The Relational Mind in Couple Therapy: A Bateson‐Inspired View of Human Life as an Embodied Stream

• Published date: 01 December 2018
• Date: 01 December 2018
• Author: Markku Penttonen,Petra Nyman‐Salonen,Virpi‐Liisa Kykyri,Anu Karvonen,Jaakko Seikkula
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/famp.12382

The Relational Mind in Couple Therapy: A

Bateson-Inspired View of Human Life as an

Embodied Stream

JAAKKO SEIKKULA*

ANU KARVONEN*

VIRPI-LIISA KYKYRI*

MARKKU PENTTONEN*

PETRA NYMAN-SALONEN*

To read this article in Simplified Mandarin, please see the article’s Supporting Information on Wiley

Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/famp).

To read this article in Spanish, please see the article’s Supporting Information on Wiley Online Library

(wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/famp).

Research on human intersubjectivity has found that humans participate in a dialogue

throughout their life, and that this is manifested not only via language, but also non ver-

bally, with the entire body. Such an understanding of human life has brought into focus

some basic systemic ideas concerning the human relational mind. For Gregory Bateson,

the mind works as a system, formed from components that are in continuous interaction

with each other. In our Relational Mind research project, we followed twelve couple therapy

processes involving two therapists per session, looking at the ways in which the four partic-

ipants attuned to each other with their bodies, including their autonomic nervous system

activity. Using observations from the project, we here describe the ways thro ugh which the

relational and embodied mind can be realized in a couple therapy setting.

Keywords: Couple Therapy; Autonomic Nervous System; Embodiment; Dialogism

Fam Proc 57:855–866, 2018

Our research group participated in a research program on the human mind, funded by

the Finnish Academy of science. As family therapists, our interest was in looking at

the human mind as relational. The basis of the program was the adoption of a multidisci-

plinary approach, including contemporary knowledge gained from neuroscience. A prime

aim was to add the relational point of view to neuroscience research on the human mind,

while at the same time contributing to family and couple therapy, adding the new knowl-

edge of embodiment. In this paper, we seek to summarize our main observations, consider-

ing their clinical relevance. The research results have been published in several paper s;

hence, in this paper we shall give only a condensed description of the design, the methods

of analysis, and the results (Karvonen, 2017; Seikkula, Karvonen, Kykyri, Kaartinen, &

Penttonen, 2015).

When we started the research project, we had adopted some ideas that we thought

formed an important addition to systemic descriptions. Of particular importance was

research on intersubjectivity, which highlighted notions of the human mind as formed

*Department of Psychology, University of Jyva

¨skyla

¨, Jyva

¨skyla

¨, Finland.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jaakko Seikkula, Department of Psychol-

ogy, University of Jyva

¨skyla

¨, P.O. Box 35, 40014 Jyva

¨skyla

¨, Finland. E-mail: jaakko.seikkula@jyu.fi.

The research has been supported by the Finnish Academy.

855

Family Process, Vol. 57, No. 4, 2018 ©2018 Family Process Institute

doi: 10.1111/famp.12382