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Mentoring the Patient’s Self-Creation: Thoughts on the Nature of the Therapeutic Relationship

Recent writing in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy has emphasized the ineradicability of the analyst’s subjectivity. This article tries to take this idea one step further by arguing for the existentialist position that psychoanalysis and psychotherapy are primarily encounters between two human beings who bring their own aesthetics of existence, that is, their vision of what makes a life worth living, into the therapeutic relationship. Therapeutic technique is seen as a means that increases the likelihood that the relationship will be beneficial. This is illustrated by work with a highly gifted and perceptive patient whose theory about the therapy was that a form of what he called "intellectual mentoring" was integral to it. This idea is examined, and it is argued that it has practical implications. Making the fit between the patient and the analyst’s personal idioms an explicit part of psychotherapeutic discourse is proposed.

Key Words: psychotherapeutic relationship • patient-therapist matching • mentoring • self-creation

Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Vol. 44, No. 3, 377-405 (2004)
DOI: 10.1177/0022167804266094


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