Optimal Responsiveness: How Therapists Heal Their Patients

A new generation of dynamic therapists is taking a fresh look at what actually heals the patient. In contrast to the classical vision, whose essential feature is intervention by interpretation in an ambience of optimal frustration, Bacal's conception of optimal responsiveness legitimizes a whole repertoire of professional behaviors - empathic attunement, confrontation, support, self-disclosure, validation or invalidation. Ferenczi, Alexander, Balint, Winnicott, and more recently Kohut anticipated aspects of the idea, which Bacal and his colleagues - informed by emerging understanding in self psychology and intersubjective relational perspectivesarticulate, elucidate, and apply as a comprehensive indicator of therapeutic efficacy.