ABSTRACT
Central to our approach is a key emphasis on the healing quality of a good therapeutic relationship supported by outcome research (e.g. Wampold, 2001) and linked to the crucial importance of attending closely to patient factors such as patient strengths and preferences (e.g. Hubble et al., 1999). Such empathic attunement is brought out as crucial within all the different modalities in the psychotherapies. Over many years we have developed a framework for integration based on a relational perspective. This framework seeks to understand the relationship of self to self (the intrapsychic and body-based perspective), the relationship of self with other at both explicit and implicit levels of exchange (the interpersonal/intersubjective frame), the relationship of self with context, both historically and in the present (the psychosocial, cultural and political domain), and the self as a spiritual entity (the transpersonal domain). Our contextual conceptualization is informed also by Kurt Lewin's ®eld theoretical ideas (Lewin, 1997) as well as by postmodern conceptualizations highlighting the impossibility of excluding context from any analysis (e.g. Bayer and Shotter, 1998). In summary, we view an integrative psychotherapy as involving attention to empathic attunement and related exchange, recognition of the co-created nature of relationship, understanding of implicit relational exchange, and the importance of the contextualization of human interactions.
