Three Associating: Adventures in Relational Psychoanalytic Supervision
Three Associating is a podcast that offers the listener a peek behind the closed doors of therapists working within a relational psychoanalytic model. Join Rachael and Andrew as they explore with their supervisor Gill how their own hidden feelings and motivations influence the therapeutic process and affect their patients. In each episode, a relational dilemma arising in the context of work with a fictitious patient is explored. While reasons of confidentiality and privacy mean that none of the patients we discuss are real, the relational dynamics are. www.threeassociating.com
S5 E3 · Wed, April 16, 2025
Episode 3: Unexpected Twists and Turns: Prayer Cards Part 2
In this rich episode, Rachael grapples with a variety of complex nuanced issues such as an unexpected ending and the feat of balancing the therapist's self interest with the patient’s interest in a number of domains, including payment. Also on the table were inner conflicts around masochism and self care and the potential risks and rewards of playfulness and creativity and the inherent pleasures and perils that they engender. At the end of the session, Rachael and Gill concluded that whatever side we finally land on in the resolution of inner conflict, it is essential to own the outcome and to stay authentic and transparent.
S5 E2 · Sun, March 02, 2025
Episode 2: Us Vs Them Thinking - A Silent Threat To Your Mental Health
In this episode, Andrew struggles with the power of splitting and projection as they close down thought, generate anger, and diminish compassion. He gets caught in these dynamics and struggles with his own reactivity as anger and defensive intellectualisation masquerading as thinking emerge in the therapy space. Through supervision, Andrew realises the fear and existential threat that underpins these dynamics. He moves from a wish to confront binaries and from an appeal to both/and thinking to understanding the feelings underpinning either/or thinking, projection, and othering. Andrew comes to see how his own responses have been subverted by this extremely pressuring dynamic and returns to the capacity to go meta to himself and to the transference/counter-transference matrix
S5 E1 · Sun, February 02, 2025
Episode 1: How To Spot Narcissism - Red Flags and Dating Hacks
In this episode, Rachael works with a young woman who is desperate to find the right man and equally desperate to find a failsafe way to make a good choice. A prolific consumer of social media, she scours all the information about red flags that are meant to help someone spot a narcissist (e.g. lovebombing, gaslighting, self-centredness). She appeals to Rachael to assist in this endeavour of constructing and applying lists of red flags. Rachael tries to shift the agenda to fostering agency, but to no avail. In supervision, Gill asks a series of questions which leads Rachael to her own conclusion that her own narcissism constellated around the “need to know”. A common dynamic in therapists is implicated in this therapeutic impasse.
S4 E8 · Sun, December 22, 2024
Episode 8: Hooked On A Feeling: Traumatophilia and Traumatophobia
In this episode, Rachael is conflicted about performance artist Petra's wish for Rachael to watch a video of Petra engaging in human suspension. Rachael has an immediate countertransference feeling that she doesn’t want to be “implicated". Rachael does not understand this feeling as she is aware of the mastery involved in this activity and also Petra's pride in her ability. However, Petra also speaks of her engagement in this practice as a means of regulating her affect. Rachael comes to understand that her reaction to Petra’s request was connected to wanting not to judge Petra’s engagement in human suspension and also wanting not to turn a blind eye to the trauma that could be "implicated” in Petra’s activity. Thus, Rachael comes to understand her own reaction as pointing to the need to integrate both the positives and the problems involved in Petra’s chosen mode of mastery and self soothing and to engage with both traumatophilia and traumatophobia (Saketopoulou, 2023).
S4 E7 · Sat, December 07, 2024
Episode 7: The Sound of Silence
In this session, Andrew is confused by why Amber, an anorexic adolescent woman, is so silent in session when she chats easily with other team members. Andrew is sidetracked both by his anxiety about his position in the team and his anxiety that he is getting it wrong. In supervision, Andrew comes to understand that his different treatment by Amber may signal something positive including Amber's emerging desires for male attention. He explores how safety for both him and Amber may lie in introducing material that can cut across the intensity of the therapeutic couple while, paradoxically and at the same time, detaching himself from his persecutory anxieties about the team which interfere with his focus on Amber.
S4 E6 · Sun, November 24, 2024
Episode 6: Internet Connection or Intimate Connection?
In this episode, Andrew finds himself conflicted. His talented young patient reflects a contemporary set of values and ideas that Andrew wishes to honour, but he has a nagging sense that Jaxx is running ahead of himself. He is caught between admiring Jaxx’s resilience and wondering about the cost. But Andrew is not sure if his worry reflects a more conservative world view in himself or real potential danger for Jaxx. In the session Andrew recognises that he needs to move to a both/and position, validating Jaxx's achievements while holding his vulnerabilities and being less cautious about moving closer.
S4 E5 · Sun, October 13, 2024
Episode 5: Trauma and Magic Powers Part II
In this episode, Rachael revisits the complex feelings that child sexual abuse evoke in both patient and therapist. Rachael discovers that her wish for magic powers has not disappeared and has reappeared in a different form. Beyond this, Rachael contacts both the magic and the terror of the therapeutic journey itself and the loneliness this sometimes produces in the therapist. Both Gill and Rachael conclude that while trauma itself is to be regretted, the person that we emerge as in the wake of trauma is to be embraced as a crucial and valuable aspect of our autobiography.
Sun, September 01, 2024
Episode 4: When Two Become One: The Seduction of Merger
In this episode, Andrew surprises himself by the degree to which his patient has led him into dissociating from his own inner subjectivity and into merging with the patient's agenda. This agenda, in turn, reflects the patient's merged state with his partner so that “two become one”. Andrew is able to use supervision to take up a third position and to take a perspective which frees him to use his own thoughts, thereby helping the patient shape his own subjectivity independently of his partner.
S4 E3 · Sun, July 14, 2024
Episode 3: Erotic Countertransference: The Taboo of Being Turned On
In this episode, Rachael approaches the taboo of sexual attraction in therapy and its tendency to lead to dysregulation, involuntary self-disclosure, and shame. Rachael's feelings unduly amplify her self-consciousness, complicating the ongoing therapeutic task of understanding her and her patient's contribution to the co-construction of their relational field. After engaging Rachael in a discussion of the reality/fantasy divide and the difference between voluntary and involuntary self disclosure, Gill invites a recourse to theory both as a stabilising force in the choppy waters of the embodied and as a way of retaining the boundaries of supervision versus therapy.
S4 E2 · Tue, June 04, 2024
Episode 2: Too Good for the 'Hood
In this episode it becomes clear that Andrew and his patient Manuela are unconsciously co-constructing a dynamic in which Manuela is under pressure to be cultured and cool in order to maintain Andrew's admiration, while Andrew is under pressure to take up a lesser position. As the supervision unfolds, Andrew becomes aware of how his envy is at the heart of this dynamic and how he is projecting certain longings onto Manuela. He becomes aware this leads to both an underplaying of Manuela’s limits and vulnerabilities and the overplaying of his own and keeps her stuck in a relational impasse. In the session, Andrew moves to a more balanced perception of Manuela’s plight and a greater recognition of his own contribution to her relational dynamic.
S4 E1 · Sun, February 18, 2024
Episode 1: The Therapist's Revenge: Trading Porn for Prayer Cards
Rachael comes to realise that feeling provoked by the patient’s apparent self-centredness in enactments that occur in the waiting room and in the session has led to a wish to be provocative in return. She first enjoys then tussles with revenge fantasies. By talking through these fantasies and owning their pleasure, she recognises their meaning, and this opens up multiple perspectives.
S3 E8 · Tue, December 05, 2023
Episode 8: XOXO Gossip Girl; Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?
In this episode, Rachael encounters a worthy adversary in the elegant and charismatic Iris. Beguiled by Iris charm and colourful stories Rachael can’t help feeling seduced. However she also feels manipulated and is irritated with herself and Iris. Nevertheless she still feels the pull to captivation in the session. In the end, Rachael realises that the most worthy adversary that she has is herself and in freeing herself contemplates helping Iris to be both her charismatic and her vulnerable self.
S3 E7 · Mon, November 06, 2023
Episode 7: Sex Talk
In this episode, Andrew struggles to disrupt his patient's rigid self-control, ever mindful of a psychotic potential that could be unleashed given the patient's history of experiencing a psychotic episode. Andrew experiences both the seductions of a meeting of minds and the potential tyranny of his patient's mind that fears the body, its appetites, and affects.
S3 E6 · Mon, October 02, 2023
Episode 6: An Education on Trauma: The Obliteration of Thinking and Feeling
In this episode, Rachael is provoked by a disrupted patient. Power struggles and challenges emerge in the room as Rachael struggles to think and not enact in the face of the patient's enactments. Technical questions of courageous speech versus disruptive challenges are engaged as Rachael shows great integrity and courage in taking in the challenges of supervision to come to an expanded understanding of trauma.
S3 E5 · Sun, September 03, 2023
Episode 5: SHUSH! When Talking Is The Problem and Not The Cure
In this episode, Andy is frustratingly blocked by his patient's difficulty in listening and by her incessant talking, both of which reveal parts of her self and mask others. Ironically, Andy himself has to surrender into listening rather than talking and into only having recognised small snippets of his thoughts, if any at all. He becomes aware of the deprivation under his patient's excess and how this fuels the discrepancy between her subjective reality and his experience of her.
S3 E4 · Mon, May 22, 2023
Episode 4: Dine In or Take Away Therapy
In this episode, we encounter Rachael's struggle with an avoidant patient who is fearful of closeness. Rachael is conflicted between her desire for the patient to make progress and to stay present to the work and to 'dine in', and her awareness that, for his desire to move forward to emerge, she needs to take a step back and let him continue with 'take away' for a while longer.
S3 E3 · Mon, May 01, 2023
Episode 3: Dank Memes, TikTok, and Unprocessed Grief
In this episode, Andrew finds himself challenging his patient's perception of him as an internet dinosaur, too old to be familiar with youth culture. In engaging this challenge, Andrew finds both a way to connect with his patient, but also a way to collude to avoid an underlying grief which needs to be addressed.
S3 E2 · Mon, April 10, 2023
Episode 2: The Dangers of Addiction: Help Me, Help You
In this episode, Rachael struggles with exasperation and grief as she writes a court report for a patient who has relapsed. To be both truthful and helpful is no mean feat, and nor is accepting the limits of her responsibility while still grappling with how to move the therapy forward.
S3 E1 · Sun, March 19, 2023
Episode 1: Neurodiversity: Lost in Translation
In this episode, Andrew , Gill , and Rachael explore the hot topic of neurodiversity. We conclude that whatever the political and ideological controversies, our main focus needs to be on the person in the room.
S2 E8 · Sun, July 10, 2022
Episode 8: When The 'Not Me' Is Actually Not Me
Misrecognition and the projection of others are a perennial problem, but perhaps more so for those who are queer identified. But whoever is at the receiving end of mistaken identity, the effects are very unpleasant as Gill , Andrew , and Rachael come to know first hand in this episode. www.threeassociating.com
S2 E7 · Mon, June 13, 2022
Episode 7: Decent Or Indecent Exposure
In this episode, Gill , Rachael , and Andrew grapple with feelings of exposure as Rachael becomes aware that her private and professional lives have collided, but the exact nature of this is unknown. www.threeassociating.com
S2 E6 · Mon, May 23, 2022
Episode 6: The Therapist's Destructive Fantasy
Rachael , Gill , and Andrew work together to understand how the presence of subtle power dynamics, unconsciously enacted in the therapeutic relationship, are signalled by the therapist’s destructive fantasy. www.threeassociating.com
S2 E5 · Sun, April 24, 2022
Episode 5: "Help! I'm A Borderline Nightmare And I Need Reining In"
In this episode, Gill , Andrew , and Rachael are confronted with how intense feelings can muddy the waters and produce confusion about which feelings belong to the therapist and which to the patient. www.threeassociating.com
S2 E4 · Sat, March 26, 2022
Episode 4: Protection And Its Perils
In this episode, Rachael , Andrew , and Gill discuss the proverbial notion that the road to hell is paved with good intentions as Rachael's wish to protect the patient reveals hidden difficulties. www.threeassociating.com
S2 E3 · Sat, March 05, 2022
Episode 3: The Sexiness Of The Self-Help Guru
In this episode, Andrew , Rachael and Gill tussle together over ethical and therapeutic issues as they wonder where self help ends and where helping oneself to what belongs to the other begins. www.threeassociating.com
S2 E2 · Mon, February 14, 2022
Episode 2: Trauma And Magic Powers
Rachael , Gill , and Andrew struggle hard to resist the all-too-human desire for magical solutions to truly awful problems. www.threeassociating.com
S2 E1 · Sun, January 23, 2022
Episode 1: Game Of Cards
In the first episode of season two, Gill , Andrew and Rachael plunge into the pleasures and perils of toxic masculinity and the allure of trading intimacy and authenticity for the exercise of power. www.threeassociating.com
S1 E8 · Sat, July 10, 2021
Episode 8: Feeling Drowsy When The Connection Is Lousy
In this last episode of season one, Gill, Rachael, and Andrew grapple with the challenges of staying awake when it seems that the other person is exaggerating wildly or, even worse, is somewhat out of touch with reality. Faced with the seemingly impossible task of finding a constructive way to express one’s thoughts to the person, it is easy to unconsciously zone out instead. www.threeassociating.com
S1 E7 · Fri, July 02, 2021
Episode 7: When The Patient Demands Special Treatment
Gill , Andrew , and Rachael wrestle with the thorny issues of rivalry and competition. They show how, ironically, being caught in rivalry can lead one to give away one’s authority, as the focus comes to be placed on competing rather than on occupying one’s own personal power. www.threeassociating.com
S1 E6 · Fri, July 02, 2021
Episode 6: Fairweather Friend: The Honeymoon Is Over
Gill , Andrew , and Rachael encounter the common problem of when we are drawn in by charisma, fail to set firm boundaries and then experience guilt and anxiety about hurting the other person when we feel our boundaries have been transgressed. www.threeassociating.com
S1 E5 · Sat, June 26, 2021
Episode 5: Therapist As Sex Object
Gill , Rachael , and Andrew dive into the heady brew of sex and aggression, showing how these issues can be unconsciously provoked and can then easily lead to shame and overwhelm. www.threeassociating.com
S1 E4 · Sat, June 26, 2021
Episode 4: Twinning Isn't Always Winning
Gill , Andrew and Rachael uncover some unexpected disadvantages of friendliness, delving into how affability can cover up an unconscious fear of difference and otherness, and also mask a desire to be mirrored back positively to oneself. www.threeassociating.com
S1 E3 · Fri, June 18, 2021
Episode 3: When An Explosion Is Detonated In Session (Part 2 of 2)
Gill , Andrew and Rachael discover how unconscious disapproval can be communicated with ill effect and provoke bullying and verbal intimidation in return, resulting in overwhelm, dissociation, and an inability to think. www.threeassociating.com
S1 E2 · Fri, June 18, 2021
Episode 2: When Our Best Is Not Good Enough (Part 1 of 2)
Gill , Andrew and Rachael come to understand how an unconscious bias towards over-identifying with a person's trauma story inadvertently deprives the person of agency and disallows a more nuanced perception of the person. www.threeassociating.com
S1 E1 · Fri, June 18, 2021
Episode 1: Naming Without Shaming
Gill , Rachael , and Andrew explore the common problem of feeling conflicted between a wish to be accepting and the desire to be confronting of offensive stances and statements. They come to recognise how understanding one's own unconscious biases contributes to the solution. www.threeassociating.com
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