Women’s Therapy Centre Institute (WTCI) was founded in 1981 in New York by Carol Bloom, Luise Eichenbaum and Susie Orbach, building on work that Eichenbaum and Orbach had begun in London at the Women’s Therapy Centre, which they co-founded in 1976. Together they sought to integrate psychoanalysis with feminist thought in order to better understand women’s psychological lives and the ways social and cultural forces, such as gender, race, class, sexuality, and body norms, shape identity and emotional experience. Their work contributed to the early development of what would become known as feminist relational psychoanalysis.

One of WTCI’s earliest public initiatives was the Friday Night Lecture Series on Women and Psychology at the New York Academy of Sciences in 1982, which brought together feminist clinicians, scholars, and writers and created an exciting forum for exploring new ideas about women and psychotherapy. That same year, the Institute held its first Speak Out, now known as InDwelling, where hundreds of women gathered to speak openly about experiences often kept private, including struggles with eating and body image, family relationships, discrimination, and desire.

From the beginning, WTCI has been committed to linking what clinicians hear in the consulting room with broader social and cultural realities. This work led to the development of the Institute’s three-year training program in feminist relational psychotherapy, first launched in 1989, along with subsequent programs exploring the body, culture, and relational life. Today, WTCI offers training and educational programs for mental health professionals as well as programs for the broader public, fostering a community dedicated to the integration of feminist theory, psychoanalysis, intersectionality, clinical practice, and social justice.