Longing and Fear: The Ambivalence About Having a Relationship in Psychotherapy

Abstract

It is unquestioned that reaching the hypnotic state is helped along by relational factors and that, conversely, relational experiences can be deepened through hypnosis. It is also true that deepening the experience of being in a relationship with another person is neither comfortable nor indicated for every patient or therapist. Most humans feel ambivalent about closeness. People vary in their desire for and their skill in sustaining mature intimacy. When we move along the continuum from rudimentary notions about relational factors in psychotherapy, such as rapport, to complex concepts, such as enactments, we move along a corresponding continuum of increasing need for specialized training, supervised experience, and personal therapy. The field of psychotherapy has been plagued from its inception by not knowing what to do with the tensions that emerge when two people listen to and look at each other. Avoiding relational factors may be a very human response to a very daunting matter.

Keywords:

• alliance
• harm
• hypnosis
• personal therapy
• psychotherapy
• relational factors
• relational psychoanalysis

Notes

^1. Because interpersonal factors are the focus of this article, it is salient to articulate the interpersonal implications of using the word patient versus client. It is salient because when one listens from within an interpersonal lens, one assumes that everything speaks. I use the word patient instead of client because of my training, not because it is a perfect word. The word has its minuses and pluses. The minus is its connotation of hierarchy, rather than equality. The pluses are its connotation of suffering and the corresponding wish to help heal. I would argue that using the word client cannot erase the reality of there being a power differential between therapist and patient. When we face consciously the reality of the difference in power, we are better equipped to channel power intentionally for the patients’ well-being, as well as to vigorously empower our patients to discover and utilize the power within them. I would also argue that the word patient allows for an ennobling of the receptivity required for help receiving, as well as the respect demanded of help givers. I may be arguing from a position of having a blind spot. The reader is referred to Pruyser (1979) for further thoughts on this matter.

^2. Interestingly, also at this time period, similar tensions were reaching critical mass in the larger culture beyond psychotherapy. Revelations of President Bill Clinton’s transgressions with Monica Lewinsky grabbed and held center stage: two adults, in an intimate working relationship with a power differential, behind closed doors, slid down a slippery slope from working relationship to mutual admiration into an illicit physical relationship. The country was riveted, gripped by ambivalent, confusing tensions, unsure how to respond.

^3. Two of Gardner’s (1983) seven identified “intelligences” were “interpersonal” and “intrapersonal” (see pp. 237–276). See also Goleman (1995) and even Hallowell (2002).