ABSTRACT
In CAT theory we think in terms of early reciprocal roles (RRs) that have been internalised by patients and that act as the template for adult relationships. These roles are seen as central with people operating from both active and responding role positions. Recognising the importance of social hierarchies in opening up, or closing down, the repertoire of potential role positions a person is allowed to operate from is essential if we are to understand how gender and racial stereotypes are formed, how men and women are shaped differently by gender-based violence or sexual abuse and how people from minority ethnic groups necessarily evolve ways of expressing resistance and defiance.
Radical, social therapies such as CAT, need to provide an echo that defines our task more broadly because we believe that the inner world is inextricably created in and out of the external dialogues, mediated by individual caregivers and relationships but nonetheless permeable in the face of culture and economics. We might define our task to include a quest to help our patients understand the impact on them of ‘a multi-layered external world’. To reframe a feminist axiom not only is the personal political but also the political is most definitely personal.
