ABSTRACT
Relationship draws on current thinking in evolutionary theory and intersubjectivity to examine the phenomenology of Mirroring. The developmental basis for the process thesis, Mirroring confirms client self. For Mirroring to be done “properly” so as to build client self-structure and confer healing, the clinician must bring vulnerability to operationalization of self, with a stance of attentive curiosity and not of “fixing the problem.” The concept of the client’s dilemma is introduced via a composed case vignette illustrating the process of empathic feeling-into client experience. Accountability (a construct formulated in response to the concern that evidence-based interventions are not being delivered by some clinicians) is reconceptualized according to the goals–process dialectic, defining counseling and psychotherapy as distinct but co-occurring endeavors. Thus goals and process are inseparably twinned, whether in the same, predominantly goals-based intervention or in the same, predominantly process-based intervention. They cannot be disentangled but it is necessary, by managing the dialectic, to steer treatment between them to meet client need.
