When One Model Isn't Enough: Inside Brad McLean's Couples+ Therapy Online CPD Series

There is a particular kind of frustration that experienced therapists know well. You have a solid theoretical home - a framework you trust, a language that fits. And then a couple sits down in front of you, and something in the room outpaces what that framework can hold.

Not because the theory is wrong. But because relationships are genuinely complex, and the therapy that serves them well tends to be too.

Brad McLean has spent years thinking about what a rigorous, multi-perspectival approach to couples therapy actually looks like in practice. His new five-part online CPD seminar series on couples therapy, Inside Couples+ Therapy, is the result of that thinking - an in-depth exploration of the theoretical frameworks he finds most clinically compelling, and what each one demands of us as practitioners.

Five frameworks, one room

What makes this series unusual is its range. Over five 60-minute online sessions, (£12 per person per session) Brad draws on Gottman, Tavistock, Kleinian and Jungian thinking, alongside his own integrative Transactional Analysis model for relationship therapy. These are not presented as competing approaches to be weighed against each other, but as complementary lenses - each illuminating something the others may miss.

The series opens with the Gottman Method, exploring how one of the most research-informed approaches to relationship therapy translates into a TA framework. The focus is on Adult ego state functioning - the tools that sharpen communication, build emotional regulation and deepen connection between partners. It's designed to offer clear clinical application from the outset.

The second session moves into psychoanalytic depth, introducing the Tavistock model of couples therapy through a TA lens. This is territory that many TA practitioners haven't fully explored - the unconscious life of the relationship itself, and how it is expressed and negotiated in the relational field. Brad's framing of the co-constructed Child ego state of the relationship is a particularly rich idea to sit with.

The third session presents Brad's own integrative TA model for relationship therapy, focusing on the decontamination and de-confusion of ego states within relationship systems. Through clinical illustrations and practical stages, it demonstrates what TA offers that other frameworks don't - a structured and dynamic way of working with both the content and the architecture of a couple's difficulties.

Sessions four and five move into more specialist territory: a contemporary Kleinian reading of infidelity as a manic defence, and a Jungian psychological exploration of concepts such as individuation, alchemy, and shadow in intimate relationships. Both sessions take seriously the depth and complexity of what brings couples into therapy - and offer frameworks for holding that complexity without being overwhelmed by it. 

Why theoretical breadth matters in couples work

There is a temptation, particularly in CPD, to look for a single refined tool - something practical and transferable that can be applied on Monday morning. And there is real value in that. But couples work also rewards something different: the capacity to think from multiple positions simultaneously, to hold a systemic and an intrapsychic lens at the same time, to understand what is happening between two people and within each of them.

This series is designed to develop that capacity. Each seminar moves between concept and clinical application, so the theoretical grounding always has a practical destination. But the accumulated effect of engaging with five different frameworks - each with its own explanatory power and its own limitations - is something harder to quantify: a richer, more flexible way of seeing.

About Brad McLean

Brad McLean CTA MSc is a Certified Transactional Analyst and experienced relationship therapist whose integrative couples therapy model draws on TA, psychoanalytic and contemporary relational approaches. He brings both clinical depth and genuine intellectual curiosity to his teaching, and this series reflects the breadth of thinking that informs his practice.

Online CPD Series details - Couples+ Therapy

Inside Couples+ Therapy runs across five online sessions via Zoom from April to July 2026. Sessions are 60 minutes and cost £12 each - bookable individually or as a full series.

Dates:

• Wednesday 22 April, 10.30am - The Gottman Method

• Wednesday 20 May, 10.30am - Early Wounds, Adult Love (Tavistock)

• Wednesday 24 June, 10.30am - Decontamination and De-confusion in TA Couples Therapy

• Saturday 27 June, 10.00am - Understanding Infidelity as Manic Defence (Kleinian)

• Saturday 4 July, 10.00am - The Jungian Shadow in Intimate Relationship

Find out more and book at northsidetraining.co.uk/couples-plus-therapy-seminars.

Why Couples+?

The series is open to all relationships and inclusive of gender, sexual and relationship diversity.