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Soth, Michael

doi:10.1080/17432970701374445

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…There is not space here to discuss how I perceive humanistic practice as pervaded by hidden and disavowed medical model assumptions that are profoundly at odds with our explicit humanistic philosophy, values, and principles. I have addressed this issue repeatedly (Soth, 2007c, 2008) and have arrived at a paradoxical position that neither excludes nor entirely subscribes to the medical model in therapy. I do, however, validate and include it as one of the psychotherapeutic relational modalities (in addition to Clarkson & Wilson’s, 1994/2003, five modalities of the therapeutic relationship).…”

Section: The Characterological Wounds Of Transactional Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

We Are All Relational, but Are Some More Relational Than Others?

Soth¹

2013

Transactional Analysis Journal

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This article discusses Ray Little's (2013) integration of humanistic transactional analysis with both traditional and relational psychoanalysis from the vantage point of a wider, broad-spectrum integrative perspective, with particular emphasis on TA's sister tradition of body psychotherapy. The growing consensus across diverse therapeutic approaches regarding the developmental origins of relational patterns is acknowledged. The problems, inconsistencies, and contradictions within the integrative project are discussed, with particular reference to the origins of humanistic psychology during the 1960s and their partially reactive differentiation against psychoanalysis, which leaves today's practitioners with unresolved legacies in the form of fixed assumptions regarding both theory and practice as well as key concepts such as ego and working alliance. Taking the key notion of the therapist's equidistant position between the needed and repeated relationship as its starting point, the author suggests that enactment is the central notion of relationality. A multiplicity of diverse therapeutic kinds of relatedness is affirmed as valid, and different notions of the relational and inconsistencies and ambivalences in integrative formulations are addressed. The aim is to reach a more solid, robust integration that is grounded in a bodymind understanding of enactment as the paradoxical essence of therapeutic action.Ray Little (2013) does an urgent, significant, and sterling job in bringing together transactional analysis and psychoanalysis (especially its relational branch). His grasp of the two traditions and their historical roots, respective metapsychologies, and, in some respects, contradictory paradigms allows him to fashion an attempt at integration that combines the best of both worlds, one that is larger than the sum of its parts. This work constitutes a quantum leap that takes transactional analysis a long way beyond its origins in the 1960s toward the twenty-first century.

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Section: The Characterological Wounds Of Transactional Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%