ABSTRACT
The essential principles of relational psychotherapy have not changed in twelve years. Relational therapists still believe their clients carry the effects of early relational trauma in how they experiences and performs self-in-relation. They continue to invite their clients into a therapy relationship of intersubjective empathy, in hopes that new self-with-other experience makes new psychological organizing principles possible for them. The argument that people's our brains are inherently social does not stand alone; it is intertwined with other important ideas-mentalization theory, theory about dissociation and enactment in the therapy relationship, and a nonlinear dynamic systems theory of change. Mentalization theory tells the person that he needed to know about his part in people's shared emotional process in order to understand his part in it. Both mentalization theory and Boston Change Process Study Group (BCPSG) theory about change processes in psychotherapy have their roots in theories of infant development, as do self psychology and intersubjectivity theory.
