 I hope to do it today as a book which is off transaction analysis, but again this particular book, but not all of them Jackie, would probably be of interest for seasoned psychotherapists. I'm not saying it wouldn't be interested to students or the lay person, but I think it's more specifically for people who have been someone like you of your ilk. It's been around quite a while and has seen the landscape of psychotherapy change. So speaking of that, what's the book that we're going to talk about today? Okay, the title of this book. The title. Yeah, we'll start off. It's called The Relational Revolution in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. And it's a brand new book 2021. When I read the write up on this, I was thinking, wow, that's, that's been printed and published quite quickly with the content of what it's about. Yeah, much so. It's by a psychoanalyst or psychotherapist, Stephen Coochink, K-U-C-H. Who I don't know. No, me neither. But I will put a link underneath this with a copy of the book and, you know, its description. This is a person who's been around a long time and trained, I think, in classical psychoanalysis by the sounds of it, that I wouldn't swear on that. And I've seen the landscape of psychoanalysis, stroke, psychotherapy change over 50, 60 years, and the other part of this book, which you've just alluded to, how psychoanalysis, stroke, psychotherapy, or relational psychoanalysis, as he calls it, has to accommodate and change in this global pandemic. And to really start addressing very current subjects, but they shouldn't just be current, it should have actually been subjects for many a long time. You know, race, you know, what is called intersectionality nowadays, inclusivity, diversity, inclusion, and how psychotherapists themselves really have a role in the future. In fact, the whole psychotherapy world, or psychoanalytical world, hasn't really addressed these subjects, but they really come into the forefront now. Yeah, 100%. So that's why I think he wrote it, but the book is, and I'll just read it out, the very short introduction at the beginning. So this book investigates clinical theory and technique, as well as the challenges of conducting psychotherapy during the extraordinary twinned circumstances of a global pandemic, and an equally widespread societal awakening to the consequences of systemic racism. Too heavy subjects there. Yeah. And also, he examines the arch of how psychoanalysis, since it started, you know, with Freud and Young and people like that, and how it's now changed or being really influenced by the concept of what we call the relational psychotherapy or relational psychoanalysis. And how, really, the verified view of drive theory and psychoanalysis has been left behind, if you want to put it that way. And now we have this really dominant force of what is called relational psychoanalysis, or another way to bullet Jackie, it was often called the relational turn. So in the beginning of the century, you know, 1999 2000, you had what was called the relational turn in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, where all research showed, and most psychotherapies and psychoanalysis focused on the relationship being the cure, you know, being the aspect of healthiness and curative transformation. So there was a movement to looking at the relationship between the therapist and the client as a vehicle for change, rather than the modality, or transactionalysis, existential psychotherapy, rather than the modality was driven by the relationship being the most important of curative factor. So that's what the book's really about. Two twin subjects, like you just said. That's why I said at the beginning of this, this book is really more aimed at more of the seasoned psychotherapists who've seen the arc of change throughout. So it's interesting to people who want to know about more about psychotherapy now it's developed, and also how the really important societal process of racism, diversity and inclusion have been left out of the agenda, sadly to our shame of the psychotherapy trainings. Not all of them I hope might address them to a certain bit, but I think there's been a lack of looking at some of these really pivotal issues. Yeah, yeah, I agree. One of the reasons why I was drawn to transactional analysis in the first place was that relational part of it. I've dabbled in person centred, but it didn't sit right with me somehow. I kind of felt like I had to leave myself outside the therapy room. That's right. Whereas, you know, with transactional analysis, I'm very much part of the therapeutic process as, as the clinician, so to speak. And you came along and trained in 2010, 11, 12, 13, and that was when it was just after the relational turn I was talking about. Most psychotherapy disciplines in court, as well as transaction analysis, started to seeing the study of the relationship as the major curative factor and to leave that out would be criminal. So TA changed as well, if you like. So, for example, my training is highly relational, and there is a focus on the relationship being the focus for change. So, so you're correct. And in your, in your day, I can understand that traction. Yeah, yeah. So what's your overarching view of the book then, the relational revolution? What, what? Okay, let's start with that part. Let's look at that part of it. Really, the drive theory and classic psychoanalysis is defunct, basically, and misses out a whole analysis on the relationship and the intersubjective part of the relationship. What's going on between the two subjects? What's going on between the two people, the client and the therapist? Yeah, whereas, whereas what you got with the classical psychoanalysis for the first half of the century, well, really till 6790, you know, 6790, 1790, 80, really, you had drive theory and a real concentration on an expert. Yeah. So, you know, you can analyse the pathology and give a diagnosis. And you had a real emphasis on what we call free association, but more than anything else, a one up, one down position. And there was no, absolutely no credence to the relationship being equal or a study of what's happening to people or any ideas that the therapist, stroke analyst, would self disclose what's happening. Between them, no sense of any mutuality between the two people. No sense of a study of the countertransference of the analyst. None of those things were there. So you had a very, in my opinion, one down theory based on actually very old fact old fashion, well, not of the day, and also drive theory and sexist. And certainly no sense of any taking into account cultural or races always know it now. It was a very antiquated theory. We can take some of the things from it, but a lot of it was from another era. Yeah. And so what we've seen this book is talking about the letting go of this early psychoanalysis driven by Freud to a much more modern study of the psychotherapist, the person really, and the relationship between the therapist and the client. For me, it's quite abstract to imagine how it was because I only know it as it is now and the thought of me walking into a room with a client and me being the expert and me being one up. Not one of the things that you taught me over and over with Eric Byrne was I'm okay, you're okay in the life positions. Yes, that's right. That's my writing a lot of the time. If you went into a bookstore, a psychotherapy bookstore or bookstore that was, you know, selling books on human development and psychoanalysis, pre 1960, every book would really be about how the therapist stays outside the relationship. It wasn't until the 70 1970s 1980s 1990s, what we call the relational turn that you found books about the opposite. Yeah. How we stay in the relationship, how the therapist and client actually examine what's happening between the two of themselves as an indicator for change. That's a completely new revolution in the last 40 years. Well, I'm glad I only learned it in the last 40 years and then I didn't do it before. Yeah, because if you go right back 100 years ago, Freud would have said it was all to do with, you know, the hysteria was all to do with the sexual dysfunction. And it would all been around sexual dysfunction rather than anything to do with real occurrences, I think. Yeah. Everything will be through a lens of sexual dysfunction. Everything will be through a lens of drive theory. Everything will be the expert naming the pathology and nothing at all to do with an examination between two people. So where does, you know, if we're looking at this book now, where does racism and equality and, you know, all those things play in the therapy room? Of course, what wasn't ever looked at was the cultural aspects of the two people, the therapist and the client. So for the psychoanalysical movement pre-1950, there was no place at all for racism, cultural effects, sexuality, diversity, because pre-1950, that type of psychoanalysis was everything fitted for one. In other words, you just treated everybody the same. Yeah. If you can imagine that, which I find absolutely bizarre. Yeah. There's nothing queer as folk, we're human beings, but we're all made up of life scripts and life stories and everything. Yeah. So, you know, any type of cultural difference, any type of difference around sexuality and racism and all the things we're just talking about went out of the window. You just treat everybody the same through pathological lens and actually in Freud's case, through looking at sexual dysfunction, but even when he let go of that, it was all through, you know, there was no sense of difference at all. You just speak in one way, which is totally bizarre. What this book is talking about is the change over the last century to a completely different type of psychoanalysis, stroke, psychotherapy, where there is a taking in account culture, taking down race, taking into account sexuality, taking into account all these differences we're talking about as highly influential in cure and what happens between the two people. So, do you think a therapist can specialise in one area? They can do, but they have to take an account. So, for example, a therapist who specialises in eating disorders, they can do that, they can specialise in eating disorders. Unless they take in a frame of reference of all the things we're talking about in terms of difference and cultural implication and where the person was helping them understanding themselves, then their frame of reference about eating disorders is something missing, because somebody is brought up in, say, some particular cultures. Food would be seen very differently rather than, say, a take that the food is all about swallowing emotions. Well, I just think of some cultures where food is seen very differently. So, unless we take in those cultural differences and we take in frames of reference about sexuality and difference, then I think it colours our thinking about certain specialists, say, eating disorders in this frame. I've had phone calls where people have made contact with me and asked me if I would work with people transgender. Have I got any experience of working with somebody from the transgender community? I see everybody as a human being. Yes, I know we're all different and we've got different cultures and different sexual preferences and all those sorts of things. So, I openly said it's not something that I'm specialised in, I'm not a specialist in that area and I can sign post you to somebody else. You got me thinking about, you know, do I need to have experience of that in order to have a therapeutic relationship with somebody who is of the transgender community? Yes and no. So, I think that your own internal frame of reference, which may be at a conscious level, may include prejudice, for example, you don't even know about, for example. And in some ways that doesn't matter and it doesn't matter. In other words, if you are reflective enough to be able to get a hold of your own character transience in the therapeutic conversation and own that or take it to supervision or therapy wherever you would, I think that there can be great curative factors in the relationship as the client sees a very authentic person in front of them, for example. But it demands the therapist themselves, I think, being reflective in their own state of, they don't have the same references, it's always going to be a sense of contamination and prejudice. And as long as that's owned and worked through, I think there's a lot of prospect for cure in the relationship, because the person on the other side will see somebody being authentic and struggling with issues, people struggle with all the time in the society. But if they're not going to go into it from that point of view or that frame, we've got a problem. I mean, I think a lot of the trainings of psychotherapy, sadly, don't include enough training in all this and the trainers themselves. Now, if we look at the trainers, how many black trainers do you see? How many, you know, we could go on and on, and we can see that the people who probably are the trainers or in the power positions in the psychotherapy world often are white middle class people. They don't come from other places of difference. And that's what the book talks about in some ways, the shame of that and the shame of living with that, with people coming in a complete sense of difference from what they're used to and the way they were trained. I like your answer to that question that I put to you earlier on, because does that work not only with, you know, different sexual preferences or anything like that, but also across cultures? I wouldn't like to think that as a white middle-aged woman, I could only see white middle-aged women. With you being honest in your own character, transness and reflection, what that brings up for you, and I believe if you come from that place, the impact on the client will be highly cured too. Yeah. That fills me with something. I'm not sure what's going on and resonating with me. But yeah, it does. You know, I've got quite a few clients that are mixed race that were involved with some of the demonstrations down in London last year and felt really strongly about it. Yeah. And that's what you need to bring up in your own, as a therapist, to share your own kind of transness, your own self-disclosure is so empowering with somebody who's never had that from the other person. Yeah. And you know, as another human being, I couldn't claim to comprehend what this client was feeling at that time. Impossible. You know, that's it. Impossible. But as long as you share that and yourself disclose the hopelessness of that, or whatever's happening for you. Yeah. Then that's what I believe is the mutual, curative factor in a relational psychotherapy, and that's what this book talks about. Yeah. And that is undisputable in that therapeutic relationship in that room. I think so. And it's bizarre to think of psych analysis for 75, 80 years from what, since the birth of that book on hysteria by Freud, right up until 1945, 50, 55, where everybody was just treated one uniform way. That's how is that? Half of the thing. How is that? It's bizarre. I think it's so, it's hard for myself to get my head around that in some ways. Yeah. So, you know, when you sit in here now in 2021, so you know how I can't get my head around how that was, do you think in, I don't know, 20, 30 years time people will be looking back at what we practice today thinking how did they practice that way? What's that all about? Do you think there's a big shift coming as far as? I think we've, yes, I think it was a huge shift in the relational turn at the beginning of the century, you know, where we are 2021, 202 onwards. And now we are in 21. We've seen the birth in society of societal cultural difference, the black lives movement, the huge emphasis on difference and racism and all the things we're talking about here. And on sexuality and transgender and all the things we just talking about Jackie. And I believe that if we follow this relational, the way I'm talking about things here, right, then I think we'll be looked back very favorably. But I believe psychotherapy will go further and further along the path that the curative factor is when two human beings can share their own powerlessness in the next room. I love that. I love the way you put that into words very succinctly Bob. Oh, well thank you very much, but I really believe that. I also believe there's going to be a huge development in the study of spirituality, what that means in the psychotherapy room. So I think that this period will be looked back as favorable. Now having said all that lot, I think psychotherapy trainings have to change. Unless the psychotherapy trainings change, that's some of the place these changes need to happen. Sometimes we need to be a bit radical to encourage change. I do agree it's kind of white middle aged a lot of this. And when I first started my training, I did feel out of my depth being working class and coming out of school with not a lot of qualifications. A lot of the people in my group have degrees that they were graduates and everything. Now I've got to come to the end of this, but I do want to say things. Until recently I was a trustee of the UK CP, which is the major regulating body. My last board meeting yesterday, and we were talking about exactly what we're talking about here, is how can we change psychotherapy trainings to reflect what's happening in the culture and society today as a major, major vehicle for change in the psychotherapy world. And really in a way that's what this is talking about. I need to get that book and I need to read it. Yeah, it sounds really interesting. So thank you so much Bob for letting me be a part of this. This is book review number one and there's going to be many more to come. Thank you, thank you very much. Thank you so much.