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Channels of Communication and Levels in the Therapeutic Relationship

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The Psychotherapeutic Stance

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Abstract

Psychotherapy is typically understood as a form of talk therapy, which might give the impression that psychotherapy is solely or mainly about the content of the verbal communication between patient and therapist. However, that is far from the case. The process is much more complex, and the pathways to psychotherapeutic change include much more than the explicit content of the patient and the therapist’s conversation. It is thus important to attend to and include these other aspects in one’s understanding of the psychotherapeutic stance. It is argued that the therapist needs to listen to the patient on several different levels and under consideration of different contexts; here-and-now and there-and-then, the conscious and unconscious intentions behind the patient’s communication on different levels in here-and-now, actualization of the patient’s implicit relational knowledge and so on. Three channels of communication between patient and therapist is identified: verbal communication, nonverbal communication and the therapist’s countertransferences. Similarly, it is suggested that we can distinguish at least five levels in the relationship between patient and therapist.

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    Carsten René Jørgensen

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Jørgensen, C. (2019). Channels of Communication and Levels in the Therapeutic Relationship. In: The Psychotherapeutic Stance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20437-2_11

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