Therapist-Client Relationship

Heller refers to three therapy modalities, the classical, objective, and totalistic, to explain how views of the therapist's role in the therapy process has evolved since the earliest period. Transference and countertransference aspects of the therapist-client relationship originate in classical theory, and classical theory originates with Freud. In the classical view, transference is the name given to the patient's carrying into the relationship with the therapist "unresolved difficulties in interpersonal relationships with the significant people of the patient's early life." According to Fromm-Reichmann, Freud's valuable contribution was to study the therapist-client relationship closely. Heller adds that the classical view of that relationship was that the therapist should guard against countertransfering his own unresolved difficulties into the relationship with the client, which resulted in the classical view of countertransference as the dangers of (a) dropping a neutral perspective and (b) displa

. . .
n the interpersonal experience of psychotherapy. While Heller combines a number of apparently different and competing ideas of psychotherapy under the totalistic label, the common feature that various subperspectives share is that as an aspect of totalistic theory, they attempt to capture, as Heller says, "the inner emotional life of the therapist in psychotherapy." Even totalistic therapy modes, however, contain power relationships that surface in the connection between therapist and client. Not all power relationships in psychotherapy are negative or destructive, although there is danger of power abuse by the therapist, for purposes of self-aggrandizement, conveying of therapist values, or the assumption of social power roles, for example. Heller adds, however, that power gives life to the role of psychotherapy: Power is an essential component for therapy, both as the therapist's contribution to the change process and as the client's intended destination in the search for change. A reasonable amount of power is necessary for an individual client or therapist to become a fully individuated person. An issue ancillary to that of power ratios in psychotherapy is that of how the self is disclosed in and projected into the client-t
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
Fromm-Reichmann Freud's, Carl Rogers's, , classical view, therapist-client relationship, People Press, York Norton, Sciences Press, Chicago Press, therapist client, relationship therapist, Mifflin Company, Row Publishers, transference countertransference, Rogers Carl, power ratios psychotherapy, relationship client, rogers carl, self patient, power relationships, picture therapist, emotional life therapist, classical view transference,
Approximate Word count = 1652
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

More Essays on Therapist-Client Relationship