Secret Gardens and Dusty Roads

Abstract

The author examines the tensions present in every psychotherapy between the contract, on the one hand, and the illusions of the patient and therapist, on the other. She considers these as two of the various polarities through which the psychotherapeutic process develops with its intrinsic ambiguities. The role Berne assigned to illusion and disillusionment in life and in every psychotherapeutic process is compared with the various functions of illusion discussed by Winnicott and psychoanalysts of the British School. Considering the contract and illusions in a dialectic relationship, the author reflects on the clinical implications of the transactional analysis theory of contracts; discusses recent transactional analytic viewpoints, mainly from a relational perspective, that widen the clinical prospects of psychological contracts; and considers the possible implicit and dynamic influences of these developments. She also examines some specific illusions of patients and therapists and considers their implicit links with clinical models common to various psychotherapeutic theories.

• psychological contracts
• illusion
• disillusionment
• transitional space
• play
• solitude

Notes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Valentina Terlato

Author Biography

Valentina Terlato is a psychologist, psychotherapist, and Provisional Teaching and Supervising Transactional Analyst (psychotherapy). She lives in Rome, where she works with adults and adolescents at a public mental health center. She is also teacher at Auximon, an Italian school for transactional analysis. She can be reached at Via C. Peano, 19 – 00139 Rome, Italy; email: [email protected]. This article is an extended and modified version of a workshop entitled “The Psychotherapeutic Process Between Contract and Illusion,” which was presented on 10 July 2015 at the United Kingdom TA Conference in Edinburgh, Scotland.