The Realtionship is the Therapy

The Realtionship is the Therapy

THEORY ASSIGNMENT – YEAR 1 – INTEGRATIVE

'THE RELATIONSHIP IS THE THERAPY'
DISCUSS AND CRITICALLY EVALUATE


Introduction:
This essay will attempt to establish a clear context, in which the above statement may be
understood. To enable this, different approaches to this relationship will be examined, and some of the academic work that informs them will be explored and assessed. Two schools of therapy, which have contributed to our understanding of the therapeutic relationship, are Person-Centred Therapy and the Psychodynamic approach. The dynamic between them contributes, in large part, to my own approach to counselling. I will describe their make up and use them as a means to illustrate the components of the relationship, and how they may be used to compliment each other, in order to enhance it. I will then reflect on how these models inform my practice.

Person-Centred Therapy:
Carl Rogers was the founder of the Person-Centred approach to therapy. He felt that the best way to optimise client outcomes was to first establish a relationship between therapist and client that both supports and enables the client to self-actualise, and also facilitates the therapist in using his/her training and knowledge to co-manage such outcomes.

'It is that the individual has within himself or herself vast resources for self-understanding, for altering his or her self-concept, attitudes and self-directed behaviour – and that these resources can be tapped if only a definable climate of facilitative psychological attitudes can be provided.' (Rogers, 1986).
Such a collaborative alliance between the two participants, Rogers argued, necessitates the pre-existence, and therefore the conscious development of, a set of factors, which he referred to as Core Conditions. (Rogers, 1957). This belief arose from his view that, contrary to the deterministic stance of psychoanalysis and of the behaviouristic approach, our behaviour is governed by our perception of our...

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