Between Therapist and Client The New Relationship

Perhaps the most important aspect of the therapeutic process is the relationship between therapist and client. For years, two major schools of thought have strongly disagreed about what the nature of that relationship should be. The humanists emphasized warmth and empathy. The psychoanalysts kept a neutral, cool distance. Recently, however, the beginnings of a reconciliation between these traditions have opened new possibilities for the way therapists relate to clients. In Between Therapist and Client, Michael Kahn shows why this new consensus is promising. Beginning with Freud's discovery of transference, Kahn traces the history of the clinical relationship from Carl Rogers' introduction of humanistic concerns through Merton Gill's theory and technique of transference analysis, to the pioneering work of Heinz Kohut, who has most successfully brought together psychoanalytic and humanistic thought. Using vivid examples from his own practice, Kahn shows how a coherent synthesis of these various approaches leads to the most successful clinical relationships. Completely updated with greater discussion of ethics and countertransference, the new edition of Between Therapist and Client is essential reading for those in psychotherapy both therapist and client.

Michael Kahn received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Harvard University. A professor emeritus at the University of California, Santa Cruz, he presently maintains a private practice and also trains psychotherapists as the director of a counseling center at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. He is the author of The Tao of Conservation.

Why Study the Relationship?
Five Propositions
A Short History of the Relationship
From Dilemma to Dialectic

The Discovery of Transference: Sigmund Freud
Breuer and Bertha: The Discovery of Transference
The Theory of Templates
The Repetition Compulsion
Transference

The Influence of the Humanists: Carl Rogers
Rogers' Great Influence
A Therapy of Love
The Three Attributes as Continua
The Implication of Rogers' Theory
Rogers' Optimal Therapy

A Re-experiencing Therapy: Merton Gill
What About Therapy Is Therapeutic?
Conditions for Therapeutic Re-experiencing
A New Importance Seen in Transference
The Inevitability of Resistance
Decoding the Transference
Liberating the Therapist's Warmth and Spontaneity
The Place of Remembering
Interpreting Resistance to the Recognition of Transference
The Therapist's Contribution to the Client's Experience
Validating the Client's Perception and Interpretation
The Therapeutic Relationship

The Meeting of Psychoanalysis and Humanism: Heinz Kohut
The Beginnings
Kohut's Two Questions
The Theoretical Issue
The Issue of Therapeutic Technique
The Liberated Therapist

Countertransference
Two Hidden Dramas
Sources of Countertransference
Obstructive and Useful Countertransference
The Therapist's Difficulties

pardThe Need for Vigilance

The Therapist's Dilemmas
The Conservative-to-Radical Continuum
Self-Disclosure: Too Little or Too Much?
Disclosing Feelings
Failures of Empathy
Intersubjectivity
Discarding the Therapist Mask

The New Relationship
An Integration
Increasing the Client's Awareness of the Relationship
Attending to the Selfobject Transferences
Helping Client Learn About the Power of the Past
Therapy as an Intersubjective Situation
The Question of Diagnosis
And When the Therapy Must Be Brief?
In the Consulting Room

Suggested Readings
Notes
Index