Relational Cultural Therapy

Catalog description

Relational Cultural Therapy is a treatment model with feminist, relational, psychodynamic, systemic, and multicultural underpinnings. Students will learn about the underlying theory, as well as the history, of the relational cultural approach to treatment. Students will also learn how to address diagnosis, assessment, conceptualization, and intervention when working from this orientation. Additional weekly topics include specific interventions, such as moving towards connection, mutuality, the central relational paradox, strategies of (dis)connection, challenging oppression, race, and sociopolitical integration. The goal of this course is to prepare students to assess and conceptualize clients from a relational cultural perspective, as well as treatment plan and intervene with them, using power with, rather than power over. Similarly, in an attempt to decolonize this course and as a form of parallel process, students will be invited to share power with the professor in designing the syllabus requirements and classroom activities to fit their learning needs.