</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
He said something about 'relational psychology' or 'family systems theory' or 'systems theory' or something along those lines.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">
My T says he is "family systems theory." I read about it once on the Internet somewhere, but I forgot exactly what it is. But I remember liking it. My brain is shot, sorry. Alex, all you wrote about the relational view, both members of the dyad bring something to the encounter, etc., is totally what happens in my therapy. The relation is all important and I always strive for moments of true connection with my T. It helps me with my relations outside of therapy and my ability to connect to others. My T is (according to me) primarily humanistic, and these views fit that too. But he will say he is family systems, which is less familiar to me. And, yes, yes, yes, there is a lot of therapist disclosure. I've said this before many times here in this forum. the disclosure is totally a part of this therapeutic model. Sometimes therapists who work in this model get in trouble in court because they have expert witnesses, speaking from the psychoanalytic model, appear saying the T should never self disclose and this was the first mistake toward "other" boundary crossings. They are citing "evidence" from the wrong model so it doesn't even make sense to apply this to a humanist or a systems therapist. I love knowing about my therapist. He tells me incidents from his personal life that relate to my own difficulties of the moment and model to me ways of healthy being and also show me he is a human being who grapples with life's challenges too, just like me. This, in turn, makes it easier for me to share with him.

For the connectedness in therapy and other relations, I take as my model, "I and Thou" by Martin Buber. If I can have some moments of "I and Thou" relatedness in therapy each time, it is healing in itself. I don't really understand how. But my T does. And it works, so I go with it.

Am I making any sense? Sometimes things happen in therapy that seem almost mystical to me.