This workshop will examine the importance of relationship – in forming our personalities and attachment patterns, in living harmoniously with others and in working effectively as therapists, consultants, coaches or educators. The central importance of relationship is something that we have known in our hearts for years, but it is now the subject of overwhelming and incontrovertible research evidence that cannot be ignored. Researchers Assay and Lambert (1999, 2001) put relationship as twice as important as any theory or technique a practitioner may use; Wampold puts it even higher; Alan Schore, basing his view on neuroscientific research, states that attachment theory is the only theoretical approach that is biologically valid.

In this workshop, we will explore what we mean by attachment and relationship in transactional analysis. I will present:

· a brief overview of the research findings

· a model for understanding attachment theory linked to TA

· a model by Hargaden and Sills (2001) for understanding the early development of relationship patterns and their later transferential manifestation.

· some connections with recent neuro-scientific studies about relationship and early development.

There workshop will also be a large experiential component to the workshop as participants will be invited to experiment and work with these ideas and theories – including some from the world of organisational work (eg Kline; Casey and Critchley)

Charlotte Sills MA, MSc (Psychotherapy), Dip. Systemic Integrative Psychotherapy, CTA (ITAA), UKCP Registered Psychotherapist. Visiting Professor at Middlesex University.

Charlotte is a counsellor and psychotherapist in private practice and Head of the Transactional Analysis department at Metanoia Institute . She has worked as a trainer and consultant in a variety of settings and is co-designer and Director of the Coaching for Consultants programme at Ashridge Consulting, UK.

She is a qualified Transactional Analysis psychotherapist and a Teaching and Supervising Transactional Analyst. She is the author or co-author of a number of publications in the therapeutic field, including TA Counselling and Gestalt Counselling (with Lapworth and Fish – both published by Winslow Press) Integration in Counselling and Psychotherapy by Lapworth, Sills and Fish, Contracts in Counselling, Sills. C (ed) (both by Sage) and Transactional Analysis - A Relational Perspective by Hargaden and Sills (Routledge).