Edward Bordin
He named what makes the therapy bond actually work.
Reconceived the therapeutic alliance as a working partnership of three parts — an emotional bond plus agreement on goals and on the tasks to reach them.
The strength of the working alliance is a function of the agreement on goals and tasks and the bond between the partners.
Who they were
Edward Bordin was an American counseling psychologist who reframed the therapeutic alliance in a way that crossed every school of therapy. He proposed that the alliance has three interlocking parts: the emotional bond between client and therapist, agreement on the goals of treatment, and agreement on the tasks used to pursue them. This panctheoretical model became one of the most researched and clinically used ideas in psychotherapy, and the foundation for decades of alliance research.
Terms they cared about
Ideas worth knowing
Their techniques
How the work was done
Best known as a theorist — their ideas shaped the techniques of those who followed.
Their big idea
Working Alliance Theory
Edward Bordin recast the therapeutic alliance as a working partnership shared by every kind of therapy. It rests on three things: an emotional bond, agreement on the goals of the work, and agreement on the tasks for getting there. The strength of that partnership, more than the method, predicts how therapy turns out.
Questions in their spirit
What they’d ask you
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Carry the idea forward
Bordin — What they’d ask you
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