The Therapeutic Relationship

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Most of us have at some time or another met a person for the first time and found ourselves either strongly attracted or repelled by them. Given time the client begins to trust their own judgment and the need to use the therapist as an emotional support lessens, at this point therapy usually comes to an end. Barrett-Lennard, G. T. (1962). Dimensions of therapist response as causal factors in therapeutic change. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 76, 1-33. The presentation, entitled “A Global Vision: Taking Gestalt Therapy into the 21st Century”, brought together delegates and presenters from across the globe that reviewed and explored views of Gestalt therapy. Clarkson also co-founded two training organisations, the Metonia Institute and Physis.

The Therapeutic Relationship - Petruska Clarkson - Google Books The Therapeutic Relationship - Petruska Clarkson - Google Books

One of their underlying aspects of people being relationship seeking and the idea of people having internalised relationship patterns is an interesting one. They bring into play the theories of Stern in child development in how a child creates a sense of repeated similar experiences with primary carers and how this builds a set of self beliefs and behaviours built on this; what they call the core interpersonal scheme. It also brings to mind Transactional Analysis theory on life scripts and “drivers”. They do point out clearly that whilst it is stated sequentially, that these stages often are re-cycled and overlap. In my experience in other work around behaviour change such as the transtheoretical model, this is true of robust, flexible models; they contain a sense of start, middle and end, but have circumnavigated ways through. For me, therapeutic use of self is all about being a human being in relation with another human being. Its less about applying therapy techniques and more about finding a way to be-with our clients, in patience, curiosity, compassion, caring and challenge, while we go exploring together. In short, we need to move away from a view of the use of self as an internal/individual act towards seeing it as a dynamic, ethical and reflexive process that is profoundly relational. When we ‘go with the relational flow’ and trust the therapeutic process, the use of self is like the playing of a finely tuned musical instrument. Together, client and therapist find themselves immersed in a duet of co-created music.The transferential/countertransferential relationship refers to the idea that we may remind a client of someone from their past, or vice versa, and the related feelings from the past may be transferred to the present, so affecting the therapeutic relationship. If this happens, it is important to explore the issue in supervision.

The Therapeutic Relationship by Clarkson - AbeBooks The Therapeutic Relationship by Clarkson - AbeBooks

The person-to-person relationship is the core or real emotional connection – as opposed to a professional relationship with say your doctor or dentist. Gelso, C.J. & Samstag, L.W. (2008). A Tripartite Model of the Therapeutic Relationship. Handbook of Counseling Psychology (4th ed.). (pp. 267-280). The working alliance forms the basis of the client–therapist (or therapist–supervisor) relationship, and includes the contract. It focuses on building a shared understanding and foundation, so that if the relationship falters, both parties can return to this stage and try to repair it.Rogers describes the core conditions of empathy, congruence and unconditional positive regard, as the foundations of building an interpersonal alliance between two people. In terms of “The 5 relationship model’ the therapist would use these conditions to facilitate the ongoing encounter with the client. Bordin, E. S. (1979). The generalizability of the psychoanalytic concept of the working alliance. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research & Practice, 16(3), 252-260.

The therapeutic relationship - BibGuru Guides Citation: The therapeutic relationship - BibGuru Guides

Forgotten the title or the author of a book? Our BookSleuth is specially designed for you. Visit BookSleuthMany clients come to see therapists as the ‘good enough other’ the idea that at some level they emotionally take on the therapist as a ‘parent figure’ to support them during the personal growth that hopefully takes place during therapy, Clarkson described this as ;