Relational Transactional Analysis

Principles in Practice

Heather Fowlie, Charlotte Sills, Heather Fowlie, Charlotte Sills

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429918520
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicologia
• Subtopic: Storia e teoria della psicologia

'Through different voices and styles of contributions, including papers, edited talks and panel discussion, this collection explores and applies the principles of relational transactional analysis. It sets them in social, cultural and political contexts, and considers a number of important implications of this particular relational turn in psychotherapy. The book advances relational transactional analyses and, in doing so, reflects the creativity and vibrancy of contemporary TA. The editors have skilfully brought together different generations of TA practitioners in an accessible and stimulating volume. I commend the editors and highly recommend the book.'- Dr Keith Tudor, author of a number of books and co-author of the article "Co-creative transactional analysis" in the Transactional Analysis Journal. He is Associate Professor, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, Aotearoa, New Zealand.

Part I
Principles of Relational Transactional Analysis

Principle 1
The centrality of relationship

Chapter One

The use of self in psychotherapy

Diana Shmukler

Chapter based on the keynote address at the first IARTA Conference, December 2010

Through the course of preparing and giving this talk, then continuing to think more about this opportunity to present a personal perspective to a group of like-minded colleagues, I have had a few more thoughts to add to the chapter. As I edit my original notes for publication, changing them from thoughts for a talk to a written piece, I have added these comments in italics to the original version.

The key addition, I think, is the sense I have that a relational perspective is beyond an integration of humanistic and psychoanalytic thinking. Possibly this is what Steven Mitchell meant in his now groundbreaking work Relational Concepts in Psychoanalysis (1988), as a paradigm shift. I mean an even broader frame than his, as I and most of the IARTA audience come from a humanistic tradition. Although many of us have appropriated and accumulated psychoanalytic ideas to our way of working—indeed our approach may have psychoanalytic roots—we are, however, psychotherapists. We do not claim to be psychoanalysts, we have been trained and work in a variety of ways (usually face-to-face, once a week) which tend to be interactive and dialogic, rather than relying on interpretation and insight alone as the mechanism of healing.

What I mean by this as a perspective on therapeutic action is that in the same way as we talk about relational trauma, relational injury, or relational deficit as the source of the psychological problems, so are we also describing a process of therapy that focuses on relational healing. This is the focus of this chapter. It is about not only the validity (according to the research on the efficacy of psychotherapy) but also the necessity of considering the therapeutic relationship, its creation, maintenance, long-term sustainability and internalization as the essence of the work. The work is about making and attending to relational needs in both participants of the therapeutic dyad.

In a sense, this addendum is a plea for a way of working which invites therapists and counsellors to be alive to the need to fully embody themselves, to strive to be themselves, and express themselves, with all the caveats we have around self disclosure—some of which are described below. Thus, we offer our clients and patients a relationship and the experience of being in a relationship with a real, alive person, who has worked on themselves, developed not only the capacity for listening but equally relevantly for self reflection, and self awareness. Someone who is willing to metabolize feelings, process and think about the process, judiciously disclose their own process, and own up to making mistakes, getting things wrong, not knowing and at times not understanding what is happening. Someone who is willing to endure the discomfort and anxiety that intensive intimate one-to-one relationships with other adults generate in the here and now. Someone who both deeply considers themselves and the impact they have on others while at the same time lets themselves go; in other words is able to give up on their own narcissism, known defences and self-protective mechanisms, in the service of risking authenticity and spontaneity.

What follows is the original talk somewhat adjusted to the written rather than the spoken form

I am honoured to be invited to give this address and very pleased to take the opportunity to put some ideas together at this time in my thinking and professional development. I will come to the title: “The Use of the Self in Therapy”, or It’s all about you and nothing to do with you at the same time, in a minute. I want to introduce this talk however with a description of my own background influences and perspectives, which of course have shaped and determined the views that I hold. Inevitably everything that I have to say is framed and in some ways arises from these factors. For years we have used a process called “Who am I?” as a way of introducing people to each other. This is a very powerful way to create a shared context in which to work. At times I have indeed asked clients early on in the work, often in a first session: “Who are you?”

So this first part is about “who I am”.

As is well known to many of you, I grew up within the apartheid structures of what is now known as “the Old South Africa”, living in a country which meant that all the inhabitants were profoundly influenced by the prevailing political climate of oppression, injustice, and simmering discontent. Yet for a long period while I was growing up, white South Africans appeared to live their lives untouched and in fact sheltered, shielded, and protected from the underbelly of what was going on in terms of the injustice, violence, and racial discrimination, with its impact on the children and adults of races other than white.

As a young woman I was privileged and lucky to get an appointment very early on at the big and important white English language University in Johannesburg. Partly as a result of the brain drain which began as the apartheid policies strengthened and the academic boycotts increased, I became a professor at a young age. Consequently, I belonged to a group of youngsters in charge of things who were able to influence policies, syllabi, and courses at an early stage in our careers. With that came the opportunities to work in a variety of contexts and with a variety of issues, beyond the ordinary middle class preoccupations we may have had and seen in clinical settings.

My earliest intellectual and academic interests were, in fact, typically white and middle class: I pursued a master’s and subsequent doctorate degree in the area of creativity, imagination, and play. However, these were superseded by what were to become more significant and political interests. These involved our bids for academic freedom and getting our courses open to all races so that we could train and teach black therapists and professionals, to work across many communities. We were thus thrust into and had to face constant challenges with regard to the relevance of white middle class ideas and theories in broader communities, families, and psychological issues and problems.

Political issues were to take over and dominate our work. In particular, the violence that erupted with the 1976 riots, and then continued to escalate and spread until eventually every-one’s life was affected by violence and thus, of course, trauma.

Against this background I want briefly to describe the way in which the psychological field, and in particular ideas about psychotherapy, have changed in the last thirty years or so, leading to the rapid growth and development of contemporary views of psychotherapy.

As a student of psychology in the 60s it seemed as if there were only two options. The first was behaviourism, and our school produced some of the top and best known people in the world, namely Wolpe and Lazarus, followed by a whole cohort of their students who left for the States to head up well known departments of psychology at Princeton, Yale, and to Canada for Vancouver, Toronto etc.

The other frame, much more interesting to us, was the psychoanalytic view, very much at that time traditional Freudian, which was somehow not acceptable because it was not scientific within a post ex facto view of science, and was also problematic in apartheid South Africa where psychoanalysis was somehow linked to the evils of communism. It was seen, ironically, as in the Soviet Union, associated with liberal and hence anti-government ideas.

During the 60s, however, in between these two approaches, arose what became known as the “Third Wave”—that is either humanism or existentialism. Its development allowed a small group of young go-ahead psychotherapists (we were also trained traditionally as clinical psychologists, which meant testing, behavioural techniques, and so on) to seek a training within the humanistic field, which we saw as extremely compatible with the ideas and politically left-wing views held by many at the liberal universities in South Africa. We were attracted particularly to the offshoots of traditional psychoanalysis, specifically Eric Berne’s and Fritz Perls’s challenges to conventional psychoanalytic treatment.

As many of you remember, an early exposure to TA theory carried its own thrilling and compelling features. Everything seemed possible, people could change, changing was simple if you applied the right technique, be it re-decision therapy, re-Parenting, re-Childing, confronting old script beliefs and so on. Many of these techniques worked well and in response, to provide ourselves with further training, we formed what we called the “TA/Gestalt Society for ongoing training and development in psychotherapy”.

The release of affect, the power of catharsis, and the insight that often followed, indicated that unconscious and out of awareness processes were being unlocked, and these experiences were particularly appealing and powerful.

By the time I came to live in England, I felt I was doing reasonably competent work with this approach. I also felt, however, at times and in some clinical situations that I was getting profoundly stuck and there were things that would happen that I could not make sense of.

Self psychology, in which I grew interested around this time, seemed to form some bridge between humanism and psychodynamic thinking and a way of thinking about these stuck places. It was certainly clear to me, and always had been, that unconscious processes were key to transformative and effective therapy going beyond supportive and superficial changes. I think I was looking for some way to include or integrate psychodynamic understanding into a way of working. What remained a puzzle was how to work with the unconscious if one was not traditionally psychoanalytically trained.

My personal growth point at this time had to do with coming to live in London, a rich home of psychoanalytic thinking, ideas, and practitioners. Once I got over the regret of not having come as a young woman to train as an analyst and perhaps a training analyst myself, I could settle down, with my very gifted, generous, and able supervisor, and learn how to extrapolate the richness and brilliance of analytic thinking into broader arenas of work, thus expanding and extending the way and gain access beyond what still feels to me like an elitism in terms of the availability and acceptability for that magical process—a Psychoanalysis.

Some further and highly significant developments in the broad field have largely influenced the thinking, practising, and development of psychotherapy. These developments provide strong theoretical grounds for relationally based work.

The first is what could be called the effect of the “baby watchers” which supports our understanding of how the self is organized and shaped by the past—historical, familial—particularly in relation to others and in relationship. I will come back to this.

The second highly relevant and key development is the research on the brain, the neuroscience and in particular the developing brain, the traumatized brain and the way in which relationships are key to the child’s development and capacity for relationship.

In many ways this brain research has, at last, provided the scientific evidence for a relational or relationship-based psychotherapy as a foundation for the correction of the earlier trauma, disruptions, and disorganizations in relationship.

Finally another factor that needs to be mentioned is that all the research into the efficacy of psychotherapy has emphasized and supported the single most outstanding common factor to be the therapeutic relationship.

* * *

So, I have briefly outlined the major influences on my own clinical work and understanding. I believe these same theoretical factors have shaped and changed the field more generally, in the last fifteen to twenty years, laying a solid basis for an integrative way of thinking, as well as an emphasis on a relational perspective.

I want also briefly to expand on some ideas about creative expression—my very early interest, which, as I became clinically equipped, translated into what I call working with the “inner world” in the “outer world”, a notion described long ago by Winnicott (1971) as a “transitional space”. I see this creative expression as relating to a more general finding and using oneself—expressing aspects of one’s inner world in a way that connects to others in a form of creativity in the shared external world. Although these terms seem recognizable and readily understood, I am still not able to clearly describe what the inner world, landscape, internal process, states of mind fully are. It does seem clear to me, however, that this is what the work is about: finding ways and opportunities for this expression by our clients/patients to use in the shared space, the dialogue we co-create together. And, of course, so too do we, the therapists, express our inner beliefs, perceptions, values, and deeply embedded familial and cultural experiences in relationship.

I offer an example from a recent workshop, which involved the symbolic making or constructing aspects of self which then very powerfully led to greater understanding, expanded awareness, and ability to use the self. Simply, we used a technique from play therapy by asking the participants to make fairies from all sorts of bits and pieces. While they were gluing things on, firming things up, finding the right piece of ribbon and so on, it seemed obvious to me that they were concretizing a form of self structure, by the finding and making—both from the real world and their inner worlds. Where this workshop became thrilling and at times, of course, not playful in the fun sense but in fact deeply serious, was when we linked these creations up with their scripts in the form of stories or children’s narratives from a selection of children’s books.

This is a long introduction to the Use of Self, or my statement that It is All About You and Nothing to Do with You at the Same Time.

The use of self

It seems to me that from a relational point of view, what we most powerfully offer our patients and clients is a relationship—a relationship with a real person who is present, alive, responding emotionally and intellectually, and putting themselves in the service of the work. I consider the damage that we deal with clinically to be relational damage, trauma, and injury. The people that we work with come to us primarily because they want help to be more effective in their relationships with others and to understand these better. This is not behavioural work, although of course there are important behaviours that can be learnt and that need to change. This is not lying on a couch four or five times a week, ruminating about what is in one’s mind—as enriching, stimulating, and enlivening as this may be. Neither is it beating up cushions, shouting at empty chairs, or pretending to be a child again.

As I see it, it is very firmly and clearly working out current and real issues in as straight, effective, honest, and caring a relationship as is possible. As therapists we have the advantage of not living with our clients; our relationship is tightly bounded and securely held in time, space, and professional contracts. (I will say more about the centrality of boundaries in a minute.)

I have come to the position that the more fully we can be ourselves, the more we bring this quality to the relationship. Thus, irrespective of what or who the client thinks we are, when we are sure that we are as fully ourselves as we can consciously be, then we more easily become aware of being turned into something that we are not.

I will explain a little more of what I mean. Of late, I have felt that when I am working most effectively, in whatever capacity, as therapist, supervisor, teacher, consultant, facilitator, that is when I am most fully “who I am” as the grown-up adult. Of course that does not mean that I do not regress—become Parental in a TA or other sense, it means that I bring all of myself as much as possible to the relationship. This best describes what I mean by being fully yourself, that is, the “all about you” part of the equation.

I also feel that the all about you part has something to do with how we inevitably put ourselves into the client’s shoes in the required attempt to understand from their perspective. In doing so we are of course vulnerable to imagining what our solution to the dilemmas would be, perhaps missing or not accounting for the client’s ability or inability to follow a course of action. I often have biases in couples work and the...