Therapeutic Relationships

Reductionism
means diminishing or restricting the use of ideas, things, or terms, to their basic pattern or parts, in order to oppose another perspective, view, or argument. This can sometimes be valid, but I here coin the term expansionism to open up the flexibility or fluidity of ideas and terms as well.

I don’t like too much reductionism or censorship of the use of terms, but I also don’t like the misuse of terms if they are being applied without understanding what they mean or where and when they come from, or if terms are being used very contradictorily to mean very opposing things, and which can itself be very cold or reductionist.

When the term "relationship" is used in this way, it can be a way of leveling everyone down, of cloning people, and a way of destroying or denying the unique ways that people might relate or express their love, desire, or emotional affection; because everyone has different ways of expressing those things, and we all experience some things differently. The cold reductionism of cloning and leveling down, also destroys or denies any possible human aspect to our unique ways of relating, feeling, and thinking.

One way of doing this cold reductionism, cloning, or leveling down of our uniqueness and humanness, is to give a person a series of very false or rigid injunctions, and usually men do this to other men, or women sometimes emulate what men do to other men in this way.

For this and other reasons, I much prefer women to give me orders or instructions, even if I am being bullied or mistreated, because when men give other men orders or instructions, it’s used to say that this is how we should behave and speak towards women, or how we should enlighten or instruct. When women give men orders or instructions, there’s a different tone of voice, a different way or relating or instructing in it, or a different kind of emotional connection.

Contexts of behaviours and ways of relating may overlap, but unless this has creative potential between individuals or groups, there seems to me little point in ignorantly speculating about over-similarities or simulations, and it’s important not to emulate anyone’s bad or ignorant perceptions of this.

What does the term "therapeutic relationship" actually mean?, and what are the flexible uses or meanings of the term? Certainly it is a term which doesn’t exist specifically in psychiatry, but a term which is applied broadly sometimes within mental health, and I’m interested in what people mean or hope to get out of the term.

I think that the term "relationship" is an American term which has entered into our language to replace terms like "wife", "husband", "girlfriend", "boyfriend", or "partner", and that it more often than not specifically means sexual or love-relationship. In any other context if you were to use the term "relationship" to people you didn’t know, anyone you worked with, or people of the same sex (as it is also used in mental health by some professionals), then they are more than likely to regard you as weird, insane, call the Police, or punch you on the nose.

The term "relationship" in society and mental health also came to mean things like "friend", "comrade", "object" or "subject matter", as academic subtext or pretext terms. A friend of mine who is an ex-psychiatric patient suggested that "therapeutic relationship" might even be a fantasy term, presuming that there is something there in the form of some kind of relationship when there is not, or that it is used when the therapist or client doesn’t really know the person long enough to have any real relationship with them at all.

Some might say that the term "therapeutic relationship" like "mental illness" is an oxymoron - a self-contradiction in terms. In some ways I think it is an oxymoron, but I also try not to be too reductionist or dogmatic about it in that way, because part of psychotherapy in particular is about exploring the flexibility of terms, and the creative ways of feeling, thinking, and relating. Relating is an emotional, intellectual, or social act, but relationship can imply an objectification or passive correlation - as ships that sail past each other in the night.

When I mentioned that the term "therapeutic relationship" may be an oxymoron, my friend pointed out that some people talk about a "love-hate" relationship, and which could also be a contradiction in terms. We then discussed the fact that one person might love, whilst the other person might hate; that one person might not know that the other person loves them, or each other; or that a person may love or hate other things about that same person at different times, and within different contexts and situations; and with all the mental and social pressures that may be influencing or controlling that.

I pointed out that people have different social and individual ideas of love-relationships, and he said that a genuine love-relationship is not over-idealised or over-cynicised, but involves sharing each others love, desires, potential, and accepting each others uniqueness as individuals, whilst also acknowledging or accepting each others scars and faults.

Some people see relationships purely in economic terms, that if you don’t economically produce, sell, or consume - equally or individually - then you are seen as not worthy or love and respect, or rejected as a useless and worthless individual. Some men say this about all women, and some women say this about all men, but this is a lot to do with misogynism related to those men’s perceptions, experiences, and political dogmas about women and materialism - that women and/or men should be owned as slaves, money, or mammon.

Whilst love and respect is of course to some extent to do with economics, most relationships based upon economic equality or economic self-worth are still very much about ownership or possessiveness; no matter how well the economic equality, shared household tasks, and interpersonal communication is between men and women.

Whilst it is possible for some patients or clients to have genuine love-relationships, friendships, creative or work relationships with their therapists or professionals, more often than not (as in the case of the chat show hostess Trisha Goddard who eventually married her psychology consultant), this may involve some form of radically changing or socially integrating a person with others, and which if not used as an excuse for bullying, is a very positive and desirable thing; but which like chat shows may also involve some voyeuristic speculation or social dogma.

I have no problem with describing a therapeutic relatedness as a relationship, in all the positive and potentially creative or flexible ways possible, but more often than not, it means a very rigid and dogmatic kind of relationship, without any real, free, or equal contract.