The Therapeutic Relationship

My understanding of the psychotherapeutic relationship has led me to believe that the central component of healing work starts and continues to depend on the safety and containment of the relationship. According to John Mills (2005) in relational psychoanalytic psychotherapy

the primary focus . . . is not on the object . . . [but] rather, the emphasis is on the system itself. The intersubjective field . . . – or whatever words we wish to use to characterize the indissoluble intersection and interactional enactment between two or more human beings—these terms evoke a spatial metaphor, and hence they imply presence or being. (p. 161)

Freud’s expression “Cure by love” expresses what I strive toward with all the patients I work with. Nancy McWilliams (2004) wrote that

the secret [to Freud’s cure ‘by love’] is to listen carefully, to be genuinely interested in the other person, to react in an accepting and nonshaming way to his or her disclosures, and to make no demands that the other party meet one’s emotional needs—defining aspects of the psychoanalytic arrangement. (p. 158)

TThis brings to mind the depth psychological perspective that symptoms “may be looked at . . . as natural attempts at healing” (Samuels, Shorter, & Plaut, 1986, p. 64). The attempt of a patient to self-heal, because it may appear pathological, often can be projected onto the therapist, which can trigger in the therapist the archetype of the wounded healer (p. 65). “the analyst projects his own experience of being wounded into the patient in order to know the patient in an emotional sense” (p. 65), and, in turn, a client projects his or her ability to self-heal onto the therapist, who holds this capacity for the client.

If the patient is only seen as ‘ill,’ then he is also cut off from his own inner health or his capacity to heal himself. Ideally, though the patient may initially project his self-healing capacities onto the analyst, later he will take them back. (p. 65)

The unconscious of the client and therapist are thus linked in the healing process, and the self-healing ability of the client is activated in the safety of the contained feminine space.