Within a clearly articulated treatment frame, a developmental relational approach allows therapists to play with and entertain any of her patient’s unusual requests. In fact, through the explication and negotiation of these requests, we gain access to a wide range of dissociated self-states, affects, and relational scenarios. This information facilitates the deepening of our understanding of our patient’s experience of self and other. Often these requests provide a window into previously unseen aspects of old relational scenarios or signal a shift in the patient’s inner object world and relationship with us. A genuine openness to our patient’s subjective experience and the process of interpersonal negotiation around requests opens up space for authentic engagement and moves along the developmental process. Through the clinical process of an intersubjective negotiation, our patient may expand and rearrange self-knowing, states of consciousness, and relational knowledge. 

Learning Objectives

1. Understand the use and potential misuse of self-revelation in therapeutic relationships from a developmental relational perspective.

2. Understand and formulate exceptional requests in therapeutic relationships from a developmental relational perspective including the use of touch.

3. Understand and apply concepts from attachment research such as moments of meeting.