Relational-Cultural Therapy

In Relational-Cultural Therapy, Dr. Judith V. Jordan demonstrates and discusses this increasingly practiced approach to therapy. Relational-cultural therapy is a theory of doing therapy, as well as a developmental theory, that works on connection and disconnection in a client’s life. A person’s past relationships positively and negatively influence expectations–or relational images–of future relationships. People become disconnected from each other primarily because of negative relational images, and the therapist’s job is to loosen the hold these negative images have on the client’s present life.

In this session, Dr. Jordan works with a young woman who suffered a lot of pain surrounding the death of her father. Dr. Jordan makes use of mutual empathy, an emotionally authentic responsiveness, through which she seeks to understand the client and join her where she is in the moment.