ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how working relationally and at the edges with clients who bring deep and/or early disturbances to the consulting rooms demands a practice of ethical mindfulness. It proposes four principles to support this, which are: the normalization of enactments and therefore ethical disorganization in the therapist and the dyad; exquisite attention to minding the gaps; keeping "one foot in and one foot out", and finally the capacity to use a third. These principles need to be included in the training of relational therapists, the supervision and supervision of supervision, and the work in writing and considering ethical codes as practitioners, colleagues, and ethics committees. The therapist's need for clinical supervision and therapy is central. As therapists, and as relational transactional analysts, there is a need to develop formative ethics in ways that stretch and deepen an appreciation of the relational dimensions of therapy.
