User:Samuelochie1

Five Relationships at Work

(a) The Working Alliance: This is the constituent of the client–therapist relationship that enables both the client and the therapist to work together even when one or both experience strong desires to the contrary. In the working alliance, the client’s reasonable side…aligns with the counsellor’s working side (which is his or her more reasonable side). This permits the client to experience negative feelings toward the counselor without disrupting the work….It is the working alliance also, and perhaps more essentially, that creates the sense that the participants of the counseling relationship are joined together in a shared enterprise, each making his or her contribution to the work. (Gelso & Carter, 1985 pp.163).

(b) The Transference/Countertransference Relationship: This is the anticipated relationship, in which the experience of unconscious wishes and fears onto or into the therapeutic partnership take place. This can take any of four forms, any of which could act in a facilitative or destructive way in the therapeutic process: 1.	Proactive transference: - what the client brings to the relationship/ the client’s projections of past          experiences          onto the therapist. 2.	Proactive countertransference: - what the therapist brings to the relationship/ the therapist’s transference towards the client. 3.	Reactive Transference (or countertransference): - what the client reacts to because of what the therapist brings in the relationship. 4.	Reactive countertransference: -what the therapist reacts to in the client. (Clarkson, 2003)

(c) The Developmentally Needed or Reparative Relationship: “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” (Clarkson 2003, pp.113).

(d) The Person-to-Person Relationship: “The person-to-person relationship is the core or real – as opposed to object relationship” (Clarkson 2003:152). Garfield & Affleck (1961); Sloane, Staples, Cristol, Yorkston & Whipple (1975); Ford (1978); Adelstein, Gelso, Haws, Reed & Spiegel (1983) and Gelso, Mills & Spiegel, (1983) have all shown that it is significant to the client that there be a real relationship from within which environment the psychotherapist can use whatever theory or technique he or she advocates. In contacting you, I wager my independent existence, but only through the contact function can the realization of identities fully develop. Contact is not just togetherness or joining. It can only happen between two separate beings, always requiring independence and always risking capture in the union. At the point of union, one’s fullest sense of this person is swept along into a new creation. I am no longer only me, but me and thee make we. Although me and thee become we in name only, through its naming, we gamble with the dissolution of either me or thee. Unless I am experienced in knowing full contact, when I meet you full-eyed, full-bodied and full-minded, you may become irresistible and engulfing. (Polster & Polster 1973,pp.99). Often this relationship only emerges towards the completion of the psychotherapeutic process

(e) The Transpersonal Relationship: “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” (Clarkson, P 2003, pp.187). Grof defined it as “Experiences involving an expansion or extension of consciousness beyond the usual ego boundaries and beyond the limitations of time and/or space” (1979, pp.155) These relationships do not constitute a sequential and/or hierarchical structure of the therapeutic process. Different types can occur/overlap any time in the therapeutic task even during one session. This model recommends a different way of viewing and experiencing the entire therapeutic process. In this manner, the therapist focuses on the actual relationship with the client and can deliberately utilize each type aiming to fulfill the client’s unique needs.

References: Clarkson, P. (1995). The Therapeutic Relationship. London: Whurr. Clarkson, P. (2002). On Psychotherapy 2. London: Whurr. Clarkson, P. (2002). The Transpersonal Relationship in Psychotherapy. London: Whurr.

Clarkson, P. (2003). The Therapeutic Relationship (2nd edition.). London: Whurr. Gelso, C.J. & Carter, J.A. (1985). The relationship in counselling and psychotherapy:                  components,         consequences, and theoretical antecedents. The Counselling Psychologist, 13(2), 163. Gelso, C.J., Mills, D.H. & Spiegel, S.B. (1983) Client and therapist factors influencing the outcome of  time-limited counselling one and 18 months after treatment. In C.J. Gelso and D.H. Johnson (Eds), Explorations in time-limited Counselling and Psychotherapy, New York: Teachers College Press. Polster, E. & Polster, M. (1973). Gestalt Therapy Integrated: Contours of Theory and       Practice New York: Random House, 99.