ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the nature of relational therapeutic skills and emphasizes that therapists must play on different knowledge modalities in therapeutic work, including both verbal and nonverbal aspects. Recent methodological developments within the research field that may contribute to shedding light on the nature of these skills are explored. It is argued that psychoanalytic researchers, by following the principles of inductive qualitative research methods, can increase the scientific quality of psychoanalytic research. Finally, it is argued that psychoanalytic research can produce useful knowledge about relational skills that convincingly explains phenomena that are difficult to understand from a cognitive or rational perspective and thus provide significant contributions to the psychotherapy research field.
