Life in Parallax
Tentative Axioms of a Relational Therapist (in Training)
Entering my second year of graduate-level training as a Marriage and Family Therapist, I’ve taken some time to try to articulate my own assumptions about experience and relationships on the one hand, and therapeutic intervention on the other. I don’t propose these principles as universally binding, objective, complete, or unchanging — just as a snapshot of my subjective theory of therapy as of this stage of my career.
For context, the following axioms draw on systems theory (including some of Marriage and Family Therapy’s idiosyncratic models of therapy) and psychoanalysis (especially, though not exclusively, object relations theory and intersubjectivity). Though the language I use foregrounds human relationships, I think these axioms could also be broadened to discuss human experience in general, whether relating to other people, ourselves, objects, or any other phenomena. Theoretically, I believe they can be fruitfully applied regardless of modality.
My hope is that these axioms are helpful to those I work with — or, at the very least, helpful conversation starters.
- There is something that it’s like to be you that it’s not like to be me — and vice versa.
- But because I am in some way present in your field of awareness…
