IJSP Number 4, 2022

41 Some remarks on the therapeutic task may be useful here: Even the simplest definition of a therapeutic goal, namely that the patient should somehow get better, can be questioned, e.g. in the sense of a pessimistic critique of society, that as long as conditions make us sick, there can be no real recovery. Also, from the point of view of different therapy schools very different goals are aimed at: they oscillate between a strict symptom orientation up to a comprehensive personality development (e.g. in the sense of Carl Rogers ’ „ fully functioning person ” ). In addition, the patient and therapist may strive for different goals. Moreover, the goals may change in the course of therapy. In this respect, the discussion about the goals will usually be a (recurring) part of the therapeutic process. For the purposes of this paper, it is assumed that the patient is suffering or has a problem that has led her to seek therapeutic help, and that a perceived reduction in suffering or a perceived approach to a solution to the problem or a better way of dealing with the problem is considered a therapeutic success. This already shows how inseparably goal attainment and relational events are interwoven. This interweaving becomes particularly clear in a classic research work from the Lewin ’s school, Tamara Dembo ’ s “ The Dynamics of Anger ” [8]. Therefore, this experiment is briefly outlined here: The experiment puts the subject in a situation where a certain goal should be reached but the experimental conditions are manipulated in a way that goal attainment is almost impossible. This constellation leads unavoidable to a point, where the focus of the subject ’ s attention increasingly shifts from the task to the experimenter and a struggle between the subject and the experimenter takes centre stage. This has a certain “advantage” for the subject: she can – at least temporarily – withdraw from the frustrating task; moreover, she may no longer feel weak and inferior, but in the new situation of the struggle with the experimenter at eye level. Dembo ’ s classic research analyzes an experimental task, so one should be cautious of making overly simplistic transfers to the therapeutic process. Nevertheless, analogies can be found with all due caution: A patient who enters therapy may also experience the task she faces as difficult to master (bumping up against the inner barriers of her life space as the Gestalt psychologists conceptualize such a constellation). Her life situation in general and the therapeutic situation in the narrower sense form the outer barrier. Bumping up against the barriers increases the state of tension. But what is experienced in particular is the dependence of the task on the relationship: the difficulties in overcoming the problem direct the focus to the relationship and have a clear influence on this relationship. 4. The initial situation Whoever goes into psychotherapy enters into a (new) relationship. This relationship develops, however, not from a kind of point zero or neutral state, but it is from the first moment in a describable state of tension: Both, patient and therapist, experience a certain given relationship constellation, namely that of help- seeker on the one side and helper on the other: suffering and pressure of suffering, helplessness on the part of the patient, expertise and the promise of help on the part