Earlier this year, The Existential Moment began exploring an E-H-informed approach to couples therapy. After sketching the framework (May) and considering distress and health (June), this month turns to a theory of relational organization: how two distinct “ways of being” meet to construct and sustain a shared “world.” This frame offers the clinician an orienting touchstone so that distress can be understood and change can be facilitated more intentionally.
Within E-H’s “Dimensions of the Therapeutic Encounter,” the interpersonal dimension provides a useful parallel. It directs attention toward the therapist-client relationship as it is being lived in the here-and-now. How do we affect one another? What’s the quality of the “between” us? What ways of being emerge within the relationship? In couples work, this relational process becomes the basis for understanding how two lived lives come together and begin to influence and organize one another.
As two ways of being repeatedly meet, they form a relational field, a patterned organization of experience, meaning, protection, and ongoing response. Each partner helps shape the field, based in what they bring and how they respond, while the field, in turn, influences what each feels, perceives, and thus does. In therapy, the therapist also enters this shared world, affected by and participating in it while attending to each partner and how the pattern unfolds in the here and now.
Several features help make the field more visible. Its pattern reflects what repeatedly happens between partners (e.g., pursue–withdraw), its climate the felt quality of the relationship (e.g., tense, warm), its anticipation what repeated experience has taught partners to attend to and expect (e.g., disagreement predicts rejection), and its contact how openly or defensively they can meet one another (e.g., guarded, vulnerable). The field also exerts a pull, inviting partners and therapist into familiar positions (e.g., rescue, judge). Together, these dimensions help show how the relationship organizes those within it.
Next month will turn to a deeper examination of how the therapist might work within the field to facilitate change.
Related Blog Posts:
Read more about working in the here-and-now and the therapeutic relationship .
Read the Existential Moment posts on E-H couples therapy .
Explore all the Existential Moment series posts on EHI’s blog.
Existential Moment Author: Scott Gibbs, LMFT, EHI Board Member-at-Large | Website: www.mscottgibbs.com | Twitter: @Novum_Organum
