Field Attunement for a Strong Therapeutic Alliance: A Perspective From Relational Gestalt Psychotherapy. (January 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Day, Elizabeth
• Is Part Of: Journal of humanistic psychology. Volume 56:Number 1(2016)
• Page Start: 77
• Page End: 94
• Publication Date: 2016-01
• Subjects: field theory -- relational psychotherapy -- intersubjectivity -- therapeutic relationship -- field principles -- Gestalt -- Levinas -- phenomenology; Humanistic psychology -- Periodicals; 150.192
• DOI: 10.1177/0022167815569534
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0022-1678

Abstract

This article addresses the basis for the centrality of the therapeutic relationship in effective therapeutic outcomes, especially as distinct from technique, which prevails in the 21st-century Australian mental health context as a focus in determining what constitutes evidence-based practice. Presence-oriented therapeutic approaches infer an intersubjective field within which transformative enquiry can occur. This forms the basis of the article's exploration of the function of the phenomenon of the "field" for intersubjective therapeutic relationship and its relationship to Levinas' "third" as the basis for transformative, ethical, therapeutic practice. Work on "fields, " in different disciplinary domains that share a focus on understanding underlying processes and patterns of physical and social organization, yields sufficient common ground to speak of a field as a substantive principle on which to base practice. Relational Gestalt psychotherapy has developed the concept of field sufficiently to have evolved principles for working with the felt effects of the field, without firm resolve yet as to the ontological status of relational fields. Paradigmatically the work remains emergent in most disciplines. Further transdisciplinary research into field theory may yield more nuanced analysis of how to work intentionally with field conditions.