Relational psychoanalytic psychotherapy is an approach to depth therapy that is grounded in the human relationship between therapist and patient. This is a radical departure from the “rigid frame” of classic psychoanalytic treatment which emphasizes that the treatment situation not vary from session to session and that the therapist’s own personal qualities be highly minimized in the therapeutic process. With the advent of the “relational frame” the treatment of the same patient in varied treatment contexts becomes both understandable and salient. Practically, this enables the effective combining of individual, marital and group therapy modalities not readily possible within the classic model of treatment. The underpinning of these multi-modal approaches is the flexible constancy of the therapy relationship that spans across the different therapeutic contexts. With repect to the marriageofopposites, it especially powerful for each in the marriage to have individual therapist’s who then come together in four-way conjoint sessions for the couples work. This arrangement enables a highly stable form of marital therapy combined with in-depth individual work on the underlying issues fueling the marital conflict.
About Orin Borders, Ph.D.
Orin Borders, Ph.D, a psychologist in private practice with a long standing interest in the Marriage-Of-Opposites, is the originator on this site.
