What Is Relational Self-Psychology?
Relational psychotherapy is not entirely new, for it’s
roots are in psychodynamic and humanistic therapies that
have been around for many years. But at the same time,
relational psychotherapy, understood in it’s own terms, is
a new phenomenon. Over the last 15 years, a relational
perspective has opened up new vistas for psychoanalytic
theory.
Relational psychotherapy is a model driven by the client’s
experience and the client’s needs. It pays close attention
to how these needs are understood and addressed within the
therapy relationship. The relational therapist tunes in
very carefully to all of the client’s experience, and
especially to the client’s ongoing, moment-to-moment, and
cumulative experience of therapy. Since relational
psychotherapy is so client-centered and experience-near the
relational therapist is always personally engaged in the
process of therapy. Empathy is central to relational
psychotherapy and therapists have a strong commitment to
understanding the client on her/his own terms. The
therapist will stay as close as possible to what the client
says about their own experience and the therapist will do
what ever they can to enter into the feeling of that
experience and to communicate empathy to the client in ways
that let them know you get it. This can build a deep trust
between client and therapist which allows for more specific
kinds of interventions.
The problems we all have exist in those places where the
outside, significant people in our lives and situations,
interacts with our inside responses. As we grown up these
interact to shape a sense of ‘ourselves’. This interaction
between ‘ourselves’ and others become encoded within us in
what we call ‘organizing principles’ – these are
assumptions and ways of interacting that have become so
part of us that we don’t even realize that’s how we are
operating. These patterns quickly become woven into the
interaction between the therapist and client. It’s noticing
these patterns as they emerge that’s fundamental to the
assessment and treatment. These patterns can become gently
uncovered and understood so that a healing and shifting can
take place. Once this healing and shifting takes place the
ways people interact with and see others changes and a new
deeper truer self emerges.