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APA Psychotherapy Training Videos are intended solely for educational purposes for mental health professionals. Viewers are expected to treat confidential material found herein according to strict professional guidelines. Unauthorized viewing is prohibited.
Relational–cultural theory (RCT) emphasizes the power of relationships to create change in individuals and groups. It posits that all people begin life with a yearning for connection: They wish to participate in the growth of others and they wish to be responded to, to "matter." Suffering arises when people experience a sense of "condemned isolation," alone, outside the human community, paralyzed in their efforts to reestablish connection, and self-blaming. When a less powerful person is hurt or misunderstood by a more powerful person and the less powerful person is not able to register their pain (i.e., their experience is invalidated or unheeded), this person learns to take that aspect of themselves out of relationships. In this way relationships become characterized by chronic disconnection and inauthenticity. Mutual growth occurs when both people are responsive to each other's messages. This is curtailed when disconnections become chronic. In more responsive contexts, acute disconnections can be reworked to create stronger and more resilient relationships. We are not destined as human beings to grow to greater and greater autonomy and independence: Such benchmarks of growth create unrealizable standards of maturity. Rather, the natural pathway of growth is toward greater mutuality and interdependence. The overly individualistic nature of 21st-century America makes it difficult for people to embrace this necessary interdependence. Psychology has too often conspired in this emphasis on independence and separation, including its overemphasis on the "separate self." In therapy, use of RCT leads to judicious, therapeutic authenticity on the part of the therapist, recognition of the distorting influence of power-over dynamics in human relationships, the importance of social context and privilege. There is an interest in working through disconnections toward more resilience and strengthened relational competence. RCT has been used with many different kinds of clients: women, men, children, and people diagnosed with affective disorders and personality disorders. It has been applied less in working with psychotic populations. While it is generally used in long-term individual therapy, it has also been adapted for short-term therapy. There is a manual for using it in time-limited groups and in longer-term groups. |
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