Читать книгу Counseling and Psychotherapy - Группа авторов - Страница 84

In contrast to developmental theories that place autonomy, independence, and individuation from others as key tenets, RCT posits that people grow in connection with one another and that optimal human development is relationally centered (Miller, 1976, 1986). The premise that people grow through relationships rather than through individualist dominance over their environment and others challenged many of the prevailing theories of psychological adjustment and counseling in the 1970s and 1980s. Banks (2015) envisioned growth in connection as differing from growth in separation. Growth in separation means that, as people mature, they adopt a psychologically defensive stance. The purpose of individualistic growth is to eventually “walk away” (Banks, 2015, p. 11) from others. By contrast, growth in connection is described as flexible as “a magician’s linking rings” (Banks, 2015, p. 12). Relationships move and breathe. People experience the freedom of coming closer together at times and moving away at others, yet they are still connected with each other. In these relationships, people experience liberation, safety, nurturance, and vulnerability. These are the very key elements of effective counseling relationships, which robustly predict client outcomes (Wampold, 2015). In the next section, we further detail the major constructs of RCT.