Advances in Relational Psychotherapy

Enactments, mentalizing and developing a mindful stance with the patient

The healing potential of the therapeutic relationship is ultimately determined by the interaction between the attachment patterns of the patient and those of the therapist – which often emerge from a history of trauma. Failing to attend to the impact of our own attachment patterns, we usually repeat them, often compromising our efforts to create a secure base. By contrast, recognizing the hand of our past in the present can loosen its grip, while also revealing the ways in which own attachment patterns and those of the patient are meaningfully related. David will discuss how our attachment patterns shape not only how we relate but also what we know-sense, feel, think, and remember. Such patterns can be sources of insight (we know others most deeply on the basis of what we know about ourselves) but also of impasse (our ability to know others will be limited by what we are unable or unwilling to know about ourselves).