Giving back knowledge: the thin boundary connecting patient and therapist in the challenge towards mental health

Abstract

Giving back knowledge has to do with the quality of the psychotherapist in proposing an in­tegration of content and process of the therapeutic relationship, where the psychotherapist has the ability of giving back to the patient an experience of recognition through a dyadic re­lationship.  This intersubjective experience supports the knowledge and development of intersubjectivity of the patient.  Intersubjectivity refers to the acquisition of the patient's ability to see himself as seen by the other without a risk of dissociation related to the patient's own perception. Therefore, only with this new intersubjective relationship a patient can go through a transformative experience of healing through cure.  The path to knowledge is precisely the expression of co­construction in Relational Transac­tional Analysis.In co­construction, the patient­therapist relationship evolves as a set of interactive micromodels, in each actual ­moment of presence within each single subjective level. Therefore, connecting together moments of presence is the process that leads to the transformative experience of healing.