ABSTRACT
Buber (1923/1996) talks of the I±Thou relationship as the real or core relationship when two people meet and encounter one another as two human beings. It is characterized by a sense of real meeting in the here and now between two people. Through this process of meeting both are changed by the other and in this sense the therapist is very much part of the process of change. What is essential here is the sense of mutuality and the absence of any agenda about the other, the openness to a `real meeting' with authenticity as its main quality. Such meetings happen spontaneously when both partners are open to the novel and unorchestrated in the relationship. Buber contrasted the I±Thou with the I±It relationship. In the I±It relationship, I view the other as an object and stand apart. The existentialists stress the importance of encounter and real meeting. Spinelli (2007) talks about the focus of existential therapy as being about the `ways through which relatedness expresses itself . . . through the psychotherapist's and the client's currently lived experience of relatedness as it enfolds them both during the therapeutic encounter' (Spinelli, 2007: 12). It is this openness to experience that is at the heart of the real relationship.
