The relational approach is a psychoanalytic technique that emphasizes the the therapeutic relationship, and the way important relational patterns get acted out. Emphasis is placed on the importance of therapists' authenticity, and on their willingness and ability to bring their unique personhood into the therapeutic relationship.

In treatment there is often an ongoing process of rupture and repair in the relationship between client and therapist, that is similar in some respects to the ongoing process of disruption and repair that developmental researchers observe in mother-infant interactions. The process of acknowledging and working through these ruptures plays a critical role in helping clients to develop an internal representation of self as capable of negotiating the inevitable tensions that emerge in relationships with others, and of others as available and open to working things through. This therapeutic process typically (but not always) has a conceptual or reflective dimension to it, but it is important to emphasize that much of the learning takes place at a bodily felt, affective level.

Source: Dr Jeremy D. Safran