Connection in the therapeutic relationship, sharing a subjective world

grantor: University of TorontoWhile a positive therapeutic relationship is necessary to successful therapeutic outcome, it remains a variable that is not well understood. A review of the theoretical and empirical literature indicates that the relationship's interactive, subjective, dynamic nature has been largely ignored. This study attends to the relationship's essential yet elusive nature by exploring clients' and therapists' experiences of 'connection' in the therapeutic relationship. Twelve participants were drawn from the OISE/UT Depression Project. Consistent with a two-person model of relationship, 'both ' clients and therapists in six therapeutic dyads were interviewed about their experiences of connection in actual videotaped therapy sessions. Interpersonal process recall (IPR) interviews were conducted in order to capture the moment-by moment, subjective meaning and experience of connection for the participants. A grounded theory analysis was utilized in order to integrate both the clients' and the therapists' subjective experiences of connection. The resultant theory determined that 'connection in the therapeutic relationship is the experience of sharing a subjective world'. The moment by-moment experience of connection ranges from the ordinary to the profound, and it is grounded in the relationship in which it exists. Therefore, the experience of connection in the therapeutic relationship is defined by the unique, asymmetrical boundaries of the therapeutic frame. For both participants in a dyad, sharing a subjective world in the therapeutic relationship is coming to know, and interact with, the client's inner world. The process of connection closely parallels the process of psychotherapy and, while the therapeutic process facilitates connection, connection facilitates the therapeutic process. The mutual work of therapy is connecting, as is the interactive process of building the therapeutic relationship. Connection is, and is a result of, all the 'shared' and 'interactive ' choices participants make to 'open' up their ' subjective worlds'. The culmination of these choices is the experience, for 'both' client and therapist, of connecting with the client's subjective world. For the therapist, this is the experience of meeting and sharing another's inner world. For the client, this is the experience of knowing his/her own inner world. Therefore, in connecting with another, one ultimately connects with oneself. This is the significance of connection in the therapeutic relationship.Ed.D