RELATIONSHIP FROM A CRITICAL PSYCHOLOGY PERSPECTIVE Case Study Solution
The therapeutic relationship is defined as the relationship between the client or the patient and the healthcare professional. This relationship is the means through which the professional and the client help to cope with one another and to help each other for their mutual benefit. This concept had also been defined by Freud in 1912 who defined this as the feeling of the friendly affection which is in the form of the positive transference(Sully, 2006). Therapeutic relationship has a strong correlation with power in a healthcare setting. The Therapeutic relationship between the client and the therapist is not balanced in terms of the power(Browne, 2012).
The therapist is invested by the client through power and then the therapist makes use of that power for using it in the favor of the client to empower the client. However, the therapy can be impeded as a result of the power imbalance when several power factors are taken into consideration by the health care professionals. These factors can include HIV status, sexual orientation, background, race etc. Also when the healthcare practitioners belong to a dominant culture within the society in which they live, then this imbalance of the power becomes more significant and as a result, the professionals begin to devalue the values of their clients and the perceptions of their clients(Lazarus, 2015). This occurs when the imbalance of the power becomes highly exploitative. If we compare therapy with the human life, then we can see that the therapy of the clients occurs in a framework of the difference and sameness.
The clients and the healthcare professionals tend to find out the point or the ways through which they both seem to be different and also same. However, either of these relationships between the therapist and the client can be inaccurate or even accurate and thus they can have a significant impact upon the therapy(Sully, 2006). However, there are also few differences among the humans that can be considered as neutral with respect to the power. Firstly, if we talk about the ranks and the ranks of the people in a Therapeutic relationship and if there are differences in the ranks than this can cause inflicts on the people and cause emotional wounds and these can be reinforced and re-enacted within the Therapeutic relationship(Cahill, 2013). According to Arnold Mindell, if a person has either earned a rank or inherited the rank, then that rank would be able to organize the behavior of that individual. When the rank of an individual is (Wolfe, 2013) combined with the visual information based on ethnicity and gender then this enables the people to quickly and accurately read the relative rank of each person and determine the implications of their power. Although, it is not always true however, power moves along with rank(Browne, 2012).
The imbalance of the power is created within the Therapeutic relationships when the adults and even the clients bestow high power over their therapists and this is the basic reason where the imbalance and the power differential occurs when the therapist is considered to have more leverage, control and psychological strength. However, the actual reality here is that although the therapist might have a higher experience, expertise, knowledge of the field but the client is the one that has the most of the actual power within a Therapeutic relationship. For instance, the client is at will to speak anything about the therapy or the reason why he was there and he even can talk about the therapist however, the therapist needs to maintain discipline and follow the privacy and confidentiality of all the matters that are discussed between the therapist and the client within a Therapeutic relationship(Cahill, 2013). Client is therefore, considered as the employer of the therapist and this is also evident by the fact that the client is able to fire a therapist without any reason while on the other hand, it is unethical for the therapist to abandon a client without transitioning the therapy of the client or recommending the client about any other therapist(Wolfe, 2013).
The client is the boss of the therapist and it is the will or the decision or the power of the client that he or she can terminate their Therapeutic relationship at any time without following any rules and regulations and without any reason. Most of the people or the clients take the comfort in the perception that their therapists have special powers or they are psychologically powerful and have a strong influence just like a parent has on his or her child. However, the truth is always that there is no special power or any ability that is possessed by the therapists and they can only cure their patients with the knowledge, expertise and the skills that they have developed over the years(KK, 1996). They are just ordinary people and not more than that. This imbalance of the power or the mis perception about the power of the therapists within any Therapeutic relationship occurs as a result of the psychotherapy through psychoanalytic methods. In this relationship the clients give a lot of importance to the transference and as a result a balance of power occurs shifting more power towards the therapists whereas, the more actual power is possessed by the client(Lazarus, 2015).........................
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