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Why Relational Psychotherapy Helps People Have Better Relationships

By Allyson Burke


Psychotherapy is the way a therapist works with a client. Relational psychotherapy looks at how a patient's friendships can impact their mental and emotional state. It is still a reasonably new discovery within psychoanalysis but it is thought to be extremely important.

It was first introduced during the nineteen eighties and was an attempt to recognize the importance of an individual's internal relationships with people. Supporters of the therapy argued that the personality is formed in response to our very earliest relationships with family members and other people we may have come into contact with.

Relational theories depart from most our areas of psychotherapy because it doesn't view a person's instincts as the main driver for their actions. Freud believed that instincts were rooted deep within us and were not shaped by experience. Advocates of relational therapy believe that we are driven by the friendships we would like to have with others. In addition, they believe that we try to reconstruct the relationships from our childhood in order to satisfy our wants.

Psychoanalysts who use relational techniques, tend to ignore the Freudian use of free association. Instead they focus their efforts on building a relationship with the patient. They believe that psychotherapy works best when their is a healing relationship. In so doing, they believe they can get rid of a patient's habitual way of relating to others and so heal them.

Therapists who use this technique, study their client's relationships which leave them feeling bad about themselves. They try to find patterns of behavior which mirror an earlier time in the patient's life. These earlier relationships are then studied in order to understand how they impacted the patient's view of the world and of themselves.

It tends to be associated with social constructionism. This is a theory that we do not define our ideas about the world on our own. It says that we tend to form them with other people. There are two important aspects of it. The first is that we come to terms with our experiences by creating a model for how we think the world works. Second, that language is the most important way in which we define our reality.

A lot of people who would like to have better quality relationships. They engage in therapy because they hope it will help them remove the problems they're having. They believe that their happiness is being ruined by stressful friendships. Lots of therapists suggest that trying to find help is a very courageous step to take because it means you are facing up to your issues. Six to eight sessions is what they recommend as the minimum to find out whether this treatment works for you.

The relationship a client has with their therapist is very important in relational psychotherapy. It's crucial that the client's problem is properly understood otherwise the treatment will not work. One danger is that the sessions become about the therapists agenda and not the client's. This is why the sessions need to have an atmosphere of trust. For some people it just does not work and they need to seek an alternative form of therapy.




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