ABSTRACT
I will begin with a few comments about the question most pertinent to this panel, a question often raised and seldom answered to complete satisfaction: What is a relational perspective? The first point made by many in this regard is that there is no single set of descriptors or guidelines by which anyone who chooses this label for his or her clinical work must be confined; individuals holding to a number of diverse theoretical frameworks see themselves as relational analysts. However, we can use the clinical points delineated by Lewis Aron (1991) as one way to delineate the relational approach to the clinical process and, in any case, it serves as a good beginning for approaching a relational understanding. Aron includes in that article 10 points, which, for the purpose of my introduction here, I will paraphrase and shorten, as follows:
The analytic situation is constituted by the mutual, though asymmetrical, regulation of communication between patient and analyst, a communication in which each is vitally affected by the other.
The analyst's subjectivity is an important element in the analytic situation, and the patient's experience of it should be made conscious.
Patients seek to connect to and to know their analysts.
The analyst's self-revelation is inevitable and continuous, but direct self-revelation may interfere with the patient's capacity to recognize the analyst's subjectivity.
Establishing one's own subjectivity in the analytic situation is essential, yet problematic, because the analyst is as complicated as the patient, and his or her self-awareness is limited. We are thus not in a position to judge the accuracy of our patient's perceptions of us, and therefore we cannot validate such perceptions.
It is useful to ask patients directly about their perceptions of the analyst, but it is best to get at this perception through analytic exploration; however, the analyst's insistence on asserting too exclusively his or her own subjectivity leads to reversal in the relationship and doesn't permit an intersubjective exchange. Finally, these perceptions must be seen as only one aspect in the totality of the therapeutic relationship.
