Secret Gardens and Dusty Roads

Abstract

The author examines the tensions present in every psychotherapy between the contract, on the one hand, and the illusions of the patient and therapist, on the other. She considers these as two of the various polarities through which the psychotherapeutic process develops with its intrinsic ambiguities. The role Berne assigned to illusion and disillusionment in life and in every psychotherapeutic process is compared with the various functions of illusion discussed by Winnicott and psychoanalysts of the British School. Considering the contract and illusions in a dialectic relationship, the author reflects on the clinical implications of the transactional analysis theory of contracts; discusses recent transactional analytic viewpoints, mainly from a relational perspective, that widen the clinical prospects of psychological contracts; and considers the possible implicit and dynamic influences of these developments. She also examines some specific illusions of patients and therapists and considers their implicit links with clinical models common to various psychotherapeutic theories.

Hard contracts, soft contracts and the unconscious

“…Of course in the literature further work on contracts continues, such as Terlato (2017), Przybylski (2021) and Rotondo (2020), but with little discussion on the specific topic of hard and soft contracts. Hence, this article continues the direct discussion on soft and hard contracts, and looks at some implications of this hard and soft contracts in a number of spheres, and considers the implications of this dichotomy on the whole question of what is psychotherapy and psychological treatment.…”