The Therapeutic Relationship

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What do our therapeutic relationships with clients involve? How do we create a safe space for clients to go exploring? What are we doing when we show clients respect and caring, attuned attention or when we challenge them to grow? How is our way of being with clients therapeutic? These questions around ‘doing’ and ‘being’ all relate to the idea of therapeutic use of self which can be defined as: "A therapist’s thoughtful, deliberate effort to use their self as a tool, one which embodies a self-aware therapeutic way of being in the service of clients and the client-therapist relationship" (Finlay, 2022, p. 1). The person-to-person relationship is the core or real emotional connection – as opposed to a professional relationship with say your doctor or dentist. 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. This strong feeling is sometimes rooted in ‘The presenting past ‘also known as ‘transference’ the idea that the client reminds us of someone from our past and as such we ‘transfer’ those feelings from the past on to the client.

The Therapeutic Relationship : Petruska Clarkson

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. For example, quantitative research is good for measuring things, providing objective statistics, but can be narrow and requires very careful choice and phrasing of questions. Qualitative research is open-ended and potentially more flexible, but is time-consuming and may be subject to researcher bias.

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This text provides coverage of the uses and abuses of the therapeutic relationship in counselling, psychology, psychotherapy and related fields. It provides a framework for integration, pluralism or deepening singularity with reference to five kinds of therapeutic relationship potentially available in every kind of counselling or psychodynamic work. Barrett-Lennard, G. T. (1962). Dimensions of therapist response as causal factors in therapeutic change. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 76, 1-33.

The Therapeutic Relationship - Petruska Clarkson - Google Books

Research on the working alliance suggests that it is a strong predictor of psychotherapy or counseling client outcome. [8] Also, the way in which the working alliance unfolds has been found to be related to client outcomes. Generally, an alliance that experiences a rupture that is repaired is related to better outcomes than an alliance with no ruptures, or an alliance with a rupture that is not repaired. Also, in successful cases of brief therapy, the working alliance has been found to follow a high-low-high pattern over the course of the therapy. [9] Therapeutic alliance has been found to be effective in treating adolescents with PTSD, with the strongest alliances were associated with the greatest improvement in PTSD symptoms. [ citation needed] Regardless of other treatment procedures, studies have shown that the degree to which traumatized adolescents feel a connection with their therapist greatly affects how well they do during treatment. [10] Necessary and sufficient conditions [ edit ]This is harder to define in absolute terms; it can include an expansion of consciousness, which can be spiritual or healing. Gelso, C.J. & Samstag, L.W. (2008). A Tripartite Model of the Therapeutic Relationship. Handbook of Counseling Psychology (4th ed.). (pp. 267-280). Several scales have been developed to assess the patient-professional relationship in therapy, including the Working Alliance Inventory (WAI), [11] the Barrett-Lennard Relationship Inventory, [12] and the California Psychotherapy Alliance Scales (CALPAS). [13] The Scale To Assess Relationships (STAR) was specifically developed to measure the therapeutic relationship in community psychiatry, or within care in the community settings. [14] See also [ edit ]