ABSTRACT
The representational relationship refers to the contextual nature of all relationships and how context in¯uences the client's perception of the therapist. Here we ask: Who or what do I as therapist represent for this client? How the client perceives me will be very much in¯uenced not only by their personal history but also by our shared history as human beings. What part do I as a person play in the client's current perception of me as an authority? When considering the nature of the representational relationship, we need to take into account factors like race, culture, nationality, national history, gender, sexual orientation, age, the context of our meeting and the expectations surrounding that, what I may represent for the client in terms of my position in an organization, current events in the social and political arena which may in¯uence the client's perception of me as therapist, issues of class and economic status that may be evident at our meeting. We are not neutral human beings at that ®rst meeting. Many factors will immediately be present and some will already have entered the relationship at our ®rst contact over the phone. The concept of pretransference has relevance here. This refers to the picture that the client constructs ahead of the meeting from any hints which are available, sometimes even from comments that a friend who knows of you has made to them. There may be several sources of the pretransference: the client will form an image of you from your name, your voice tone and accent over the phone, from a search on the web, and any other clues that she picks up before even meeting which will in¯uence the representation she forms. Nowadays it is not unusual for a client to say, `Well I Googled you and I discovered . . .'
