ABSTRACT
The basic premise of the relational approach is that psychoanalytic data are mutually generated by therapist and patients, co-determined by their conscious and unconscious organising activities, in reciprocally interacting subjective worlds. Self–other awareness is the linchpin of any psychodynamic approach. The therapist's mental relationship to him or herself—to the therapeutic/personal "me"—has the potential to be an ongoing, evolving, and primary nuclear idea. The desire for psychological knowledge motivates people to group: to seek and live in groups, and to accept the invitation to participate in group psychotherapy. Self-disclosure is inevitable and continuous in any human interaction. Emotional reality is not a concrete, unchanging something, from which truth can be derived with certainly or finality, but an ever-incomplete process of learning and becoming. The "me" is observed and awaits development as a nuclear idea. The group therapist's activity, internal and interpersonal, exposes the qualities of care and establishes authenticity.
