ABSTRACT
Every part of relational psychotherapy is a process. The beginning of therapy is a process of discovering the forms of empathy that the client needs from the people in order to feel understood. Relational therapy offers no recipe for transcendence, no escape from the realities of history, culture, conflict, and oppression. If, at the close of therapy, a client has changed in how he can perform and experience himself with others, these changes will start to show themselves in all of the important relationships of his life. Stone Center theorists insist that individual relationships of mutuality are the ground for all healthy social relations. What matters is not how individuals develop autonomy, but rather, how individuals open themselves to mutually empowering relationships that extend outward in networks of respect and empowerment. From the moments of "diagnosis", relational therapy is always moving away from the fantasy of individual self-sufficiency and toward the realities of human interdependence.
