SRP Research and Development
Structural Relational Psychotherapy (SRP) is a developing clinical model for the treatment of personality pathology, currently used at the Kimberly Center and being systematically articulated and studied through the Center for the Study of Personality Structure and Psychotherapy Process.
For an account of the model as it is used clinically, see Structural Relational Psychotherapy.
Relationship to TFP, Object Relations, and Relational Psychoanalysis
SRP grows from established traditions in psychodynamic psychotherapy while developing a distinct account of personality change.
The model is strongly informed by object relations theory and the structural understanding of personality associated with Otto Kernberg and Transference-Focused Psychotherapy (TFP). These traditions provide a sophisticated framework for understanding personality organization, splitting, internalized object relations, and the integration of polarized representations of self and others.
SRP is also informed by relational psychoanalytic traditions emphasizing therapist subjectivity, mutual influence, enactment, rupture and repair, and the participation of two psychological subjects within the therapeutic relationship.
SRP brings these perspectives into closer dialogue. It retains a structural concern with what changes in personality organization while asking more explicitly how relational experience within psychotherapy may contribute to that change.
SRP is not presented as a replacement for TFP or other established treatments. It represents an evolving structural-relational model with its own developing account of therapeutic process and psychological integration.
Earlier clinical writing
- Using Hate in the Countertransference to Mend the Fragments: A Sampling of the Treatment of a Patient in CrisisJustin Jones, Ph.D. · 2024
- Transference-Focused Psychotherapy (TFP)The Kimberly Center · treatment page
Metabolization: How Experience May Become Integrated
A central concept in SRP is metabolization.
Metabolization is the process through which previously segregated or incompatible experiences of self, other, affect, and subjective reality are activated within an interpersonal context, experienced without being defensively evacuated or separated, reflected upon, and ultimately incorporated into a more complex and differentiated psychological organization.
From an SRP perspective, insight alone may not be sufficient to change deeply organized personality patterns. A person may understand a pattern intellectually while continuing to experience and repeat it when emotionally activated.
Psychotherapy can create an opportunity for something different to occur.
Experiences that previously could not coexist psychologically may emerge within a relationship where they can be experienced, examined, and thought about together. Over time, what once had to remain psychologically separated may become increasingly capable of being held within a more complex understanding of oneself and other people.
SRP proposes metabolization as a potential mechanism connecting interpersonal experience within psychotherapy to longer-term changes in personality structure.
Research, the Lab, and the Continuing Development of SRP
Structural Relational Psychotherapy is both a clinical model currently in use and an active program of theoretical and research development.
SRP is being systematically articulated and studied through the Center for the Study of Personality Structure and Psychotherapy Process, directed by Justin Jones, Ph.D. The Center brings together Dr. Jones, graduate students, and research collaborators interested in personality structure, personality pathology, and psychotherapy process.
The development of SRP is an active focus of the Center’s research lab. Working with Dr. Jones, students and research collaborators participate in literature review, theoretical discussion, clinical-process conceptualization, development and refinement of scholarly papers, and the translation of emerging theoretical ideas into questions that can ultimately be examined empirically.
This collaborative research environment is an important part of the model’s continuing development. SRP originates in Dr. Jones’s clinical and theoretical work, while the research lab provides a setting in which its concepts can be questioned, clarified, situated within the existing literature, and developed into a coherent scholarly and empirical research program.
Current areas of inquiry include personality structure, psychotherapy process, therapist subjectivity and countertransference, relational dynamics, structural integration, individual and group applications of SRP, and potential mechanisms through which enduring personality change may occur.
Current scholarly work includes theoretical development of the model, examination of its relationship to existing approaches to personality pathology and psychotherapy, refinement of its clinical principles, development of the Self & Others group application, preparation of scholarly manuscripts, and formulation of propositions that can ultimately be subjected to empirical investigation.
SRP is not currently presented as an empirically validated psychotherapy. Its clinical use is occurring alongside an active research program intended to define the model more precisely, critically examine its theoretical assumptions, and evaluate its proposed mechanisms and outcomes.
Center for the Study of Personality Structure and Psychotherapy Process
Research and Publications
- Jones, J. (2024). Using hate in the countertransference to mend the fragments: A sampling of the treatment of a patient in crisis.The Kimberly Center · read
This list is updated as work is published.