The Therapist As Relational Artist

Rich Hycner, PhD

The aim of this workshop is to explore the professional artistry involved in our psychotherapy work when balancing the client’s emotional safety with her/his growing edge (while in the background the therapist is also balancing her/his own safety and growing edge). 

There will be a presentation of theory, numerous individual demonstrations of relational work, and the likelihood of a group demonstration, and in-depth clinical discussions of the demonstrations. If participants wish, there can even be supervised practice sessions. Newcomers to this workshop are welcome while those who have participated in previous workshops will be able to build on their previous experience.

Rich is particularly focused on the therapeutic relationship as the nexus for healing, and views the therapist’s presence as an especially unique and challenging medium for exploring the relational and experiential dimensions of therapy. The therapist needs to be mindful of her/his emotional range and depth, to be as fully present as possible to the innumerable possibilities of connecting and/or disconnecting in the therapeutic relationship. It is an ever ongoing challenge to be as present as possible to “what is,” but to also imagine and “lean into” the next connecting movement toward “what can be.”  The therapist’s acutely sensitive attunement leads to either greater relational connection and the client's (and possibly the therapist's) intrapersonal integration—or if momentarily unattuned, this may lead to further relational disconnection, defensiveness, and compartmentalization. Even these moments of apparent relational disconnection will be explored for turning them into possibilities for deeper therapeutic connections. 

Rich’s thinking is permeated by Martin Buber’s philosophy of dialogue and Erving and Miriam Polster’s creative Gestalt therapy approaches, and forty-three years of being a psychotherapist. He is the author of Between Person and Person: Toward a Dialogical Psychotherapy and co-author with Lynne Jacobs of The Healing Relationship: A Dialogic/Self Psychology Approach. Rich and Lynne Jacobs also co-edited; Relational Approaches in Gestalt Therapy.

"The Therapist as Relational Artist", 2010

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

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San Diego 2010