Therapeutic Relationship Quotes

“... every therapist must develop enough personal maturity, clinical wisdom, and capacity for good judgment to effectively and safely conduct psychotherapy, an imperative that is especially important in the treatment of this population. The emotion dysregulation and insecure and disorganized attachment of complex trauma clients elicit strong emotional reactions from others, even those in their support network, including therapists. Reactions can range from sympathy, sorrow, fear, and guilt to frustration, impatience, anger/rage, hostility, and disgust or contempt.”
― Christine A. Courtois, Treatment of Complex Trauma: A Sequenced, Relationship-Based Approach

“... the silent client may be experienced as withholding, oppositional, and sulking or as holding the therapist "hostage" in ways that elicit resentment and other negative responses. Because it is not unusual that relational and other forms of traumatization began when the client was preverbal, he or she may not have words. The lack of access to emotions or to words to describe them is known as alexithymia and is a common response to trauma. What the client is likely to have instead is somatosensory, behavioral, dissociative, and relational manifestations that therapists must seek to understand and translate into words, a process that involves hard work and intense focus.”
― Christine A. Courtois, Treatment of Complex Trauma: A Sequenced, Relationship-Based Approach

“In psychoanalysis, when approaching the unconscious—that is, what we do not know—we, patient and analyst alike, are certain to be disturbed. In every consulting-room, there ought to be two rather frightened people: the patient and the psychoanalyst. If they are not both frightened, one wonders why they are bothering to find out what everyone knows.”
― Wilfred R. Bion, The Tavistock Seminars

“If I could get across to Dibs my confidence in him as a person who had good reasons for everything he did, and if I could convey the concept that there were no hidden answers for him to guess, no concealed standards of behavior or expression that were not openly stated, no pressure for him to read my mind and come up with a solution that I had already decided upon, no rush to do everything today—then, perhaps, Dibs would catch more and more of a feeling of security and of the rightness of his own actions so he could clarify, understand, and accept them. This would take time, real effort, great patience on the part of both of us. And it must at all times be basically and fundamentally honest.”
― Virginia Axline

“One example of taking a male-friendly approach [in therapy] is the view that traditional masculinity is not the root cause of men’s mental health problems, and, in fact, might contain valuable resources that can enhance mental health. This viewpoint allows therapists to understand men in a way that is more likely to foster better rapport between therapist and client, facilitating a more successful therapy.”
― Dr Val Thomas, Cynical Therapies: Perspectives on the Antitherapeutic Nature of Critical Social Justice

“No matter what therapeutic approach is provided, if the relationship between therapist and client is not established or is perceived by the client as problematic, then it is unlikely that the therapy will be successful.”
― Dr Val Thomas, Cynical Therapies: Perspectives on the Antitherapeutic Nature of Critical Social Justice