 We demystify what goes on behind the therapy room door. Join us on this voyage of discovery and co-creative conversations. This is The Therapy Show, behind closed doors podcast with Bob Cook and Jackie Jones. Welcome back to The Therapy Show behind closed doors with the wonderful Mr Bob Cook and myself Jackie Jones and in this episode we're going to be looking at what do you mean by relational therapy or what is relational therapy? What a good question and as you said that I heard a voice in my head saying well isn't all psychotherapy relational and I was thinking yeah I'm 72 and I trained in 1985 and I'm sure many of my and temporary colleagues will say well isn't all therapy relationship I mean you know I've been in therapy for years and decades and all relationship isn't isn't it and it's an interesting way to look at it because you see you know many many many therapists way would say they're relational therapists and to be a perfectly honest the next question needs to be what relationship you're talking about interesting are you talking about the relationship in the room between the therapist and client in 2023 yeah are you talking about the relationship between the therapist and the younger self in 1984 you know what you mean when you say relational therapists yeah it's a really important question you see if we go back in time let's say let's take 1950 and what's that 70 years ago what if I was born in 1950 so this is 70 years ago you know and you went to bookshops and if you could find any psychotherapy books or even psychoanalytical books or even therapy books about the new psychological therapies that were coming along and certainly psych analysis which was the flavor of the day from the beginning of the century they would all talk about the importance of the clout of the therapist or the analyst staying outside the relationship yeah it'd be completely opposite yeah now it's really important it would be completely opposite the early psychoanalysts believe that the therapist or the analyst was there to give interpretations and the only way they could have any neutral interpretations was stay outside the field of the you know of the analyst client picture in other words stay completely out in fact to the extent they stood behind well the person was on a couch in the early days weren't they yeah and the person was behind them because they couldn't even see them so it was all about staying out of relationship yeah if you went down I live in Manchester if I went down into some psychotherapy shops in Manchester in 2023 most books if not all books on psychotherapy would be about how the therapist stays in the relationship and how the relationship is between the therapist and the client is the vehicle for cure there's been a dramatic shift in the last century there are still therapy modalities where you don't take yourself into the therapy room so to speak you know you don't share personal experiences even if they're relevant and things it's now onto a different when you're the second point the first point I agreed with you which is there are modalities exactly that you've just said which talk about the therapist you know not bringing their own history and self into the relationship you know that that that is true definitely but you see since 1993 I would say I was thinking when a lot of books started to talk about the importance of the relationship as the major curative factor yeah and it's sort of the books started again or the theories started to change as we hit them hit the century we're now and there's many many many many books all talk about relationship and that whole period since 1999 mid 1996 called the relational turn so most of you started to talk about the importance of relationship between the therapist and client even if it's about how the therapist shares some of themselves in the relationship but it would be about using the relationship as the cure to vehicle for cure so there is many many many books talking about counter-transference talking about reactive counter-transference talking about you know what's the therapist should or shouldn't share but it would all be about strengthening the relationship in the service of cure not being totally outside the relationship yeah so when people come to have relational psychotherapists they're talking about or should be talking about the idea that the relationship is the major vehicle for cure the relationship between therapist and client yeah now that's why I said right at the beginning which is which relationship you're talking about so are you talking about the relationship in here and now and therefore you never going to deal with the relationship between the therapist and the younger self you always just have an adult-to-adult relationship it's certainly not my idea of therapy for me personally I understand for many other people like CPT for example would be about staying in the present and many of the counseling folks as well but I come from a developmental perspective so I would be working with the younger self because that's where I think the real healing is yeah so you've got a relationship between the therapist and the younger self then haven't you yeah relationship between the therapist and the client both at the appropriate ages yeah yeah so it's it's multi-dimensional as well into this like there's a heap load of relationships there yeah so I always head in transactionalist terms towards the child-eager state so I always think developmentally yeah so I'm not in the game of you know past timing or cures in an adult-to-adult relationships it's about healing the trauma thinking developmentally working the healing in the past so they can be different in the present that might lead to a robust adult relationship whether you're both the probably at the same age there but it but it's not but you need to get there yeah so for me I think developmentally so mostly when I used to work the relationship with the younger self that's the relationship I wanted to get to yeah so would you I would call myself a developmental relational psychotherapist when I stayed started off in 1985 I would simply call myself a transactionalist yeah in 90s in the psychotherapy world in this country and and America and sweeping into Europe was the idea of what as I've just said is the relationship is the curative factor where is it now that's interesting isn't it because I think I don't think you'd meet a therapist that would say that the relationship is really important on the road to cure with the client even psychoanalysts who believe in interpretation free association would also nowadays talk about relationship is a really important factor they probably wouldn't go as far the next step and say that it was the exclusive factor for cure but they would pay a lot more attention to it than it did 70 years ago yeah it's just you know the way that therapy is is delivered now is changed massively from you know even I don't know ten years ago you know people have therapy via text now I personally would find it really difficult to build a relationship with somebody over text yes and also you've got the huge rise of online therapy yeah yeah rise of assumed therapy yeah use rise of at least with zoom therapy like it's like us now we record these via zoom I can see your body language I can hear the tone of your voice I can yeah I can get a lot more feeling for what's going on even though we're not you know in person in the room but via a text it's so open to misinterpretation I couldn't agree with you more I don't like therapy by online medium no don't like therapy by text or phone calls you know I think face-to-face therapy is you know more important having said all that lot so I've said that so yeah that's my thing most therapy is about projections in other words you sit in front of somebody whether it's on zoom whether it's by text by and we project on to the screen our own history yeah you watch Love Island for example which is a reality television program which I don't particularly care for much for lots of different reasons oh let's pick another one we watch the Traders which is another reality program or whatever pose we want to watch we watch the x-factor we watch this we pick a little pollock or whatever we want to look on history anything you like and we project on to the screen really on history about what we've decided about other people in the world yeah yeah he's good he's bad he's he's not and whatever yeah and it reflects our own history yeah so there is that part to think about it the world of projections yeah relationships in general are very confusing when you think about it they're confusing and they really represent our past family and our past decisions about ourself in the world so when we talk about relational psychotherapy are you a relational psychotherapist like we're talking this podcast then I can really understand the swing you know beginning the century or psychotherapy in general to the relationship what happens between a therapist and client is so important for cure in curative method you know curative factors so if you have a therapist that doesn't engage that stays you know way out of the relationship yeah but never shares anything about themselves that stays as an anonomer nice figure I wouldn't call that relationship relational psychotherapy in the way it's portrayed now in 2023 no I can't imagine how that would work to be honest having been trained to the way that I was what you were trained relational yeah in other words you were trained in the relationship being an important vehicle for change yeah absolutely the first day in the way you trained in a lot to a therapist to train and a lot of other therapists for trade is the first step is building up the relationship between the therapist and the client and if you're getting a robust relationship with therapist and client and a trusting relationship and a safe one in the secure relationship between therapist and client then therapy is more likely to happen yeah and I say this so many times when people ask me about you know what modality of you know therapy is best and yes I'm you know I'm passionate about transactional analysis and I think it is the best one but I always say it's more about it being a good fit it's more about the relationship that you have with the person in the room the modality to me comes second to that yeah and me and I do all the assessments as you know the Institute pass many members of the public onto therapists and I always say to them my part of my job here is to match you up because therapy is always more effective yeah actually have the same frame of reference or at least get on with the client yeah so the therapist because then therapy is more likely I I believe be more effective because the relationship is more complete yeah yeah 100% and that is why the swing to you know relationship being the vehicle for cure has happened across many modalities over the last 20 years I mean you can sit there saying exactly what you just said is that you know it's important to have a good fit and there's very few modalities I think now in 2023 that wouldn't recognize the cure to fact of an effective relationship yeah yeah it has to be a two-way process in my head you know I don't know how you can build empathy or feel empathy with another person unless there's a relationship there somehow that's right and it also demands something very challenging I think of the therapist because if they're going to be a true relational psychopathist it demands the challenge which I think is quite cute for a lot of people who go into this business they need to know themselves yeah now that might be very challenging for people listening but if you're going to promote relational psychotherapy as the major vehicle for effective cure then you really need to know yourself because you're entering into a relationship which can easily be contaminated by your own prejudices yeah which we all have yeah which relation is to be healthy yes we all have them but you see if you're not if you haven't spent some time reflecting and having your own therapy then you may not be aware of what you bring into a relationship without being aware of them we don't even give ourselves the chance to change or become I'm going to say more healthy on this for the service of the client yeah we can contaminate the whole process by bringing in our own negative prejudices yeah yeah which again I know we mentioned it a lot of the times but this is one of the other things that I loved about transactional analysis is that for four years of training you have four years of personal therapy so at the end of it you're very well aware of yourself that's why I struggle with the BACP position and that is the BACP position has now gone to a place you don't have to have any reflection on yourself and become a counselor I know this is about psychotherapy I mean that's the name of this podcast but you know I still go that position and I think that anybody in this field needs to be understanding their own contaminations because otherwise they'll easily bring it into the relationship and that could easily end up in an unhealthy relationship which that is difficult because that isn't going to be the vehicle for cure then is it no yeah and it's again using your you know wonderful phrase it is a process and it's a slow process at that well certainly if you're going to be a developmental relationship like that was the way I've just talked about it which is sing healing back where the trauma began so you're going to have to head back then it is going to be a long process if you're going to stay in the here and now looking at behavioural focus solution issues for some people may want to do I don't want to start getting into denigrating that type of therapy then it's a different type of therapy still think it would be good to have a effective relationship though yeah yeah that's going to be the vehicle for cure yeah yeah there has to be some sort of a connection I believe so I think it's a level of some whether it is an adult to adult but there has to be a relationship or a connection in some way yeah see the very first analysts going back 100 odd years ago now was built on a parent child transactional dialogue in other words the analyst was the expert yeah the analyst was a super parent if you want to put that way the analyst was the person that would make the interpretations and have the monopolisation on the truth yeah a very parent child led which do I have been developed transaction analysis in many ways it wasn't the only reason because you want to promote an adult to adult relationship to do the developmental work if you like but have a yeah a parent child transactional in a dialogue and which is totally different yeah which when you started talking about this like that's something I wrote down was the okay I'm okay you're okay whereas I see the you know the good old fashioned couch scenario as you know the therapist is okay and the client isn't okay they need fixing they're broken and you know the therapist is one with all the answers yeah I don't think there was much good about that even though you thought that was a quote or phrase of yours but I don't think there was much good about that now for the seriously psychotic patients maybe that's a different story yeah the neurotic well and for the sort of psychotherapy that we're talking about nowadays it's far better to come from an adult adult place even if you are going to head into the developmental world yeah yeah so it's interesting when people want to have a relational therapist because I usually do ask by the well what do you mean by relationships therapist now that flummoxon because they are often asked that but you know it's an interesting question back again yeah absolutely it's the same when people say they're integrated therapists which is what we're talking about next time Bob so don't talk too much about that okay it's like well what do you mean by that yeah I'll lead to this podcast but they're interesting questions yeah absolutely and questions that I do think it's good to to discuss because they are phrases that are bandied around an awful lot and for the listeners you know to talk a little bit more in depth about what all these kind of mean and the different modalities that are out there and even you know the like you were saying the phases that psychotherapy goes through going back from the 50s to the 70s to the 90s to where we are now it's evolved yes we've you know we're in a completely different arena in the mental in the service of mental health yeah and 150 years ago it's by definition you know it's changed beyond all recognition I think the service of mental health so that's certainly too and with it comes the evolution of psychotherapy and where that's has taken us yeah very interesting so what we're going to be talking about next time Bob do we mean by integrative psychotherapy oh another one of my favourite subject because you know I am an integrative psychotherapist I caught myself a developmental relational psychotherapist from an integrative transaction analysis position that is a mouthful absolutely that's a hell of a tagline and then all that underneath it well it's been a human person yes so until next time Bob thank you so much thank you thank you very much bye you've been listening to the therapy show behind closed doors podcast we hope you enjoyed the show don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review we'll be back next week with another episode