The Relationship as a Very Helpful the Therapy - Essay Example

RELATIONSHIP IS THE THERAPY By Relationship is the therapy Basically, the eventual objective of psychotherapy is to help clients address and deal effectively with the various problems that face them. Over a long period of time, clinicians and researchers have involved themselves in discussions concerning the elements in therapy that expedite change, focusing their attention particularly to the various roles of the therapists as well as their working relations with the clients. Usually, the various actions and characteristics of therapists are key factors towards the conduction of successful therapy, since these factors play a huge role in facilitating the development and maintenance of an affirmative therapist-client relationship as well as enabling efficient growth and change to client. Therefore, it is important that therapists practice the process of interactions with their clients in the initial session in order to foster good relationships that is key to the well-being of the patients. This paper will therefore focus on Petruska Clarkson’s five relationship models as well as other therapeutic theories to bring out the importance of good relationship among the therapists and clients. To begin with, Clarkson described 5 ways through which the relationship between the clients and therapists could be established (Clarkson, 1990). For this reason therefore, the five ways of establishing this relationship between therapists and clients can offer a central framework for Transactional Analysis (TA) as an appropriate model for Integrative Therapy. Therefore, Clarkson’s models provides both the therapists and clients with the knowledge of understanding what is happening between themselves thus creating a relationship of dependence between them. Correspondingly, the various skills that are developed by the therapists are geared towards the formation and development of good and adequate working alliances with multiple numbers of clients, within which there would be an “I-You” intimacy. Furthermore, the therapists should also focus on how they, as well as their clients, can be able to alter their thinking, behavior, and feelings through the various past experiences and providing clients with the various developmental needs. For that reason, Clarkson’s model which is basically made up of five stages, can enable us to determine the various ways through which the therapist-client relationship can be natured. (a)The Working Alliance This is usually the essential psychological connection between the client and therapist and it is always developed within the outline of a clear professional contract with regards to specific factors such as responsibility limits, time, and amount of fees among others. The therapists are usually encouraged to develop the working alliance by modelling the Adult – Adult relationship using all, using their basic skills of active listening as well as implementing the TA philosophy. Using TA terms, the concealed messages given to clients by the therapists ought to be in line with the key alliance concepts and thus the therapists are needed to show trustworthiness and elementary competence to their clients. Therefore, the therapists can only be part of a functional alliance only when they have carefully made an upright enough assessment of their clients, and are thus certain that they can reasonably obligate themselves towards assisting them. Hence, a working alliance is basically the created Adult-Adult link which is usually characterized by a high level of mutual understanding of what the client needs, and what the therapist should provide. (b) The Transference / Countertransference Relationship Essentially, this refers to the various ways through which therapists can be able to distort the ways in which they perceive and relate with their clients through the use of their various past experiences with other clients. The duty of the therapists is therefore to identify with their clients so as to enable then determine how and when they may likely distort their perception, thus creating an atmosphere that can enable them to view them in a positive manner. Therefore, the therapists need to filter their countertransference responses to their clients through making up decisions concerning what needs to be done. Equally important, therapists should ensure that a number of unresolved past experiences, which are the reason why the clients are taken to therapy and psychoanalysis, are not present at work. However, it is worth noting that in many occasions, they always are and could thus lead to poor behavior through interfering with the established working alliance. Sometimes, the “unfinished” elements or unresolved past experiences are denoted as the “transferential” relationship since an individual can transfer the experiences and relationships that they experienced in the past into their current situations. To illustrate, an individual can bring the various difficulties from their home relationships or grievances from their previous jobs, to their current work environments. Therefore, therapists should ensure that they are aware of anything that might be obstructing and preventing the progress and development of their clients. This is because, as much as therapists may wish to work in coherence with their clients so as to develop and build who they are and what they do, in some occasions things may not turn out as expected. (c) The Developmentally Needed relationship Comparatively, the third stage encompasses the development of need relationship which basically refers to what the client needs from the therapists. In other terms, it basically refers to what needs the therapy session can offer the clients that they basically missed or did not have during their childhood. Usually, when therapists emphasize with their clients in a way which seems rather unfamiliar to them, then it could be possible that the clients could experience some of their “gaps” being filled, particularly those that had existed since they were children. For that reason therefore, the amount or degree of needs or gap that the client has, will determine appropriateness of the therapy offered thus enabling therapist to know whether it might be appropriate to seek other form of help. Tentatively, this type of relationship connects again with the “ego state,” and thus the therapists should examine their clients’ past unfulfilled needs in order to create an “ego image.” (d) The person-to-person relationship Similarly, the person to person relationship is used to refer to the contact between two individuals that is primarily free of distortion by either person and that occurs at present. This is therefore the bedrock upon which the Humanistic approach is based on and it can simply be referred to as intimacy in TA terms. Usually, the person to person relationship is characterized by the therapist’s openness and sincerity to themselves, other people and to the processes that exist between them. Experientially, this connection is usually very powerful and could even result to the greatest stroke exchanges. Notably important, the capacity for the person-to-person can be observed as forming a desirable end state of therapeutic or psychotherapy that would be there for quite a long period of time. Therefore, to ensure that the connection is therefore for the long time, therapists should ensure that they be in touch and deal with their various own needs as well as themselves. This concept can hence assist the therapists as well as the clients to think about how they might be presently blocking themselves from intimate relationships. Therefore, owing to the significance of the capacity for intimacy is a value that therapists hold, it is of highly essential that the therapists exercise care on how they deal with the clients who come to them for specific problems and thus they cannot demand intimacy. (e) The Transpersonal Relationship This could be more difficult to define using absolute terms, since the transpersonal relationship could include the expansion of consciousness that can be either healing or spiritual in nature. For this reason, transpersonal relationship may contain links between therapists that drives past our current understanding. Over and over, we might basically need to concede that there are many things existing in heaven and earth than we know or have ever imagined of in our philosophy. Hence, therapists must first recognize transpersonal relationship cannot merely be approached using direct methods, and secondly, it does not contain the real purpose of therapy. Whereas it may occur that on various occasions therapists have been found to address various matters with their clients which originate from the topic of ‘spirituality,’ they must acknowledge and recognize that that is not part of their professional job, since they are not supposed to give spiritual guidance. It is thus worth noting that many therapists are usually seduced by their own clients’ need to engage in performing jobs that goes beyond their consciousness. Besides, just like numerous unusual occurrences, most incidences that therapists might think of as representing some higher or spiritual form might be beyond their explanation. Apart from Clarkson’s five relationship model, there are other scholars and philosophers who have come up with the various explanations to explain the relationship between therapists and their clients. For instance, Carl Rogers, in his Person- Centered approach upholds that the quality of the relationship or the connection existing between the therapist and the client holds more importance as compared to any practices partaken by the therapist (Rogers 1957, p. 98). Furthermore, Rogers identifies the element of trust as the center of a good relationship between therapists and their clients. Equally important, Rogers held that clients who had presented themselves with emotional ‘problems in living’ were most likely engaged in interactions or relations through which they were denied their experiences, discounted or defined by the other parties (Rogers 1957, p. 98). Thus, Rogers felt that the healing would emanate from the interaction or relationship that the client found themselves valuable and acceptable. Furthermore, Rogers contended that for the client to experience a beneficial personality change, it is necessary that various conditions come into existence, and continuously stay for quite a considerable period of time (Rogers 1957, p. 95). To experience a beneficial personality change therefore, there was need for two people to be in psychosomatic contact, of which the client had to be in a state of vulnerability, anxiety, and incongruence whereas on the other hand the therapist correspond thereby getting assimilated into the relationship. Besides, after getting assimilated into the relationship, the therapist would experience total affirmative concern for the client along with an empathic understanding of the client’s basic problems. He would thus use these experiences to try and communicate to the client pertaining the various issues. Comparatively, Freud was copiously conscious of the crucial nature that existed between clients and therapists and how this relationship could become mysterious, complex and intense regardless of how the relationship appeared on the surface (2004, p. 17). For instance, Freud remarkably noted that the clients transfer some of their personal elements such as fears, attitudes, feelings and longtime wishes to their therapist. Due to this, it is therefore important that therapists should always acknowledge the possibility of this transference and come up with appropriate ways of dealing with it, since the therapist reaction to the transference could either hinder or progress therapy process depending on how it was dealt with. Therefore, put simply, it can be arguably true that the concept of transference is the not only the central opportunity but also the pivot and fulcrum of the therapist’s therapeutic leverage. Progressively, then, it can be observed that the existence of a warm, empathic, engaging and collaborative client-therapist relationship highly contributes towards a positive therapeutic result, even though it is notably important to keep in mind that different clients appear to have dissimilar interpersonal needs. Thus, this does not, in any way, propose that certain therapeutic methods are unconnected to the accomplishment of the therapeutic work, but instead, it suggests that tis techniques need to be combined with or embedded in, a positive therapeutic encounter. Besides, this also suggests that, besides developing new therapeutic strategies and techniques, therapists should also ensure that they have a deepened understanding on the matter of therapeutic relationship, as well as identifying the various characteristics and different qualities which may assist in the therapeutic growth of different clients. Ultimately, it is arguably true that since Rogers’ scholarly work on the essential and adequate conditions for therapeutic personality change, (Rogers 1957), there has been very little progress in our understanding of the crucial elements that facilitate therapeutic relationships. For this reason therefore, it would appear mandatory that there is need for the development and expansion of this horizon, since every day comes with emerging therapeutic issues which ought to be addressed effectively. However, it is worth noting that with the introduction of innovative ideas such as “acknowledgement” (Schmid, 2002), and “relational depth” (Mearns, 1997) there exists a pool of hope that the field of therapy can advance even further. Doing this will also enable therapists to further their understanding of the key therapeutic concepts that would make it possible for them to establish a kind of relationship that is curing for so many clients. In conclusion, therefore, it can be said that the “Relationship is the Therapy” due to the fact that the therapist usually creates or forms a kind of relationship that enables the clients to have an exploration of their relationships thus therapeutically “healing” them. Furthermore, through the formed relationship, the clients have the ability to perceive the various key factors that could enable them to understand how they should handle themselves while they are in interaction or relationship with others. Such understanding is importance since it acts as an encouragement more so to the client since it enables them to cognitively connect their past experiences and relationships to their current emotions and behaviors. As a result, the clients are able to realize and acknowledge their current perceptions of their relationships with others thus enabling them to handle themselves relatively more competently. Therefore, therapy is indeed of fundamental importance since the clients experience various relationships and experiences that are relatively distinct from those of their early childhood that might have led them to seek therapy. Works Cited Clarkson, P. A. (1990). Multiplicity of psychotherapeutic relationships. British Journal of Psychotherapy, 7 (2). Freud, S. (2004). The interpretation of dreams. Belle Fourche, S.D.: NuVision Publications. Mearns, D. (1997). Person-Centered Counselling Training. London: Sage. Rogers, C. R. (1957). The necessary and sufficient conditions of therapeutic personality change. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 21(2), 95-103. Schmid, P. F. (2002). Knowledge of acknowledgement? Psychotherapy as the art of not knowing – Prospects on further developments of a radical paradigm. Person-Centered and Experiential Psychotherapies, 1(1&2), 56-70. Read More