Ich bin die Andere – Die Bedeutung der Differenz in der Erfahrung psychotherapeutischer Gegenseitigkeit

Abstract

I am the other. The significance of difference in the experience of reciprocity in psychotherapy. By now, almost all of the psychotherapy schools are applying the interactive approach. The person-centered psychotherapy in particular emphasizes the experience of the relationship as a basis for its therapeutic effect. However, the interactive approach has focused too much on the similarities and thus lost sight a bit of the significance of dissimilarities. But it is precisely the interplay of the familiar and the different, the experience of similarities and dissimilarities that constitutes the driving force in psychotherapy as well as in relationships between persons in general.
The experience of sharing and of not sharing something leads to something other beyond the purely similar. The present paper intends to observe the meeting of the new and different within the familiar and the familiar within the new in its diverse facets and its significance for the development of a child and also in its significance for the development of client and therapist in psychotherapy.
The essay form of the paper has been determined by its content: since the essayistic approach lends itself nicely to its subject facilitating thus its unfolding from within it is also an adequate form for the gentle approximation of the unfamilar within the familiar.