IJSP Number 8, 2026

International Journal of Supervision in Psychotherapy, Number 8, 2026 Page | 84 scientific or technical frameworks can inadvertently obscure moral and contextual realities that are central to the client’s suffering [18]. Mini-example (social anxiety): • Intrapsychic-only frame: “Social anxiety is maintained by catastrophic thinking and avoidance; we must correct cognitions and reduce avoidance.” • Inside + world frame: “Social anxiety is also shaped by real social penalties: classed accents, gendered judgments, racialized surveillance, workplace precarity. Avoidance may have been protective. We work on fear and avoidance while also mapping the environments where the threat is real and developing realistic agency and protection.” This shift prevents a subtle clinical violence: treating the client’s realistic fear as a cognitive error. 4.2 THE TARGET OF CHANGE: SYMPTOM REDUCTION VS SYMPTOM + CONDITIONS + AGENCY Mainstream psychotherapy often defines therapeutic success as symptom reduction and improved functioning. Radical psychotherapy values these outcomes but expands them, arguing that symptom reduction is insufficient if it is achieved through adaptation to dehumanizing conditions or through increased self-blame. Radical work treats agency and dignity as clinical outcomes, alongside symptom relief, because they address the root-level dynamics that often sustain distress. This is consistent with existential and radical-relational traditions that treat relational freedom, recognition, and meaning as therapeutic aims, not merely optional “life coaching” add-ons [20, 15]. Mini-example (social anxiety): • Symptom-only target: “Reduce anxiety from 8/10 to 3/10 in social situations.” • Radical target: “Reduce anxiety and increase agency: the capacity to set limits, to choose contexts that are less humiliating, to speak without self-erasure, and to interpret fear as information rather than defect.” In a radical frame, the client’s ability to take up space becomes a marker of healing, not a personality preference. 4.3 THE THERAPIST’S POSITION: NEUTRALITY/EXPERTNESS VS ETHICAL ALIGNMENT + REFLEXIVITY Many clinical traditions emphasize neutrality (especially in classical psychoanalytic postures) or a technical-expert stance (especially in manualized frameworks). Radical psychotherapy does not necessarily abandon technique or boundaries, but it challenges the fantasy that therapy occurs outside power. Instead, it proposes ethical alignment, especially alignment against humiliation, invalidation, and structural harm, combined with reflexivity about the therapist’s authority and the institutional context of psychotherapy. The professionalization and regulation of psychotherapy can intensify asymmetries, making the therapist not only a helper but also a representative of systems that may have harmed the client [22]. Radical psychoanalytic accounts explicitly argue for resisting professional domestication and for maintaining ethical attention to power and social reality in clinical work [4].