The Relationship Paradigm

Human Being Beyond Individualism

Godfrey Barrett-Lennard

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9781137329721
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350305656
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychotherapy
• Index: Psychology

In this important new book, Godfrey Barrett-Lennard challenges the individualist focus of traditionalist psychology by proposing that the human condition is basically relational and interdependent. Rich in depth and scope, The Relationship Paradigm explores relationship systems over an absorbing vista of multiple connections. This includes relations within the self, interpersonal relationships, relationships between and within communities, organizations and nations, and relationships with animals. There is a chapter on relations in war. The result is a sophisticated account of the complex weave of human relationships, providing counselors and other professionals who work with people with a foundation of thought that will offer fresh insights both for practice and the search for new knowledge.

Combining new ideas with practice principles and illustrations, this is a book of rare value for students, practitioners and research enquirers.

Part I

Human Relationship: Nature and Domain

1

The Idea and Variety of Human Relationships

What is a human relationship in its basic nature? Does the way that people behave together constitute their relationship, or, is it centrally about the feelings each one has with and about the other? You, the reader, no doubt have observed many relationships. Do you think (or agree) that they have a kind of chemistry with its own qualities that cannot be predicted just from knowing each member separately? Further, do relationships only develop in interpersonal face-to-face situations? Or, do they arise also between groups, communities, even nations? On another level, is it meaningful to speak of relations within our own complex selves (think of inner arguments as a possible illustration). These are a small sample of the questions you or I might raise in this basic realm of human existence. One broad observation is that relationships vary greatly in kind, quality and people-dimension, and there is much to be understood about them. What follows is the opening of a full-scale effort to advance that understanding.

This chapter in the first part is concerned with the basic nature of human relationships or, more exactly, with how we might best view and think about that nature. Two connecting issues are then considered. One of these is to explore the inner life of relationships as their participants experience them. A further aspect is to begin to sketch out the very broad domain and reach of human relationships. Leaving aside inner relations, they are seen as ranging in structure from one-on-one all the way up to international and other big-system relations. And, they can be distinguished qualitatively as in the simple illustration that follows (not a test, but an invitation to connect from your own experience) adapted from the detailed exploration in Chapter 6:

Think of two differing relationships that you know from the inside or as a close observer. Try rating them (your own personal sense) somewhere on the line between the following pairs of contrasting qualities. You could identify and plot one relationship as ‘A’ and the other as ‘B’. There is no score, but it might interest you to see if/where they are alike, where they differ most, and where it’s ‘hard to say’. If you wish, add to the broad relationship qualities; or plot additional relationships.

On the Basic Nature of Human Relationships

Relationship traditionally implies connection and exchange between individuals or groups, each aware of the other in an association that matters to them in some way (positively or otherwise). Implied is the assumption that life, consciousness and human agency all reside in the participants not in relationships, which serve to satisfy needs of the members. However, relationships often engage people very strongly as a source of meaning and vehicle of self-expression. They are a major force in people’s lives. Thus, it also can be said that relationships are a further level or kind of life that specifically comes into being through association. This life expresses itself and speaks through the participants and can also have a presence and distinct quality to concerned outside others. These two views of relationship – (1) as a structure and process of inbetween activity and (2) as an emergent entity with its own character and life – warrant unfolding to reveal more of their core meanings and assumptions.

Relationships as Vital Bridges Between Lives

Linkage or connection of some kind seems basic to any idea of relationship. In a widely implied view, the link is a joining bridge between persons who also stand apart in their being. The relationship opens the way between these islands of conscious life and meaning. There typically are exchanges of feelings, stories, ideas and intentions, physical actions, and of gifts or other objects – any of which may be desired and valued, or unwanted and reacted to. In this view, each participant lives an individual life, and relationship is a major avenue for the expression of this separate and needful life. In personal relationships, each member is a felt presence to the other. It is an association and sometimes a partnership between people whose lives intersect and have meaning, often utility and sometimes threat to each other. In relations between groups and larger systems, each group is a consequential presence to the other in widely varied ways and there may be flow of interchange between them.

From this familiar standpoint it would seem obvious that the mentioned features are in keeping with what relationship is essentially about. We are separate beings (or groups of people) who have needs or concerns that involve one another for their satisfaction, and who are associated by choice or circumstance. Relational engagements that arise from circumstance can be very strong, as between children in families. Relationships that are self-chosen, perhaps with considerable investment of self, can nevertheless be transient. If there come to be disturbing features and little satisfaction for either or both parties then distancing is likely and the relationship may effectively end (see, e.g., Miller & Stiver, 1997, on strategies of disconnection).

This position implies a transactional or exchange view of relationship, in keeping with the dominant individualist mindset of Western culture. An even broader assumption is that people stand or fall by their own merit and actions, and have full responsibility for their relationships (Barrett-Lennard, 2007a). They give, receive, judge, compete and do lots of other things in relation. Where a relationship is faltering, stressed or conflictual it is the two (or more) parties who are causing and enduring this stress or conflict. Individuals feel the emotional impact; other kinds of effect are basically their doing and it is they who are responsible for any kind of resolution. The relationship itself is not a force in its own right, even though damaging consequences might flow from conflict or breakdown. Any healing processes occur in individuals and apply only indirectly to the relationship. Although this perspective has much familiar meaning some of its assumptions are open to serious question.

Relationships as Emergent Expressions and Forms of Life

An alternative view recognizes relationship as itself having or partaking of life. A literally new human life starts from complex interchange, usually in an intimate relationship. In fertilization a fresh sorting of chromosomes from the two parents occurs. A human embryo then progressively forms within the mother’s body. At some point, evidently starting before birth, there is a dawning of consciousness in this new being that is not yet aware of itself as another life. Infants gradually learn that they are separate from their parent, though dependently connected, and each acquires their identity through this and other relationships. Thus, in the forming of a new life, relationship comes before individuality. Later relationships emerge from the conjunction of formed though still evolving people.

A person is an enormously complex whole arising from the coming together of a great range of component entities, the intricate brain and nervous system being the most complex and integrative subsystem within this emerging whole of a complete person – who possesses properties (notably including consciousness) not possessed by any parts. Effectively, a human life is a more encompassing and higher order system than the components that it arises from and integrates (see Chapter 2). Similarly, a relationship is an emergent live whole on a further level, with its own properties. It is not simply an additive combination of its parts, not of the same kind as a personality but of another order (Barrett-Lennard, 2007a, 2009). Kriz (1985/1989) speaks of self-organizing processes as fundamental to the understanding and working of complex systems. A whole person can be seen as a self-organizing system. Many underlying structures and subsystems are essential for this life, but none of these wholly programs it. The whole has its own flexible ‘program’. Similarly, an emergent relationship has this self-organizing quality.

This alternative view acknowledges that we are basically co-existent beings. A disposition to relate is wired into our make-up. In most formed relationships each person has a consciousness of ‘we’ as well as ‘I’. This we-consciousness (Barrett-Lennard, 1993) is often reflected in dialogue and typically experienced in inner reflection. Interactive behaviour in relationships, however, often occurs without individual intention, even when either or both partners would wish it to have a different quality. A configuration of relationship process comes into action, which partners cannot simply turn on and off at will. They have helped to determine their ‘we’ process, but also are influenced by it. Their relational pattern will, in addition, influence and be influenced by other relationships.

Formed relationships normally are not static; they continue to evolve depending partly on the participants’ stages in life and their experience outside the relationship in focus. Children as young as three or four often form a variety of significant relationships, some necessarily dependent and others where dependence is not such a marked feature – as perhaps with grandparents or playschool carers. Older children may bond strongly with non-family peers as well as within their families. The context of family systems, culture, school and models of relationship in the young person’s world all play a part. People tend to have a web of relationships that naturally influence forming new relations.

The Lifetime and Inheritance of Relationships

As mentioned, some relationships begin at the birth of a child, or before birth in the case of a pregnant mother and the stirring baby within. They also, it seems, begin between unborn twins (Castiello et al., 2010; see also Piontelli, 2002). They can last through the overlapping lifetimes of the participants, or even longer as further noted. They develop and change, in interaction with the changing consciousness of participant members and the influence of external relational and other systems. Relationships that benefit from and contribute to the fruition of participants may develop a ‘co-actualizing’ quality (Motschnig-Pitrik & Barrett-Lennard, 2010). Given that life processes are always on the go, and that the contexts of encounter with others are so diverse, relationships vary greatly in effective longevity as well as in kind and quality (see next section). Moreover, any close relationship or one that is distinctively important to the participants tends to remain in memory long after that relationship is externally active.

Thus, even after the life of a participant ends, relationships may live on strongly in the thoughts and feelings of a surviving member, with images replayed, interior conversations, continued engagement with a person’s meanings and values and perhaps even a sense of the other’s presence. And even when both or all members of the original relationship in focus are no longer alive their observed and felt relation can live on in others who were affected by and witness to it. This appears to hold not only in family and other intimate contexts, but also in some relations between groups and communities or even nation states. Furthermore, strong echoes of such relationships may recur in the next and further generations. Thus, even though relationships do not have characteristics that are passed on genetically, both individual and group memories can provide the vehicle for significant inheritance. This thought invites attention to ways that relationships vary in their working.

Relationship Differences in Experience

Immediate experience in and inward reference to a personal relationship mostly focuses on ‘you’ or ‘me’, or one of us toward or in response to the other. Our inner images centre on the parties to the relationship and include feeling or thought messages, one to the other. These might convey ‘how I’m feeling with you’, ‘this is what I think [said as an invitation or a challenge]’, ‘you’re telling me…’, ‘I remember when…’, ‘you are making me upset’, ‘let’s you and me do X____’. Communication in relation may also advise or instruct the other, check out an understanding of them, and variously criticize or ask for the other’s help (see Goodman & Easterly, 1988). Most exchanges fit our tendency to perceive agency as located in individual people (and in individual groups). An engagement process is seen as being in ‘my’ hands, or in ‘yours’, or with some share to each one. How the relationship itself is working, and what its qualities or problems are, is seldom considered – and usually quite absent in the heat of conflict.

Although a relationship does not literally speak, it expresses itself. Its process voice can be heard by or visible to the attuned observer and sometimes to the participant who is listening for it. As most of us have felt or observed, relationship qualities vary widely. In examples already implied, they range from being stuck in a repeating pattern to being in free unfolding motion; from having a strongly cohesive quality to being disjointed or fragmented; from having a lively intensity to being subdued and muted; from a reactive jumpiness to a flowing responsive quality; from having a strongly sharing quality to a quite withholding ambience; and from being high to distinctly low in energy.

Immediate feelings of participants within relationships cover an even greater gamut. Level of trust and felt safety is an important variable. The warmth of feeling of either party toward the other is a vital aspect in personal relationships. Relations between groups can also be more or less respecting and regardful. The extent to which this regard is conditional on the other party meeting some expectation or desired quality, or whether it is conveyed without judgement of the other, has crucial bearing on the emerging relationship. As the reader may know, Carl Rogers distinguished unconditional positive regard on the part of the helper toward his/her client as a primary ingredient in therapeutic relationships (Rogers, 1959). This did not imply acceptance of all behaviours, but a profound and genuine receptivity to the felt experience and meanings of the other person. The not uncommon experience of being judged and found wanting by the other tends to inhibit open expression and felt security, as well as reducing any immediate warmth for the judging other. The aspects of level of regard and of the degree to which this regard is unconditional can be separately defined and even measured in relationships, as in my own work (see Chapter 11 and Barrett-Lennard, 2003, chapter 8).

Compassion and empathy are not identical processes though often linked in expression. Compassion implies a strongly felt concern for the experience and perhaps suffering and circumstance of the other. Empathy implies an inner resonance and recognition of the felt experience and meaning of another person. Although it involves activation within the listener of a related quality of felt experience, this is not carried to the extent of identifying with the other and losing track of what is distinctive about their experience. A tendency to respond empathically also implies the broader linkage of being a sensitive, involved part of the human world of felt experience and meaning. Communicated empathic understanding can simultaneously connect and release the other from an inner burden. For this and related awareness processes to happen within a relationship the parties need also to experience each other as open and truly the way they are presenting themselves. A simulated portrayal of this quality may briefly have similar effect but, since transparency is part of such genuineness, even skilled simulation is unlikely to work for long (see, e.g., Rogers, 1961, part 2, and sources in Bohart & Greenberg, 1997).

Nearly all felt attitudes can vary in degree or strength, and mostly they have opposites (examples are given in Chapters 3, 4 and 6). Emotional response is in our make-up and part of being alive. Although anger, contempt and other negative feelings can hurt others, their complete suppression or denial in a relationship keeps its surface temperature at a critically low level. Relationships with little participant feeling in them are barely alive. Individuals discover themselves in relationships and may find that self-change and relationship enrichment go hand in hand. Discovery learning of how to express negative emotion in ways that do not injure and may even enhance particular relationships can be a vital sphere of change. Similarly, conveying immediate positive emotion in natural expressive ways that are also perceptive of the other happens in (and is part of) enriched relationships.

These various attributes all have bearing on whether a relationship in its overall process state has a growthful actualizing quality. Very positive states of this kind, especially in personal relationships, have bee...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Part I: Human Relationship: Nature and Domain
• Part II: Human Distress and the Working of Systems
• Part III: Unfolding the Worlds of Relationship
• Part IV: Research and the New Paradigm
• References
• Index