question_answer

Explain the nature of therapeutic relationship between the client and the therapist.

Answer:

The special relationship between the client and the therapist is known as the Therapeutic Relationship.

There are two major components of a therapeutic alliance.

(i) First, is the contractual nature of the relationship in which two willing individuals, the client and the therapist, enter into a partnership which aims at helping the client overcome his/her problems.

(ii) The alliance is the limited duration of the therapy. It lasts until the client becomes able to deal with his/ her problems and take control of Us/her life.

The relationship has several properties:

(i) It is a trusting and confiding relationship. The high level of trust enables the client to unburden her/himself to the therapist and confide their psychological and personal problems to the therapist. The therapist must not exploit the trust and confidence of the client.

(ii) The therapist conveys by his/her words and behaviours that s/he is not finding the client and will continue to show the same positive feelings towards the client even if the client is rude or confides all the wrong things that s/he may have done or thought about. It is called unconditional positive regard.

(iii) The therapist has empathy for the client. Empathy is present when one is able to understand the plight of another person, and feel like the other person. It means understanding things from the other person?s perspective i.e., putting oneself in the other person?s shoes.

(iv) The therapeutic alliance also requires that the therapist must keep strict confidentiality of the experiences, events, feelings, or thoughts disclosed by the client.