The Therapeutic Relationship
Research coming out of the criminal justice sector on the factors that lead to successful outcomes for sex-offender treatment is now saying what general therapists have known for years – positive change is strongly influenced by a positive therapeutic relationship. What does this mean? First it means that even though you have an interest in child-sexual activity, you are no different to the rest of humanity in how you can improve your life. Second, it means that the relationship between you and your professional helper shapes and fuels your progress.
But what is a ‘therapeutic relationship’ and what does it mean if you don’t have a therapist? This was most notably summarised by the psychotherapist, Petruska Clarkson, who set out the different ways of looking at the relationship between psychotherapist and client (but applies just as well to someone who wants to be helped and their helper):
The Working Alliance
· your willingness to work with a therapist even if you have doubts or want to quit
· it’s the relationship between the ‘relatively non-neurotic, rational and realistic’ part of you and the therapist
· you and your therapist work towards goals, form bonds and set tasks
· your therapist shows you empathy, positive regard, genuine warmth and genuineness
The Transference Relationship
· the part of your psyche which interprets your therapist as acting ‘just like your parents or another important figure in your early life’ – for instance you might feel angry if your counsellor appears distant and doesn’t say too much, or on the other hand smothers you with kindness
· you’re probably not conscious of you doing this with everyone in your life
· experiencing this and understanding it in therapy can help free you from a ‘locked down’ way of relating to the world.
The Reparative Relationship
· the intentional act of the therapist to provide a good parental experience to your inner child
· this is helpful if your parents didn’t offer enough good parenting to meet your needs, or their parenting was bad – or their parenting was normally enough and good, but you were not able to accept it at the time.
· this may not come up as a topic for discussion and can happen just through the way the therapist attends to your needs
The I-You Relationship
· the real person-to-person relationship with your therapist – just you and him/her being with each other in a room
· it helps you understand how you relate to people and situations when you are with them at that moment, here and now
· it’s different from the I-It relationship where you treat your therapist as a profession rather than a person, or where your therapist treats you as a child-pornographer rather than a person (this is a poorer and unhelpful relationship)
The Transpersonal Relationship
· the spiritual relationship between you and your therapist
· it’s the ‘space’ between you which neither controls, nor may be conscious of but could be experienced as a ‘gut feeling’ or a sense of something deeply moving, spiritual or magical
Now you might be thinking that some of this sounds a little far-fetched – a spiritual relationship, for instance – but think about it. Would you rather be helped by someone who takes all the ways in which you and they relate seriously, or one who pays little regard to your relationship – or worse still relates to you as an ‘it’ – the ‘sex-offender’ or ‘that dodgy colleague’?
TOP TIP: How do relate to the children in the videos, pictures or chatrooms? How do you relate to other men who are into child-sex? Do these relationships tally with the helping relationships (they might, but maybe in a reverse way)? How much more successful would your stop plan be if you took time out to explore with a professional how you relate to your world and how you might be freed from old relationship ‘straightjackets’.
© Chris Willoughby 2008-
