4) Exploring the Centrality of the Self. The Independents focus strongly on self-experience rather than just ego functions or drives. Themes that will be explored are –
True self / false self (Winnicott)
Schizoid compromise (Guntrip)
Basic fault (Balint)
Unthought known (Bollas)
The Clinical focus will include:
Authenticity vs compliance
Aliveness vs deadness
Spontaneity vs defensive adaptation
Epistemological vs ontological psychoanalysis
(5) Understanding Regression as Therapeutic Opportunity: Regression is not automatically pathological, and for the Independents, regression can be:
A return to unmet developmental need
A bid for missed environmental provision
A healing movement when held properly
Treatment may thus allow:
Dependence
Need expression
Non-interpretive presence
Environmental repair through analytic reliability
(6.) Understanding the importance of Play, Creativity, and Symbol Formation. The latter is very evident in writers such as Winnicott and Milner, who hold play as the birthplace of symbolization and selfhood. The latter exploration will include,
Transitional space
Transitional objects
Potential space
Creative apperception
Health is measured not only by conflict resolution, but also by the capacity to play and create meaning.
(7.) Understanding Technical Flexibility Over Orthodoxy. The Independents resist rigid technique, and they value:
Clinical responsiveness
Patient-specific pacing
Less interpretive pressure
Greater tolerance of silence and being-with
Interpretation remains important — but timing and emotional holding are often more crucial.
(8.) Pathology as Developmental Compromise: Rather than focusing on neurosis alone, the Independents explore:
Schizoid states
False self organizations
Psychic retreat
Compliance structures
Emotional withdrawal
Guntrip especially reframes schizoid conditions as self-protective withdrawal after relational trauma, not merely drive conflict.
SYLLABUS:
Week 1: Development – Self and Environment
Independents emphasize both the actual relational experience between infant and caregiver — and later analyst and patient — as much as the focus on phantasy alone. The key idea here is that psychic structure grows from lived relational environments, not just instinctual conflict. Emphasis is given to attachment, holding, recognition, and responsiveness. The analytic relationship is not just interpretive — it is environmental.
Learning points:
Conceptualize the ‘self-object’ relation as re-visioned by the British Independent Tradition.
Explore and understand the main theoretical scholars included (e.g Fairbairn, Glover etc.) and their concepts to self-object relations
Reading Selections:
Eric Rayner (1991). The Independent Mind in British Psychoanalysis. Jason Aronson. Chapter 6 (pp 117-142).
Week 2: Character and its Vicissitudes
Character plays a central role in the British Independent Tradition, with contributions as early as 1913 with Ernest Jones’s “The God Complex.” The work on character gained momentum with the contributions of Fairbairn, Balint, Winnicott, Khan, Bollas, and many others.
Learning points:
Conceptualize the concept of character and its vicissitudes in the British Independent Tradition.
Explore and understand the main theorists and their approach to the problem of character.
Reading Selections:
Eric Rayner (1991). The Independent Mind in British Psychoanalysis. Jason Aronson. Chapter 7 (pp. 145-177).
Week 3: Character, its Vicissitudes and the Early Environment- Success and Failure (Part A)
Holding and containment of the infant in the area of absolute and relative dependence, the reality of primary agonies, and the basic fault all describe developmental needs evident in the earliest stages of infantile development. Premature ego development based on cumulative trauma presents with a variety of developmental realities to be explored in this section of the course.
Learning points:
Define Padels’ notion of ‘Ego,’ Khan’s concept of cumulative trauma, and premature ego development as described by Martin James
Explore the theorists mentioned and their clinical approach to pathology.
Reading Selections:
Gregory Kohon (Ed.) (1992). The British School of Psychoanalysis. The Independent Tradition. Section 2 (pp. 83-184). Free Association Books.
Week 4: Character, its Vicissitudes and the Early Environment- Success and Failure (Part B)
As stated by Margaret Little, within an individual, both survival and the ability to find objects with which satisfying relationships can be formed depend upon the existence of a unity which comes from the mother-infant dyad.
Learning points:
Define Winnicott’s ‘Fear of Breakdown,’ Bollas’s “Transformational Object, and Little’s notion of ‘Basic Unity.’
Explore the various clinicians’ main clinical approach to psychopathology.
Reading Selections:
Gregorio Kohon (Ed.) (1992). The British School of Psychoanalysis. The Independent Tradition. Free Association Books. Section 2 (pp. 83-184).
Week 5: The Psychoanalytic Process- The Patient (Part A)
The following two lectures will focus on the patient, the developmental realities addressed in the Independent tradition, as well as the patient’s understanding of the psychoanalytic process.
Learning points:
Understand the changes in technique suggested by the main theorists of the Independent tradition.
Understand the impact of Transference Interpretations on the therapeutic process
Reading Selections:
Eric Rayner (1991). The Independent Mind in British Psychoanalysis. Jason Aronson. Chapter 8 (pp. 177-206).
Week 6: The Psychoanalytic Process- The Patient (Part B)
Working with the pre-Oedipal patient introduces conceptual and clinical changes, such as transference acting out (vs. transference) and regression. Balint, Winnicott, and American analysts such as James Masterson developed clinical approaches to address the developmental needs and analytic pressures evident in pre-Oedipal dilemmas.
Learning points:
Differentiate transference from transference acting out and its impact on therapeutic praxis.
Understand the importance and dangers of regression in the work of Winnicott and Balint, among others.
Reading Selections:
Eric Rayner (1991). The Independent Mind in British Psychoanalysis. Jason Aronson. Chapter 8 (pp. 177-206).
Gregorio Kohon (Ed.) (1992). The British School of Psychoanalysis. The Independent Tradition. Free Association Books. Section 4 (pp. 273-330).
Week 7: The Psychoanalytic Process- The Analyst’s Contribution (Part A)
Given the developmental models proposed by the Independent Tradition, clinical focus also naturally shifted to studying the idea of a two-body psychology. The unobtrusive analyst’s affective experience and contribution to the psychoanalytic process reworks the concept of countertransference, its use, and its impact on general analytic praxis.
Learning points:
Understand the Independent Traditions’ notion of counter-transference.
Understand and describe the conceptual shift from a one-person psychology (single mind) to two-person psychology.
Reading Selections:
Gregorio Kohon (Ed.) (1992). The British School of Psychoanalysis. The Independent Tradition. Free Association Books. Section 2 (pp. 185-253).
Eric Rayner (1991). The Independent Mind in British Psychoanalysis. Jason Aronson. Chapter 9 (pp. 207-222).
Week 8: The Psychoanalytic Process- The Analyst’s Contribution (Part B)
From Pearl King’s ‘The analyst’s affective response’ to Winnicott’s ‘hate in the countertransference,’ the analyst’s own personality and use of his/her own unconscious mind remains central to the Independent Tradition.
Learning points:
Understand the use of self- reflection, reverie, and self-monitoring in treating pre-Oedipal patients.
The importance of learning from the patients, as discussed by Patrick Casement
Reading Selections:
Gregorio Kohon (Ed.) (1992). The British School of Psychoanalysis. The Independent Tradition. Free Association Books. Section 2 (pp. 185-253).
Eric Rayner (1991). The Independent Mind in British Psychoanalysis. Jason Aronson. Chapter 9 (pp. 207-222).
Week 9: The Psychoanalytic Process- the Dialogues of Patient and Analyst (Part A)
In the Independent Tradition, analyst and analysand need and rely on each other, even if the relationship remains asymmetrical. It is even evident in many of the Independent’s works that the patient may also need more than one analysis to bring the child and the adult together in the analysand.
Learning points:
Understand both the analyst’s act of freedom as well as the analysand’s act of freedom as defined by Coltart and Symington.
Understand Bollas’s use of idiom and play.
Reading selections:
Eric Rayner (1991). The Independent Mind in British Psychoanalysis. Jason Aronson. Chapter 10 (pp. 223-250).
Week 10: The Psychoanalytic Process- the Dialogues of Patient and Analyst (Part B)
In the last lecture, the dialogue between patient and analyst will further be discussed through the work of Britton and Steiner, specifically in reviewing two central papers.
Learning points:
Define and understand Britton and Steiner’s approach to the overvalued idea.
Define and understand Steiner’s approach to Patient-Centered and Analyst-Centered Interpretations.
Reading Selections:
Britton, R. & Steiner, J. (1994). Interpretation: Selected Fact or Overvalued Idea? International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 75, 1069-1078.
Steiner, J. (1994). Patient-centered and analyst-centered interpretations: Some Implications of containment and countertransference. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 14, 406-422.
INSTRUCTOR’S BIO:
Loray Daws, PhD, Reg. Psych., is a Registered Clinical Psychologist with the Health Professions Council of South Africa and the College of Psychologists of British Columbia, Canada. Based on Vancouver Island, he works in full-time private practice as a psychoanalyst. He serves as a senior faculty member at the International Masterson Institute for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy in New York, and as a teaching faculty member and board member at ORI, and as assistant editor and faculty member at the Existential Psychoanalytic Institute and Society (EPIS). Dr. Daws also serves as assistant editor of the Canadian Global Journal of Health Sciences, and as evaluator and international advisory board member of the International Journal of Psychotherapy (IJP). He has published widely in the areas of psychoanalysis, daseinsanalysis, psychoanalytic psychotherapy, disorders of the self, psychosomatic difficulties, mental health ethics, and the Rorschach, with articles and book chapters appearing in journals including the International Journal of Psychotherapy, Issues in Psychoanalytic Psychology, South African Rorschach Journal, and Clinical Counselling and Contemporary Psychotherapy. Dr. Daws supervises and teaches internationally, with students and supervisees in South Africa, Canada, the United States, Australia, and Turkey. He is the author and editor of eight books on psychoanalysis and existential analysis; his ninth, Harry Guntrip: A Contemporary Introduction, is forthcoming in April 2026.
CONTINUING EDUCATION:
Object Relations Institute for Psychotherapy & Psychoanalysis 2026 ORIPP In Search of Feeling Real – The British and American Independent Traditions Explored – Loray Daws, PhD April 9, 2026 – June 11, 2026 Online
Joint Accreditation Statement
In support of improving patient care, this activity has been planned and implemented by Amedco LLC and Object Relations Institute for Psychotherapy & Psychoanalysis. Amedco LLC is jointly accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE), and the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC), to provide continuing education for the healthcare team.
Amedco Joint Accreditation #4008163.
Professions in scope for this activity are listed below.
Psychologists
This course is co-sponsored by Amedco and Object Relations Institute for Psychotherapy & Psychoanalysis. Amedco is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. Amedco maintains responsibility for this program and its content. 14.50 hours.
The following state boards accept courses from APA providers for Psychologists/Counselors: AK, AR, AZ, CA, CT, DC, DE, FL, GA, HI, IA, ID, IL, IN, IO, KS, MA (LEP ONLY), ME, MO, NC, ND, NH, NE, NJ, NM, NV, OK*, OR, PA, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, VA, WI, WY The following state boards accept courses approved by any other state for Psychologists/Counselors: CO, MD
MI: No CE requirements. *OK: Accepts APA credit for live, in-person activities but not for ethics and/or online courses.
The following state boards accept courses from APA providers for MFTs: AK, AR, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DE, FL, GA, IA, ID, IN, KS, MD, ME, MO, NE, NC, NH, NJ, NM, NV, OK*, OR, PA, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, VA, WA, WDC, WI, WY AL MFTs: Credits authorized by NBCC or any other state licensing agency will be accepted. MA MFTs: Participants can self-submit courses not approved by the MAMFT board for review. The following state boards accept courses from APA providers for Addictions Professionals: AK, AR, CO, CT, DC, DE, GA, IA, IN, KS, LA, MD, MO, MT, NC, ND, NE, NJ, NM, NY (held outside NY ONLY), OK*, OR, SC, UT, WA, WI, WY
The following state boards accept courses from APA providers for Social Workers: AK, AR, AZ, CA, CO, DE, FL, GA, ID, IN, KY, ME, MN, MO, NE, NH, NM, OR, PA, VT, WI, WY
New York Board for Social Workers (NY SW)
Amedco SW CPE is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers #0115. 14.50hours.
New York Board for Psychology (NY PSY)
Amedco is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Psychology as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychologists #PSY-0031. 14.50hours.
To receive CE certificates for the actual hours attended – please request them at the time of registration or any time prior to beginning of the conference. CE certificate fee: $25 (in addition to the registration fees). No fees charged for PD (Professional Development) certificates from ORI.
REGISTRATION AND FEES:
Tuition: $450/10-week course/trimester (can be paid in 2 installments) Registration fee: $25/course (waived for ORI’s candidates in training)
Please Note: If CEs are requested — there is an additional fee of $25.
Request weekly installments by writing to
SPECIAL SCHOLARSHIPS are available for undergraduate and graduate students, as well as for retired or disabled practitioners, or need-based or/and those who live outside of the USA.
To apply for your scholarship, please go to the registration form below.
CANCELLATION POLICY:
Full refund until the 1st session.
75% refund before the 2nd session.
50% refund before the 3rd session.
No refund from the day of the third session, but 50% of the full paid tuition will be applied to any further ORI events.
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