THE THERAPIST AS RELATIONAL ARTIST
The central challenge for each therapist is how to address and balance, three constantly interacting dimensions of experience: the client's experience; the therapist’s experience; and the therapeutic relationship.
The workshop will focus on the “relational dance” between therapist and client. This includes the “artistic” instant-by-instant clinical decisions that the therapist must make in the here-and-now of the ongoing, and ever-changing, therapeutic engagement. The emphasis is on how the client and therapist form an interactive and constantly evolving relational field, in which both of their developmental relational strengths, and weaknesses, get illuminated and played out, in the hope of creating a deepened healing relationship together.
The primary emphasis is on the client’s experience of this relationship and the therapist’s attunement to that experience, and the client’s response to that attunement, and how that enhances the therapeutic relationship. A deepened sense of “presence” on the part of the therapist, and also the client, is essential, and will be explored.
While being attuned to the client and the ongoing quality of the relationship, simultaneously the therapist must be self-attuned, and constantly pay attention to her/his emotional reactions. A central clinical artistic judgment is: How much does the therapist bring her/his own experience and personhood into the foreground of the relationship, in the service of highlighting and expanding the client’s experiential possibilities, and deepening the development of the relationship?
The workshop will include theory, demonstrations, and discussions. Participants will be encouraged to explore their own clinical artistic interventions, and be sensitized to exploring previously unexplored dimensions of their relational impact on clients. They will further be encouraged to expand their “use of self” within the therapeutic relationship.
Ph.D. Rich Hycner, San Diego 2010
