The Therapeutic Relationship

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The developmentally needed or reparative relationship is an intentional provision by the psychotherapist of a corrective, reparative, or replenishing relationship or action where the original parenting was deficient, abusive or overprotective”.

Therapeutic relationship - Wikipedia Therapeutic relationship - Wikipedia

Gaston L., Marmar, C. R. (1991). Manual for the California Psychotherapy Alliance Scales - CALPAS Unpublished manuscript. Department of Psychiatry McGill University, Montreal, Canada. Many 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:The following video clips have been taken from seminars hosted by Prof Robert Schweitzer in 2021 at the School of Psychology and Counselling, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. My thanks to Robert Schweitzer, and his students Jeremy Vernon and Dymphna van der Leij, for the opportunity to dialogue on the topic of therapeutic use of self and reproduce clips of the video here: Integrative Psychotherapy: The Art and Science of Relationship,by Janet Moursund & Richard Erskine. 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. The transpersonal relationship is the timeless facet of the psychotherapeutic relationship, which is impossible to describe, but refers to the spiritual dimension of the healing relationship”. 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 by Petruska Clarkson - Waterstones

Counselling and psychotherapy relies to a great extent on building a human connection with clients, where a deep level of trust is established, this transcends any modality, this is seen to a great extent in the work of Carl Rogers. This is the basis of the client–therapist relationship that enables both the client and the therapist to work together and would include such things as the contract, the presenting issues and maybe a realisation of both parties that in other circumstances they may not choose to be in each other’s company. I have become interested in Petruska Clarkson due to her body of work on human relationships, including the 5 relationship model. When I look at the five aspects of a therapeutic relationship I feel a strong degree of resonance with these principles, and will focus on a couple of particular ones, the working alliance and the reparative/development need aspects. I like the metaphor Clarkson uses in relation to a piano, that some aspects are played more frequently or loudly than others, but they are always potentially there. More specifically, therapeutic use of self is the self-aware intertwining of both our professional self (the one that uses knowledge, skills and techniques) and our personal self (which arises from our history, beliefs/values, personality and embodied lived experience). It involves our therapeutic practices that we’ve learned and our particular way of maintaining a caring, attuned, holding presence. In other words, therapeutic use of self involves the totality of our being and doing; it is present in our every intervention.

Client perception: That the client perceives, to at least a minimal degree, the therapist's unconditional positive regard and empathic understanding. 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. This article focuses on a few key frameworks and models of approach that I came across in foundation psychotherapy training and think best illustrate various approaches. Rogers 6 conditions:

The Therapeutic Relationship - Petruska Clarkson - Google Books

The reparative/developmentally needed relationship is based on the client viewing the therapist as a parent figure to support them during the personal growth that takes place in therapy. This may be especially so for clients who experienced poor parenting as youngsters. In time, the client begins to trust their own judgement and so needs the therapist less (at which point therapy comes to an end).Make sure you train on an experiential course (i.e. one that is taught face-to-face, and that includes skills practice).