Relationality|Basics – INTEGRA CPD

The 4 Main Countertransference Objects in the Enactment (2014)

Michael - Handouts — Thu, 11 Sep 2014 23:00:00 +0000

This handout is a more detailed description of Contact 3 in the '3 Kinds of Contact' - it describes the 4 objects which are all constellated in the countertransference experience during an enactment - the therapist can experience all of them in different degrees and proportions, and in conflict/tension with each other.

To gain access to the full resource, please log-in if you are a member already (and then re-fresh this page after log-in), or to become a member of the site register here (it's free).

The post The 4 Main Countertransference Objects in the Enactment (2014) appeared first on INTEGRA CPD.

The Essential Relational Conflict Inherent in the Therapeutic Position: Object- versus Subject-Relating (2014)

Michael - Handouts — Thu, 20 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This handout crystallises the essential tension inherent in the therapeutic position, between: 'I-it' object-relating (which can be both deeply healing and deeply wounding) on the one hand, and dialogical 'I-I' subject-relating (which can be both deeply healing and deeply wounding) on the other. The implication is that either perspective usually gets absolutised into the assumed 'essence' or 'bottomline' of therapy, resulting in fixed and dogmatic stances and habitual therapeutic positions, whereas here I am trying to define the therapeutic position precisely as the dynamic tension between them. It is by not allowing myself to be reduced to one or the other (relationally or theoretically), but by inhabiting an impossible third position that the therapeutic space becomes both an enactment of the client's unconscious realities as well as a possible transformation of those realities. This impossible third position must be paradoxical because it recognises and maintains the simultaneous 'truth' and validity of both opposing perspectives.

To gain access to the full resource, please log-in if you are a member already (and then re-fresh this page after log-in), or to become a member of the site register here (it's free).

The post The Essential Relational Conflict Inherent in the Therapeutic Position: Object- versus Subject-Relating (2014) appeared first on INTEGRA CPD.

The Three Relational Revolutions (2007)

Michael - Handouts — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

This handout summarises what I conceive of as the three relational revolutions that have occurred over the last 100 years in psychotherapy. The first was Freud's reframing of the transference from an obstacle to the treatment into the 'royal road' into the depths of the process - this revolutionary step of genius has provided a foundation for the psychoanalytic project since then. But while Freud reframed the transference, he continued to think of the countertransference as exclusively pathological, as the therapist's 'stuff'. This view was challenged in the 1950s by the 'countertransference revolution' (Racker, Heimann, Searles), which began to recognise the therapist's countertransference as another royal road into the process, the therapist's subjective experience being considered as giving information about the client's inner world. But within the psychoanalytic circles who increasingly take these notions for granted (towards the tail end of the 20th century, e.g Casement), enactment is the still seen as pathological and countertherapeutic, as something which the therapist is responsible for vigilantly holding out against. I am proposing that a third relational revolution might occur in relation to the notion of enactment, with it being recognised as another royal road into the transformative depth of the process.

To gain access to the full resource, please log-in if you are a member already (and then re-fresh this page after log-in), or to become a member of the site register here (it's free).

The post The Three Relational Revolutions (2007) appeared first on INTEGRA CPD.

How the Wound Enters the Therapeutic Relationship (2005)

Michael - Handouts — Thu, 03 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0000

This table is a summary of the 6-and-a-half steps by which we can conceive of the late 19th century medical model frame of therapy having been deconstructed and broken down over the last 100 years. It is a summary of an article published in 'Therapy Today' under the same title. The client's wound can be seen as refusing to be segregated and ring-fenced within the dualistic frame which medical model assumptions had erected around therapy. The client's wound can be seen as entering the client's non-verbal process within the consulting room, their perception of therapy and therapist (transference), their experience of the therapist (embodied transference). Beyond that, the clients wound can be seen as jumping into the therapist's experience (countertransference), and beyond that into supervision.

To gain access to the full resource, please log-in if you are a member already (and then re-fresh this page after log-in), or to become a member of the site register here (it's free).

The post How the Wound Enters the Therapeutic Relationship (2005) appeared first on INTEGRA CPD.

Three Kinds of Contact (1995)

Michael - Handouts — Tue, 07 Feb 1995 00:00:00 +0000

This handout is one of the most basic and fundamental to a relational perspective on therapy. If it is indeed 'the relationship that matters', what kinds of contacts can exist between client and therapist? Alongside the different modalities of therapeutic relatedness, we can recognise the coming and going of the working alliance, as perceived and experienced by the therapist (this is not the explicit, contracted alliance, but an implicit sense of actual connection and relatedness). This handout is rooted in the 'countertransference revolution', which takes all experiences of the therapist as possible reflections of the client's inner world, and therefore attends to disturbances in the working alliance as necessary rupture and repair cycles in the deepening process.

To gain access to the full resource, please log-in if you are a member already (and then re-fresh this page after log-in), or to become a member of the site register here (it's free).

The post Three Kinds of Contact (1995) appeared first on INTEGRA CPD.

Three Kinds of Contact (1995, simple)

Michael - Handouts — Tue, 07 Feb 1995 00:00:00 +0000

To gain access to the full resource, please log-in if you are a member already (and then re-fresh this page after log-in), or to become a member of the site register here (it's free).

The post Three Kinds of Contact (1995, simple) appeared first on INTEGRA CPD.