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Reactive countertransference is nontherapeutic, whereas responsive countertransference is an integral aspect of psychotherapy when the psychotherapist is attuned to the client's affect and needs. Personal examples are used to illustrate the concepts of responsive and reactive countertransference. Awareness and use of each form of countertransference is essential. The psychotherapist's stance of presence and involvement delineates the necessary elements of an effective relationally focused psychotherapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid shift to telemental health (TMH) during the COVID-19 pandemic left mental health providers scrambling to adapt, raising concerns about the effect on the quality of the therapeutic alliance. This article explores the impact of TMH on the therapeutic alliance and how relational psychotherapists can support their patients and engage best practices in a way that helps all participants feel connected to the work. It defines the therapeutic alliance, explores the concepts of tasks, goals, and therapeutic bonds, and highlights the importance of developing a positive bond in the context of relational therapy. The paper also describes common challenges encountered while providing psychotherapy virtually, provides guidance on what contributes to a more positive attitude toward TMH interventions, offers a list of recommendations for improving the therapeutic alliance in TMH, and makes recommendations for future study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proponents of evidence-based treatments (EBTs) have directed complaints of potential unethical practice against psychotherapists who refrain from using EBTs as first-line interventions for a range of psychiatric disorders on the grounds that these treatments should be given priority because of their exceptional scientific backing. This article counters these claims and highlights core ethical concerns associated with the research and practice of EBT itself; namely, the appropriateness of saturating the field with short-term models of psychotherapy and the questionable assumption that these can yield meaningful and lasting change; the uncertain relevance of the results of EBT investigations for psychotherapists working with real-world clients; the foreclosure of opportunities to address clients' unmet developmental needs and self-fragility posed by the directive/didactic therapeutic stance inherent in EBTs; and, the reduced quality of psychotherapy offered to the public at large and threats to the clinical competence of early-career mental health professionals caused by overemphasizing training in EBTs over the acquisition of relational skills in graduate schools and postgraduate training sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emerging adulthood seems to be a period of not only heightened risk for mental health symptoms, but also growth toward greater well‐being. Mental health disorders are highest among adults ages 18 to 29 years, yet emerging adults are unlikely to access treatment. However, emerging adults can also experience gains in life satisfaction and interpersonal functioning, and mental health treatment for emerging adults tends to reduce symptoms. This dialectic of risk and growth has prompted a call for a specialty clinical practice focused on emerging adults and highlights a need for treatment effectiveness research that examines symptoms and well‐being. We examined the influence of risk variables on change in a sample of emerging adult clients (N = 187; mean age = 25.82 years; 62.0% female; 75.9% White). Results provide evidence of improvement, conditioned by risk variables. Implications included integrating distinct interventions to reduce symptoms and promote well‐being and addressing intra‐ and interpersonal processes associated with positive development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores a particular aspect of cure: the mutual influence of the elaboration of the ego and the self. Starting with Berne's assertion that as therapists we should always aim to cure our patients or clients, the author shares some reflections on the relationship between the Adult ego state and the Child ego state and their functional interconnections in therapy. She proposes that curing self-states (working through) can simultaneously orient cure at the level of the Adult ego state (working out). A clinical case illustrates the proposed methodology and some factors promoting cure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unexpected traumatic events, including life-threatening medical conditions, brain injuries, and pandemics, can be catalysts for patients and clinicians to consider existential issues, including meaning in life. The existential–humanistic and relational perspectives on therapeutic interventions emphasize creating meaning, taking responsibility for one's own life and self-narratives, choosing and actualizing ways of being in the world that are consistent with values, and expanding the capacity for agency, commitment, and action. Myriad factors have made the COVID-19 pandemic upsetting and potentially traumatic for individuals, including the novel experience of self and other as possibly infectious and dangerous, a sense that anyone is vulnerable, and protracted uncertainty about the duration of the crisis and its consequences. The vignettes included in this article explore risk and reliance factors relevant to patients with preexisting medical conditions during COVID-19 and highlight the benefits of exploring values, priorities, and assumptions, asking open-ended questions about meaning in life and posttraumatic growth, learning for each emotion, and interpretation of dreams. The existential–humanistic and relational approaches offer unique insights into how practitioners might help their patients to reflect on the unanticipated changes and anxieties ignited by COVID-19, while reinforcing the potential to live with greater purpose and intention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Psicoterapia is the property of Revista de Psiquiatria y Psicologia Humanista, S.L. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article is the last in a five-part series subtitled "Case Study of the Psychotherapy of the Schizoid Process." An emphasis on the concept and methods of introjection concludes this case study of a schizoid client's 4-year psychotherapy. The article demonstrates how the therapeutic relationship was used to quiet the client's constantly criticizing internal voice. It illustrates the method of treating introjection by engaging the introjected voice in actual therapy, as if the voice were an actual client. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes schizoid phenomena and how the concept of relational needs is used in integrative psychotherapy. Drawing from client work, the author explores some of the unique qualities involved in offering a contact-oriented, relational form of therapy with an individual who uses the schizoid process of a social façade to protect the vital and vulnerable self. Relational needs are discussed in terms of transference, countertransference, and schizoid phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a client's perspective on the psychotherapy of the schizoid process. It contains a word-for-word psychotherapy session, which illustrates the relational and developmental perspective used in integrative psychotherapy to enable a psychotherapy client to understand and resolve their process of fear and withdrawal. Throughout the article the client comments on her internal experience, her interpersonal connection with the psychotherapist, and the therapeutic qualities of the healing relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This case study explores depression as a presenting symptom that reflects an isolated attachment pattern, a core feature in the personality of psychotherapy clients who rely on a schizoid process as a form of emotional stabilization. The psychotherapist's various forms of countertransference--responsive, reactive, and identifying--were an essential part of uncovering the client's use of a relational withdrawal and in offering a reparative relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Psicoterapia is the property of Revista de Psiquiatria y Psicologia Humanista, S.L. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The author considers what seem to be norms and values concerning session frequency and length of treatment in 'traditional' and current child and adolescent psychotherapy practice, and the impact of training expectations and models of training on identity and status as a child and adolescent psychotherapist. In the UK National Health Service, there is pressure to do more in less time: the norm is once‐weekly work. Such an expectation does not sit comfortably with psychoanalytic theory and training, which remains rooted in higher frequency, longer‐term cases. For trainees, this can lead to feelings of fraudulence and questioning whether less frequent therapies imply that the work is not psychoanalysis. The author explores, through a literature review, a case study and research material, how one might acknowledge the tension between these conflicting values about time; how psychoanalytic work in all its forms might be valued and be valuable for patients; and urges the need to feedback clinical experience into training structures and ongoing learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The title of this paper reflects the author's continuing exploration of the nature of clinical boundaries, their maintenance, and transgressions in psychotherapy. There is a growing interest in enactments in the psychotherapeutic literature, including within transactional analysis. Boundary violations arising from enactments continue to be a feature of the psychotherapy profession. The author addresses the nature of boundaries, enactments and their management and mismanagement, and boundary crossings and violations, including questions about their therapeutic significance. Clinical examples from previously published material are used to highlight these issues. The research and clinical writings of Gabbard and his colleagues have had a significant impact on the author's thinking in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the psychotherapy methods that were effective with a client who unconsciously relied on the schizoid process of splitting of the self. Harry Guntrip's writings about the schizoid compromise and Donald Winnicott's descriptions of the true self and the false self are discussed. Alternative concepts--the vital and vulnerable self and the social self--are presented along with the methods of supported withdrawal and therapeutic description. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compassion, hope, and forgiveness in the therapeutic dialogue are essential aspects of a relationally focused integrative psychotherapy and are instrumental in healing the psychological wounds from neglect, stress, shame, and abuse. Each concept is defined, examples are given, and therapy illustrations provided that link the three concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article revisits aspects of the theory and methods of Integrative Psychotherapy as written and discussed by Richard G. Erskine, PhD and others. A case study demonstrates the use of Integrative Psychotherapy as the basis for therapeutic interventions that allow the client to interpret early experiences of relational failures, via a relationally based psychotherapy. Revisiting the theory and methods of Integrative Psychotherapy served to further validate the core of IP and its value as a cohesive and comprehensive psychotherapy.

Unlike other species, humans can experience sexual pleasure as an intersubjectively achieved sense of interpersonal union, a phenomenon that is distinct from other forms of sexual experience. Infant studies demonstrate that the human capacity for intersubjectivity is present at birth. Right-brain to right-brain affective communication can be achieved between infant and caregiver through the cultivation of complex processes of mutual affect attunement and regulation -- thus giving rise to reciprocal psychological and psychophysical experiences of mutual pleasure. The human polyvagal nerves allow genetically-driven neuroception of safety and danger -- of potential pleasure and pain -- in human relationships. Recognition and attachment theories clarify how these and other primal human response systems can be cultivated toward mutual pleasuring in infancy and early childhood. Interpersonal pleasuring is foundational to later experiences of reciprocal and mutual sexual pleasure accompanied by a sense of psychological attunement and union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the help of a clinical case, the author describes the phenomenological experience of ambivalence in the therapeutic setting and discusses its treatment in five steps: (1) recognize and legitimize the ambivalence; (2) differentiate between being uncertain and being confused; (3) accept the ambivalence, abstaining from resolving it immediately; (4) respectfully analyze the two poles of the ambivalence; and (5) recognize their fundamental unity because the two poles usually constitute the two faces of the same drive toward well-being. The case study shows how to deal not only with the patient's ambivalence but with the therapist's as well. The model of intervention described shows its usefulness for understanding both the transference and the countertransference dynamics of the therapeutic dyad. Necessary precautions are considered for successful completion of the analytic process, and the usefulness of empathic neutrality toward the two poles of ambivalence is described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Child development concepts and research provide the basis for therapeutic inquiry in a developmentally based, relationally focused integrative psychotherapy. This article focuses on the developmental ideas of Erik Erikson and relates them to the concepts of Bowlby, Fraiberg, Piaget, and Winnicott. The various developmental concepts provide the basis for developmental attunement, forming developmental images, phenomenological inquiry, and therapeutic inference that allow implicit and procedural memory to be expressed in a therapeutic narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This closing keynote address was delivered at the International Integrative Psychotherapy Association's 9th Biennial Conference, 19-23 March 2019 in Montpellier, France. It describes the history and eight essential points of a developmentally based, relationally focused integrative psychotherapy. Therapeutic presence is the concept that unites each of the essential points, which include: the centrality of relationship, awareness of phases of child development, current enactment of the past, attending to the person's body and unconscious relational patterns, the use of child therapy methods with adults, the understanding provided by the theories of ego states, and facilitating change only after the individual has an understanding of the function of his or her behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emotional experience is stored within the amygdala and the limbic system of the brain as affect, visceral, and physiological sensation without symbolization and language. These significant memories are expressed in affect and through our bodily movements and gestures. Such body memories are unconscious non-symbolized patterns of self-in-relationship. Several methods of a body centered psychotherapy are described and clinical case examples illustrate the use of expressive methods within a relational psychotherapy.

Copyright of Revista de Psicoterapia is the property of Revista de Psiquiatria y Psicologia Humanista, S.L. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

With rising student demand, time-limited therapy is becoming the rule rather than the exception at college counseling centers today. While many have viewed this shift as an unwelcome intrusion, this article will examine how to embrace and capitalize on this new, compressed form. Rather than seeing it as a constraint, it will be argued that it provides an opportunity to be more poetic and musical about our work, allowing us to take more therapeutic risks, establish greater momentum, and increase the number and variety of transformative moments in our sessions. Emphasis will be placed on the lessons that poetry and music can teach with respects to deepening and enhancing relational psychotherapy with our students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article views script as a dynamic process of attributing meaning to experience throughout life. It proposes that script change occurs through a dialectical tension between destabilization and integration within the psyche. Breakdown is seen as essential to growth. This process of “story-making and story-breaking” (Holmes, 2001, p. 87) ultimately generates an awareness of the self as author of one’s reality. Two client vignettes describe the author’s experience with a gradual and more sudden experience of script breakdown. These accounts illustrate how a relational approach to psychotherapy can facilitate the disintegration of a static script through an encounter with a separate subject. This process involves client and therapist in an intimate process: falling apart and getting it together. The discussion navigates a broader theme of script and intimacy, which lies at the heart of transactional analysis theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through the use of Relational Group Process (Erskine, 2013) the therapist(s) and group members join together to build an intersubjective environment a co-constructed group experience. This process encourages people to respectfully listen and inquire of each other, to move out of the role of simply being observers of group dynamics, and to stop engaging in judgmental assessments of the others. The intersubjective aspects of Integrative Psychotherapy are essential components for achieving the goal of integration. The set of relational methods outlined in Integrative Psychotherapy provide a comprehensive guide for intersubjective treatment. When these methods are applied to the group setting in the format of relational group process, they allow the integration of different experiences in the group matrix. The more the group matrix holds individual experiences, the more internal and external contact of group members is fostered. A case study illustrating these concepts and dynamics is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relational and intersubjective aspects of Integrative psychotherapy are essential components for achieving the goal of integration. The set of relational methods outlined in Integrative Psychotherapy, inquiry, attunement and involvement, provide a comprehensive guide for intersubjective treatment. Relational methods are important tools to help people with early relational failures, especially where those failures interfere with the development of intersubjective relating (Stern, 1985). This article focuses on three relational levels in an intersubjective context which contribute to integration: conscious verbal relating, non-verbal relating and non-linguistic or non-symbolized aspects of experience that are present in relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The set of relational methods outlined by Integrative Psychotherapy provide a comprehensive guide for intersubjective treatment. Research in child development has stressed the importance of intersubjectivity for the establishment of healthy reciprocal relationships. Several models of psychotherapy have adopted an intersubjective approach to address relational problems. The relational methods of Integrative Psychotherapy put into practice many insights emanating from research regarding the origins of intersubjectivity in child development. This article focuses on Meltzoff, Moore, Threvarthen, Stern and Rizzolatti's theories about intersubjectivity and their relationship to the relational methods of Integrative Psychotherapy. Meltzoff and Moore's studies of the development of intersubjectivity in childhood can be related to psychotherapeutic interventions at a clinical level based on the presence of an involved other. Threvarthen and Rizolatti's research supports the need to resonate with other's experience through self-experience, and Stern's theories are related to the inquiry about the other's mind. Such interventions contribute to building an intersubjective format in individual psychotherapy and may prove useful in helping people with early relational failures and the subsequent disruptions to the development of healthy intersubjective aspects of relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Philosophical principles of a relationally focused Integrative Psychotherapy are described through the concepts of vulnerability, authenticity, and inter-subjective contact. Eight principles or therapist attitudes are outlined with clinical examples that illustrate the philosophy. These philosophical principles provide the foundation for a theory of methods. This article is based on a keynote address given at the 6th International Integrative Psychotherapy Association Conference, Grantham, UK, July 11-14, 2013.

The article “Balancing on the ‘Borderline’ of Early Affect-Confusion: Part 2 of a Case Study Trilogy” serves as the basis for this rejoinder and collegial discourse. The organizing-functions of reparation, stabilization, regulation, and enhancement are described and placed within the transference-countertransference milieu. Examples of bifurcating client’s questions to resolve transference are provided.

This three part case study illustrates the principles, theoretical concepts, and relational methods of Integrative Psychotherapy in the treatment of a client who continually experienced early affect-confusion and lived on a “borderline” between intense neediness and rage, despair and self-reliance, impulsivity and manipulation. Part 1 describes the behavioral dynamics of a 38 year old female client who required a two-part treatment approach that emphasized an inter-subjective relationship, consistency, and respect while helping her to acknowledge and value her relational-needs and to engage in a relationally contactful form of anger.

The situation of empathy appearing and assertion in psychotherapy is analyzed from the historical point of view in the paper. The early psychoanalytic approaches of Sh. Ferentсi and O.Rank and their probable connection with C.Rogers views are presented. Some facts about H.Kohut and C.Rogers as founders of theories where the empathy is the core concept are first time mentioned in Russian psychology. Triple status of empathy in H.Kohut Self-psychology is analyzed in details: as the method of psychology, as psychoanalyst’s instrument and as the object of the universal personality need. Rogers’ and Kohut’s ideas development in modern experiental approaches and intersubjective psychoanalysis are viewed.

Therapeutic Involvement is an integral part of all effective psychotherapy.This article is written to illustrate the concept of Therapeutic Involvement in working within a therapeutic relationship – within the transference -- and with active expressive and experiential methods to resolve traumatic experiences, relational disturbances and life shaping decisions.

This paper is a case study, presenting the work with a client who was referred to me for six counselling sessions. This case illustrates the effectiveness of using a relational therapy in short term therapy so that the client was able to move from a place of feeling stuck in her life.

This article derives from an interview originally conducted for a webinar on relational psychotherapy. The focus is on relational approaches to political and social issues. The possibilities and limitations of such approaches are discussed in the interview. Attention is paid to ecopsychology and also to the interweave between personal experience and societal dynamics. The ways in which the political is still marginalized in psychotherapy are explored. Ideas about how to work directly in the session with clinical material that is political in nature are introduced. Specific attention is paid to situations where the therapist might be repelled by the viewpoints of the client. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the basis for the centrality of the therapeutic relationship in effective therapeutic outcomes, especially as distinct from technique, which prevails in the 21st-century Australian mental health context as a focus in determining what constitutes evidence-based practice. Presence-oriented therapeutic approaches infer an intersubjective field within which transformative enquiry can occur. This forms the basis of the article’s exploration of the function of the phenomenon of the “field” for intersubjective therapeutic relationship and its relationship to Levinas’ “third” as the basis for transformative, ethical, therapeutic practice. Work on “fields,” in different disciplinary domains that share a focus on understanding underlying processes and patterns of physical and social organization, yields sufficient common ground to speak of a field as a substantive principle on which to base practice. Relational Gestalt psychotherapy has developed the concept of field sufficiently to have evolved principles for working with the felt effects of the field, without firm resolve yet as to the ontological status of relational fields. Paradigmatically the work remains emergent in most disciplines. Further transdisciplinary research into field theory may yield more nuanced analysis of how to work intentionally with field conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article revisits aspects of the theory and methods of Integrative Psychotherapy as written and discussed by Richard G. Erskine, PhD and others. A case study demonstrates the use of Integrative Psychotherapy as the basis for therapeutic interventions that allow the client to interpret early experiences of relational failures, via a relationally based psychotherapy. Revisiting the theory and methods of Integrative Psychotherapy served to further validate the core of IP and its value as a cohesive and comprehensive psychotherapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current article is the first part of two devoted to Relational Psychotherapy in Borderline Personality disorders. Although a lot of Psychotherapy models support the idea that meaningful relationships in childhood with significant people are at the base of personality development not all think about therapeutic relationship as the main tool to achieve personal change. In this article the basic principles of Relational movement, one that is currently helping different psychotherapy schools to get closer, are described. Then the development of meaningful approaches to Borderline Personality Disorder psychotherapy is summarized. The last part presents the basic principles of a Relational Psychotherapy of these disorders with an approach which underlines therapeutic relationship and the involvement and attunement of psychotherapist as the core of treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relational loss, death, and mourning are all part of life and human relationships. Protracted and compounded grief occurs when something interferes with the normal grieving process. The psychotherapy of grief is described and two primary relational approaches are emphasized: face-to-face psychotherapy and the use of internal imagery via the empty-chair technique. In both approaches, the aim is to provide a balanced expression of affect, including emotional pain, anger, resentment, appreciation, and love. Several case examples are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the International Transactional Analysis Association, this article provides a listing of many of the books based in transactional analysis theory and technique that have been published during the past 5 years. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article focuses on the relational treatment of a male patient presenting with sexual and erotic feelings toward the therapist. The use of relational psychotherapy allowed us to collaborate in viewing our therapeutic relationship as a microcosm of other relationships throughout the patient's life. In this way, the patient came to understand his fears of being close to women, his discomfort with his sexuality, and how these feelings impacted his ongoing romantic and sexual experiences. Use of the therapist's reactions to the patient, including conscious and unconscious feelings and behaviors, aided in the conceptualization of this case. Working under a relational model was especially helpful when ruptures occurred, allowing the patient and therapist to address these moments and move toward repair. The patient was successful in making use of his sexual feelings to understand his feelings and behaviors across contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emotional experience is stored within the amygdala and the limbic system of the brain as affect, visceral, and physiological sensation without symbolization and language. These significant memories are expressed in affect and through our bodily movements and gestures. Such body memories are unconscious nonsymbolized patterns of self-in-relationship. Several methods of a body centered psychotherapy are described and clinical case examples illustrate the use of expressive methods within a relational psychotherapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Philosophical principles of a relationally focused Integrative Psychotherapy are described through the concepts of vulnerability, authenticity, and inter-subjective contact. Eight principles or therapist attitudes are outlined with clinical examples that illustrate the philosophy. These philosophical principles provide the foundation for a theory of methods. This article is based on a keynote address given at the 6th International Integrative Psychotherapy Association Conference, Grantham, UK, July 11-14, 2013. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]