ABSTRACT
The central idea of relational psychotherapy is that the patterns of people's thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, whether healthy or unhealthy, are directly related to the patterns of their interpersonal relationships. As a relational therapist, people know that change happens in complex, systemic, nonlinear ways. For example, when change begins from the inside of a client's relationship with them, the client will gradually experience many small, interconnected differences in how she experiences herself and others outside of therapy as well. These departures, from the medical model, individualism, and rationalism-help to make relational therapy what it is and so on. This is especially visible in gestalt, psychodrama, and transactional analysis versions of humanist therapies, which highlight the embodied scripts they have learned with others and that they reenact forever. Narrative therapy highlights the power of social context to construct personal narratives, and it shows how the power of those narratives lies in their reiterated performances, two themes crucial to relational therapy.
