IJSP Number 5, 2023

18 1. All people are equally valuable. We psychotherapists manifest this principle when we treat our clients with kindness, when we provide them with options and choices, and when we accept them as they present themselves. 2. Humans suffer from relational-disruptions not “psychopathology”. When we view someone as pathological, we lose our awareness of the person’s unique creative accommodation and their attempts to manage situations of neglect, ridicule, and/or shame. It is in recognizing and authentically appreciating the other person’s emotional vulnerability, relational needs, and desperate attempts at self-stabilization that we create the possibility for full inter-subjective contact —a contact that heals old psychological wounds. 3. All people are relationship seeking and interdependent throughout life. When we affectively, rhythmically, and developmentally attune to our clients, constantly inquire about our client’s experience, and when we are authentically involved with our clients, we change their perspectives of what is possible in inter-subjective contact. As we effect a change in one aspect of our clients’ relational systems, we influence their other relationships as well. 4. Internal and external contact is essential to human functioning. In a Relationally-focused Integrative Psychotherapy we are always inviting the client into full contact —contact with their internal processes of body sensations, affect, memories, and thoughts. We also invite them into external contact — to communicate interpersonally with awareness and authenticity. 5. All experience is organized physically, affectively, and/or cognitively. People are always communicating a story about their life either consciously or unconsciously. Our clients’ unconscious communication is embedded in their physical tensions, entrenched in their emotional reactions, and encoded in the way they make visceral and cognitive sense of their current and past situations 6. All human behaviour has meaning in some context. Problematic behaviours and disruptive relationships serve some psychological function such as prediction, identity, continuity, and stability. Our therapeutic work involves normalizing our client’s behaviours by helping them understand the contexts in which their behaviours, beliefs, or fantasies were derived. 7. Humans have an innate thrust to grow. As Integrative Psychotherapists it is our commitment to engage each client in a contactful relationship that vitalizes their innate thrust to grow. We do this by fostering our client’s capacity for full internal and interpersonal contact. Our goal includes promoting their vitality and psychic energy that can be invested in health, creativity, and the expansion of their personal horizons. 8. The inter-subjective process of psychotherapy is more important than the content of the psychotherapy. The inter-subjective process involves the melding together of each person’s subjective experiences, their affects, belief systems, internal relational models, implicit and explicit memories, and relational needs. Effective psychotherapy emerges in the creation of a new perspective and understanding.