James Costello - Radical Relationality

Season 9 continues with a recording from our 2024 annual conference, Embodiment and History. This episode features a presentation from James Costello Abstract: The psychotherapist’s “in the moment” relationship with the otherness of their client is the most central aspect of the therapeutic encounter. The real problems are the present problems, and so the therapist must seek contact with the client in the present. Addressing relational experiences of the past or future can only be understood in the encounter now. The purpose of remembering the past becomes attuned to its re-imagination in the present. The radically relational therapist understands depression for example, as an uncoupling from the present moment, and not the reverse, where a person’s past is the cause of difficulties in the present. What is at stake when we think about menopause, depression, dementia, or trauma in this way, is the peculiar human capacity for stepping out of our bodies and adopting a detached and disembodied perspective of ourselves. It is our capacity to rise above the here-and-now of current experience - a “view from nowhere” - which admits, filters, valorises and denies aspects of the world about me. It is the co-created therapeutic “now” that becomes the place for learning and change. As relational patterns appear “now,” the therapist engages with the client in examining, challenging, and articulating new pictures, more apt metaphors for making sense of the world. It is in the present that awareness of what sectors of a client’s world need be recovered for healthy living come to the fore. This feature of radical relationality is reminiscent of the psychodynamic concept of transference – where the client projects their internal representations of relational figures from the past onto the therapist. The radical relationist, instead, sees these patterns as appearing in the real relationship of therapy; one just as authentic, if not more so than those where the client participates as part of their embodied relational field of experience. Further Information: This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2024, co-organised with University of the West of England. The conference was held in Bristol on the theme of 'Embodiment and History'. Biographical information of speakers is taken from the programme of that event and therefore may not be up-to-date. The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast. About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/ About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/