Practice Innovations, Vol 9(3), Sep 2024, 215-222; doi:10.1037/pri0000245
Retirement from the practice of long-term, relationship-focused psychotherapy is a complex and challenging process, and one for which few therapists are prepared. To better understand this process, the author, a consultant to therapists considering retirement, examines the nature of the therapeutic relationship. This examination explores the experience of time in psychotherapy, which is quite different from how time is experienced in ordinary life. Following Alan Schore, the therapeutic relationship is understood as a primary process, right-brain to right-brain affective communication between therapist and patient, similar to—and derivative from—the mother–infant relationship. Other related phenomena which illuminate this unique relationship include Winnicott’s understanding of therapy as play and Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow. Roger’s understanding of the therapist’s empathic “being with” the client is understood as the foundation of the relationship. Understanding the relationship in these ways helps explain why ending such a practice is so difficult for therapists. The feelings of the therapist in such long-term therapies sometimes develop into what can be best understood as a kind of love. Despite the prevalent attitude in the field, which discourages seeing the therapist’s relationship to his clients as love, this recognition helps us recognize how rich and powerful is this bond. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)