| Abstract: | The importance of developing a certain consciousness in which one is present and autonomous while being intimately interconnected with larger meaning is an important dimension of a relational approach to psychotherapy. Based on the premise that both client and therapist bring something of themselves and of their respective past emotional experience to the therapeutic relationship, a relational approach to therapy is very attentive to the dynamics in the therapy room. It stresses the co‐creation of the therapeutic relationship at conscious, explicit verbal levels and unconscious, implicit levels of functioning, and establishes the therapist's emotional behaviour as a significant factor in fostering change ( Aron, 1996 ). Therapist responsiveness to client's affective impact is discussed with emphasis on its centrality to clinical practice and its relationship to countertransference. A case study of the psychotherapeutic journey with ‘Dawn’ (previously ‘David’), a 53 year‐old client who was awaiting sex‐reassignment surgery, is presented which illustrates how the therapist's struggle in the countertransference represents part of a complex relational body/mind system of parallel processes, re‐enactment and potential for therapeutic change. |
