Therapy in Practice

A stimulating paper by Slife, Harris, Wiggins & Zenger (Brigham Young University) entitled Radical Relational Therapy in Practice (APA Presentation - 2005) at http://xrl.in/2km criticises the abstraction-into-practice tradition in psychotherapy.

And, while I agree that therapy is never just abstractions applied, it seems that Slife et al. do precisely what they claim to be protesting about. Let me explain.

They 'conscientiously used a relational ontology to orient all our year’s work together, with clients of all kinds' (p. 1). Now, what is this 'relational ontology' but an abstraction? Any ontology is some kind of philosophical science of being. Relations, as soon as we focus on them, become abstractions because we have abstracted them from experience. 'Relational' describes the type of ontology that one adheres to but using this contemporary buzz word does not mean one is not involved in abstraction.

Abstraction is unavoidable in therapy and can be observed in the given 'Ann' case study. The approach 'foregrounds the immediate, the richly contextual, and the authenticity of relationships' (p. 1), which states upfront that the therapy will emphasise three abstracted qualities from pretheoretical human experience.

I am not arguing against the importance or otherwise of these three qualities but rather arguing that in naming them we are necessarily involved in abstraction and thereby theory. It is a certain theory about human relationship that governs the way the therapy is conducted. For example, an unhappily married Ann says that she doesn't like herself in her marriage, to which the therapist responds with, 'Do you like yourself with me?' When she says that she does the she is asked to indicate what she is doing that allows that to happen. (Not we notice, what the therapist is doing but what she is doing.)

The therapist does not turn to either intrapsychic issues with internal objects or to disordered cognitions but focuses on what is going on in this therapeutic relationship that may lead to benefits in her other relationship.

The authors then present a 'tiny snippet of an actual therapy encounter' to demonstrate 'some important features of the relational approach'. The four summary points they draw from the case study are: '1) interpersonal connectedness is more important than individual depth; 2) a real relationship is more healing than an abstracted one; 3) being apart from community – individual autonomy – is less meaningful than being a part of it; and 4) living into, rather than abstracting from, contextual possibilities is more helpful' (p. 2-3).

To contend that these points and their terms are not 'theory-laden' is to ignore their abstracted character. However, on the other hand, nothing is wrong with abstraction as long as we don't imagine that abstractions are any substitute for mankind's fully given experience of reality.