ABSTRACT
A basic premise of the relational approach is that psychoanalytic data are mutually generated by the therapeutic participants, co-determined by conscious and unconscious organizing activities, in reciprocally interacting subjective worlds. The therapist’s unconscious conflicts, character structure, and misunderstandings lead to inevitable iatrogenic resistances; however, they also provide vehicles for learning and transmitting intersubjective information. Contemplating one’s evolving mental relationship to the group, and its influence on the group, brings layers of meaning to the clinical situation, however conceptualized. This chapter talks about five elements: a disowned baby, retrieval, legal difficulty, emotional difficulty, and a sense of disturbing urgency. In all individuals, “two different categories of mental activity” coexist, and it is the “painful bringing together of the primitive and the sophisticated that is the essence of the developmental conflict”. The variety and flexibility of the therapist’s activity, internal and interpersonal, exposes the qualities of the therapist’s care and establishes the therapist’s authenticity.
