The emerging Relational tradition in Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic thought is more complex to capture in a brief blog post, but I would like to attempt an introductory summary for those who are more interested in what is meant by “Relational” when referred to with respect to psychotherapy. What follows is a brief description of how the Relational perspective perceives the development of the self and psychological struggles, the importance of the therapeutic relationship, and the path to healing. Relational Psychotherapy maintains both that our ideas about ourselves, others, and the world are learned in relationships, and also that we learn how to handle our emotions in relationships. While talking about these two ideas separately is helpful for discussion, these are heavily overlapping processes.
Our opinions of ourselves and expectations of others and the world are shaped by relationships. Most of these beliefs, or biases, are shaped in our earliest relationships. Some of these beliefs were overtly given to us (e.g. “never trust a salesman, son!”) while many others were absorbed through witnessing others’ reactions to ourselves or situations (e.g. “mommy must be disappointed because I am too needy when I want her attention”). These develop into biases that limit how we see ourselves, others and the situations we are in. Many of these assumptions deeply ingrained and never been thought about openly, so they operate out-of-our-awareness. Some of these experiences have led us to focus on what we see in ourselves as negative, or to focus on overly positive or negative aspects of others’ (e.g. “She’s so intelligent, she must think I’m dumb”) or overly positive or negative aspects of the world in general (e.g. “going out is always stressful”). When we only focus on and emphasize certain aspects of a person or experience, we end up with a confined and restricted perspective and lose the ability to see things for their multiple possibilities. As you can imagine, these emphases and biased interpretations can lead to painful emotional and mental experiences that we cannot quite pinpoint. To try to sum this up in a sentence: We are denied truths that are on the edge of awareness about ourselves, others, and the world, and the more truth that we are denied, the more we suffer for it.
We live in an emotional world from birth. Our primary caregivers teach us how to manage our emotions whether they realize it or not. Ideally, they respond consistently to our emotions, soothing us when we’re upset or reacting with excitement at our achievements. However, when the attending to children’s emotions is too neglectful, too overbearing, too confusing, or too inconsistent, one misses out on the experience of security, trust, and the ability to feel okay despite what he or she is feeling. These “insecure” or “disorganized attachments” also disrupt the child’s own self-development. The child becomes instilled with the pain of not having his emotions, hence his self, attended to. This results in a personality that develops around adjusting to expectations of others. In the case of too neglectful circumstances, one tends to avoid and distrust others, as well as downplay their need for others. In the case of too stifling circumstances, one becomes wary of others while simultaneously feeling dependent on them.
As stated above, these are heavily overlapping experiences, if not one-in-the-same. Whether it is how we come to interpret the world or how we learn to deal with our emotions, both occur primarily on nonverbal levels and within relationships. What we come to expect based on our interpretations of the world or how others respond to our emotions become predominantly embodied, and hence, exist mostly out of our awareness (i.e. we live what we learn, but can't always speak to what we know). These ideas reflect a psychology that is interactive between what happens outside of you and what happens inside of you. Some forms of psychotherapy and psychology overemphasize what is going on inside (i.e. neurotransmitters, irrational thinking), causing people to miss how relationships, and even one’s culture, can contribute to their suffering. This leads to too many people believing the problem is solely with them. The Relational perspective seeks to balance the insides with what is outside. Because so much of this “relational learning” has contributed to our suffering, Relational therapy also sees relationships as the avenue for healing. The therapeutic relationship becomes a place to allow these biases to surface, to identify them, and eventually relax them so they quit restricting the possibilities you could come to discover for the world and yourself. It is the attitude of curiosity in Relational therapy that replaces critical judgment or desperate avoidance of the “other side of things” and opens you up to more of the truth.