From Reparation To Relational Repair: Recognition, Regulation, and...

Professional Development for the Mental Health Community

“From Reparation To Relational Repair: Recognition, Regulation, and Embodied Intersubjectivity”

Jessica Benjamin, PhD

Friday, April 24, 2026

6:30PM – 8:30PM (EDT)

PPSC

Live Webinar on Zoom

$60 Regular Admission and $40 Student

*This talk provides 2 hours of continuing education credits for LCSWs, LMSWs, LPs, LMHCs, LCATs, LMFTs, and licensed psychologists.

A crucial phenomenon recognized by Melanie Klein was the deep and pervasive fear of harming the love object and the need to make reparation as an internal process of restoring the sense of goodness-or love, in self, other and world. Of course, Klein attributed this fear to the innate aggression founded on the death instinct and furthermore did not, as Fairbairn pointed out, distinguish between protecting the internal object and actually making the self good again. Hence the critique of the idea of reparation that has for some time been "all the rage" in the world of critical theory (literature) and has now been adopted by some psychoanalysts. Dr. Benjamin adopts an intersubjective viewpoint, and looking through the lens of affect regulation, the meaning of aggression and of restoring the self to a sense of goodness appears quite differently, and so does the meaning of repair. Understanding how affect dysregulation is recognized and soothed in early development, and following Winnicott’s theoretical line of surviving destruction as well as Tronick’s observations of rupture and repair, we reinterpret what Klein saw. We grasp how embodied intersubjectivity means self and other are always mutually affecting one another. We come to appreciate the all-important role played by the analyst’s surrender and acknowledgment in regulating the affective “too-muchness” and interactive ruptures of enactments. Dr. Benjamin has conceptualized this process as moving out of doer and done to into the moral Third; the shared position of witnessing, affirming, and understanding the inevitable experiences of badness, shame, fear of harming, and being hurt.

Jessica Benjamin is best known as the author of The Bonds of Love (1988), which brought a feminist intersubjective perspective into the psychoanalytic field, and of “Beyond Doer and Done To: An Intersubjective View of Thirdness” (2004), the most cited article on PEPweb in the last five years and the basis for her most recent book Beyond Doer and Done To: Recognition Theory, Intersubjectivity and the Third (2018). This book emphasizes the importance of acknowledgment in therapeutic interaction and in relation to trauma, including collective historical trauma. In addition, she is the author of Like Subjects, Love Objects (1995); and Shadow of the Other (1998). She has been one of the leaders in the relational movement in psychoanalysis since its inception and helped to found the Relational Orientation at the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis where she teaches and supervises. She also teaches and is a board member of the Stephen Mitchell Relational Studies Center of which she is a co-founder. She co-directed and initiated a project for acknowledgment between Israeli and Palestinian mental health professionals during the period 2003-2011. Recently she has written a series of papers on the psychological aspects of domination and destructiveness manifest in the current social world. She is currently exploring the interconnections between affect regulation theory and recognition theory.

Learning Objectives

After attending this presentation, participants will be able to:

• describe the developments in psychoanalytic theory and in infancy studies, especially mutual affect regulation that found our new understanding of relational repair.
• distinguish between the process of making the object good again as a form of submission or defense (ala Fairbairn) and relational repair that occurs through the recognition of the expression of suffering or resistance to repression.
• demonstrate the clinical process of how acknowledgment repairs, that is, how it facilitates moving out of doer-and-done-to states of the dyad that involve breakdowns of mutual regulation and recognition, into a shared Third of accepting painful emotions and experience.

Agenda

6:30 – 7:00: Developments in psychoanalytic theory and infancy studies particularly regarding mutual affect regulation that underpin our new understanding of relational repair. (LO#1)

7:00 – 7:30: Distinguishing between making the object good again as a form of submission or defense and relational repair that occurs through recognition of the expression of suffering or resistance to repression. (LO#2)

7:30 – 8:00: The clinical process of how acknowledgement repairs—how it facilitates moving out of doer-and-done-to states of the dyad that involve breakdowns of mutual regulation and recognition into a shared Third of accepting painful emotions and experience. (LO#3)

8:00 – 8:30: Q & A.

**This event will be recorded. Those unable to attend live may register as usual and contact the PPSC Learning Lab Program Development Administrator at ppsc.learninglab@gmail.com to request access. The recording will be available for two (2) weeks following the event.

You may still earn CE credit by watching the recording, provided that:

• The program is offered by an NYSED-approved provider for your specific license type, and;
• The recording is classified as a self-study course (i.e., there is no live interaction).

Under NYSED regulations, licensees may complete up to 12 hours of their required continuing education per registration period through self-study activities. The remaining hours must be obtained through live, interactive learning.

To be eligible to receive Continuing Education (CE) credits, participants must complete the post-event evaluation within this two-week period. Upon completion of the recording and required post-event evaluation, a CE certificate will be issued for qualifying participants.

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*For a refund to a PPSC Annex event, we must receive a cancellation notice 24 hours prior to the event. Please contact annex-ops@ppsc.org if you want to cancel within this timeframe or if you have any other questions or concerns.

*Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychoanalysts #P-0040, licensed mental health counselors #MHC-0166, licensed creative arts therapists #CAT-0083, and licensed marriage and family therapists #MFT-0119. We are 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 #0054 and by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Psychology as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychologists #PSY-0118. Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center maintains responsibility for its programs and its content.

*PPSC does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, age, sexual orientation, sexual preference, gender, gender identity, marital status, or national or ethnic origin in the administration of its admissions and educational policies.