No Statistical Proof Needed! I'm Convinced by Experience!

• Therapeutic Alliance and Treatment Outcome by Brian O'Neill, 1/28/97
  
  

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on "alliance." Your observation "how each therapy contributres to the alliance" as the criteria for therapy choice----is right on for me. I often make the "alliance" the conscious focus of my mostly cognitive approach to clients' issues having to do with surviving abusive work.

I borrow Gershen Kaufman's term "interpersonal bridge" and I use Ruthellen Josellson's eight characteristics of relatedness (from _The Space Between Us_ Jossey Bass 1992) to evaluate and compare our counseling relationship to what happens at work with the boss. It becomes clear very fast that work is a totally usurious proposition: there is no embeddedness, holding, tending and caring, mutuality, eye to eye validation, idealization, or passionate experience. Whereas in the counseling room all of these are trying to take place without shame. This helps my clients recognize the mistake of internalizing (taking seriously) boss's verbal abuse, and the absolute necessity of constructing a shame-proof wall to withstand the total lack of caring in the 95% of workplaces that are authoritarian.

If there is no interpersonal bridge ("alliance") there is only a repeat of the power-down work dynamic that is killing/depriving the souls of the people I see in therapy. When my therapy works, it's because there is a strong bridge. If I don't see the possibility of a solid interpersonal bridge, I refer the client to someone who may have more skill establishing an "alliance" with the client than I. No alliance, no success. I don't need statistics to convince me.

Thank you for bringing up the topic of "alliance"...Chauncey Hare workfamily@workmail.com ----------------------------------------------------------------

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