Philosophy of therapeutic relationship
Various schools of psychotherapy profess different creeds on the nature of the mind, the cause of suffering, and a way to heal. Research, however, has consistently demonstrated that, irrespective of the practitioner’s orientation, the key agent of healing is the therapeutic relationship itself.
The two philosophers most important for understanding it are Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Martin Buber.
In his Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel wrote that “Self-consciousness exists in and for itself when, and by the fact that, it so exists for another; that is, it exists only in being acknowledged.”
In plain language, this means that self comes to exist in relationship with another and seeks recognition from them. The relationship is mutual, for another seeks just the same.
Psychoanalyst Jessica Benjamin stresses that such recognition can only be freely given, and never forced.
The nature of a relationship is a primary focus of Buber’s I and Thou. In it, the philosopher states that I exists only in relationship with another. The essence of this relationship is binary: an I-Thou encounter, for when we see and are seen, and I-It, for when we use and are used in return.
I-Thou happens when you see the other as a being in their own right: you look at a tree as a whole living, growing organism. I-It is when the same tree becomes a bunch of useful parts: trunk for a mast, branches for chairs.
Since the I is a part of the pair, the way you relate to others defines who you are: a person in a world of persons or an object in a world of objects.
From Hegel’s and Buber’s thought naturally arise essential domains of psychotherapy: understanding the cause of suffering and the path towards healing.
If we were wounded by a lack of recognition, by a lack of being truly seen, both as children and as adults, the way to heal lies in entering an I-Thou relationship with a therapist.
Why not just any relationship, then? Because every I-Thou can collapse into an I-It. And it’s a therapist’s job to prevent this from happening.
Within a therapeutic dyad, only the client is to seek recognition.
By its nature, a therapeutic relationship is mutual but asymmetric. You can now understand the why.