Cognitive Analytic Therapy is a relational therapy, which is a word used to describe most therapeutic modalities these days. What is meant by "relational" is often left being somewhat vague and polymorphous suiting the needs of the writer. After so many years of working as a CAT therapist and teaching CAT therapists, I believe that the relational thesis that underpins CAT also applies to all therapeutic relationships.
Reflective capacity depends on relational awareness
Reflective capacity is key to well-being, mental health and therapy. It is the capacity to have a compassionate observing eye and an empathic narrative ear.
For CAT, reflective capacity depends upon relational awareness (an ability to be simultaneously in touch with what is going on within, between and around me and my world)
Relational awareness can be damaged by:
Childhood trauma, exploitation, smothering or neglect
Restrictive and divisive social forces and conditions
Or enabled by
Vital childhood experience of mutual, fair and honestly playful engagement and learning
Open and integrative social conditions
Recovering, developing or healing relational awareness (and thereby reflective capacity)
is a shared, active conversational process in CAT
aided by conceptual tools such as reciprocal roles, self-states, coping procedures and patterns of relating.
mediated by the co-creative, self-conscious use of therapeutic methods such as mapping, writing and voice work.
And by an understanding and use of the therapeutic relationship
Both as a positive and benign partnership (transference friendly) built on consistency, transparency and trust
And as an enactment magnet for the transference and replay of compelling (and haunting) patterns of relating
from the past
in the present
from the system
carried into the therapy room where they are played out helpfully or harmfully as ghost roles and voices with a simultaneous life in the present and in the past.
The goals of therapy are threefold
reducing distress and troublesome symptoms
Increasing self-worth and effectiveness
Developing narrative freedom, story power and voice awareness
Narrative freedom is the ability to have more than one narrative to more than one story.
It is the capacity to listen and relate in the spaces between stories and narratives and hold in mind more than one story, author or location.