Therapy requires the patient and therapist to be in a mutually aware relationship. An underlying characteristic of this relationship is that both parties aim towards ‘feeling felt’. The human necessity for ‘feeling felt’ is at the very beginning of the human journey. In a sensitive caregiver-infant relationship the infant and caregiver ‘take in’ the other’s inner state through giving their awareness purposefully to the other’s communicative gestures. This ‘taking in’ is confirmed moment-by-moment through the ‘giving back’ (mirroring) of these gestures. But for the relationship to be alive, in the giving back there must also be the addition of the other person’s inner state. In adulthood this intersubjectively shaped storytelling, created through gestures and words, characterises the space where trauma can be healed in relationship.
The dynamics of this intersubjective storytelling can be characterised as a balanced dynamic relational play between two forces – the wish to realise oneself (for example, the offering of a communicative gesture), and the wish to join with and come together (the reflecting back of a gesture). Described respectively as Power and Love by the philosopher Paul Tillich, the in-the-moment balance of these two forces results in what Tillich calls Justice. Thus a ‘just’ and effective therapeutic interaction is one characterised by a purposeful awareness of other and self where the intrapersonal and interpersonal forces of love and power move in a way that creates a story that is experience as balanced, both in its moment by moment interplay and in its overall narrative.
