South-African psychotherapist Petruska Clarkson developed a model of relationship-building that can inform both counselling and supervision relationships. Interested in Gestalt therapy, she came to the UK in the 1970s. Her model is based on integrative therapy, but is applicable to all modalities.

In the 1950s, Carl Rogers had written a paper entitled ‘The Necessary and Sufficient Conditions of Therapeutic Personality Change’, published in the Journal of Consulting Psychology. This introduced the idea that the therapeutic relationship is key, and three of the conditions – congruence, unconditional positive regard and empathy, which have subsequently become known as the ‘core conditions’ – have come to be accepted by practitioners of all modalities as vital to establishing this relationship.

In 1995, Clarkson wrote a book entitled The Therapeutic Relationship (revised in 2003).Clarkson talked about ‘intersubjective relationships’ (how we connect to others) and ‘intrapsychic relationships’ (how we connect to ourselves). Rory explains the five intersubjective relationships, and provides some real-life examples of these:

1. The working alliance forms the basis of the client–therapist (or therapist–supervisor) relationship, and includes the contract. It focuses on building a shared understanding and foundation, so that if the relationship falters, both parties can return to this stage and try to repair it.
2. The transferential/countertransferential relationship refers to the idea that we may remind a client of someone from their past, or vice versa, and the related feelings from the past may be transferred to the present, so affecting the therapeutic relationship. If this happens, it is important to explore the issue in supervision.
3. The reparative/developmentally needed relationship is based on the client viewing the therapist as a parent figure to support them during the personal growth that takes place in therapy. This may be especially so for clients who experienced poor parenting as youngsters. In time, the client begins to trust their own judgement and so needs the therapist less (at which point therapy comes to an end).
4. The person-to-person relationship draws on the work of Martin Buber regarding ‘I–Thou’ (as opposed to ‘I–It’) relationships – i.e. the development of a real emotional connection (which makes counselling a unique profession, differentiating it even from other caring professions).
5. The transpersonal relationship is hard to define, but describes a spiritual connection between people.