Longing and Fear: The Ambivalence About Having a Relationship in Psychotherapy

It is unquestioned that reaching the hypnotic state is helped along by relational factors and that, conversely, relational experiences can be deepened through hypnosis. It is also true that deepening the experience of being in a relationship with another person is neither comfortable nor indicated for every patient or therapist. Most humans feel ambivalent about closeness. People vary in their desire for and their skill in sustaining mature intimacy. When we move along the continuum from rudimentary notions about relational factors in psychotherapy, such as rapport, to complex concepts, such as enactments, we move along a corresponding continuum of increasing need for specialized training, supervised experience, and personal therapy. The field of psychotherapy has been plagued from its inception by not knowing what to do with the tensions that emerge when two people listen to and look at each other. Avoiding relational factors may be a very human response to a very daunting matter.