ABSTRACT
Whilst introduced as a supplementary rather than stand-alone approach to therapy, the chapter suggests that certain practical, ethical and relational changes are likely to accompany an adoption of contextual ideas. Beginning with the ethical stance, the chapter considers the different factors which may make a contextual approach indicated and makes a case for the therapeutic situation as ethically bound to counter the injustice of the client having been deprived of the means to know themselves. Recommendations are made for modifications to contracting which would make a larger place for an ongoing, socially-sensitive redescription of the problem. Addressing the issue of how to work with and supplement the client’s existing frame of reference, the chapter argues against a cognitive strategy of focusing in on particular problematic beliefs in favour of addressing a worldview holistically. It recommends a strategy of working with particular scenes from the client’s life which seem pivotal in the frame of reference’s organisation. Finally, a vision of the therapeutic relationship as directed towards creating the conditions for experimentation is introduced alongside an invitation to view the therapeutic relationship as private but not separate from the common life to which both practitioner and client return.
