WHAT IS RELATIONAL-CULTURAL THEORY?
“The need for connection and community and the desire to be a part of meaningful and responsive relationships is at the heart of human experience.”
—Judith V. Jordan, Ph.D.
In contemporary Western society, the individual is the key unit of analysis — each human being actively constructs a life through self-determination, self-motivation, and self-efficacy. While these values are deeply necessary for thriving, research has proven that they don’t actively cultivate one of the most fundamental requisites for human happiness – healthy connection. In our hyper-individualist culture, far too many people live in isolation and quiet desperation. The predominant values of transaction, consumption, curation, and celebrity leave people feeling profoundly disconnected from one another—in the family, the workplace, and the community. This disconnection has proven alarmingly dangerous to our social fabric. Not only does it allow people to demonize one another, but it also prevents us from truly being seen, known, understood, and appreciated by one another.
Relational-Cultural Theory (RCT) celebrates the centrality of interdependence. Flying in the face of the so-called self-made person, RCT posits that we grow not through separation, but rather in and toward connection. We need connection just as we need air and water. Our bodies are exquisitely designed to manage stress by turning to trusted others when we are anxious or scared, but the chronic stimulation of fear without the availability of comfort and love moves us into helplessness and hopelessness. In contrast, when certain parts of the brain are activated, we feel a sense of calm even in the worst of times; the reduction in stress that comes from a healthy relationship and a sense of belonging is more powerful than that which can be stimulated by simply deep breathing or individual meditation. Thus, it becomes clear that growth-fostering relationships provide the resilience that enables us to persevere even in the most difficult times.
By contrast, the experience of disconnection is considered the opposite of The Five Good Things: a decreased sense of energy, an inability to act constructively, confusion regarding self and others, and a decreased sense of worth that may cause one to turn away from relationships in general.
RCT embodies a wide range of elegant reframes for the ways in which we engage in personal relationships. This includes a concept called waging good conflict. While conflict is inevitable in relationships, it can also be a source of affirmation and growth. By being able to hold conflict within connection we begin the transformative process of cultivating compassion for difference. Founding scholar of RCT, Jean Baker Miller, defined waging good conflict as respectfully engaging others while simultaneously holding one’s own integrity with confidence and hope.
The scope of RCT extends far beyond personal relationships to consider the structures and systems that shape our wider society. Over the years, RCT has come to influence scholarship and practice in psychology, psychiatry, counseling, education, the arts, organizational development, community development, faith and spirituality, and the environment. Our hope is that RCT will help shift the dominant paradigm from “me” to “we,” thereby creating a more just and hopeful world.
AFFINITY GROUPS
Relational-Cultural Theory spans a variety of disciplines — among them, psychology and social work; neuroscience and medicine; social and economic justice; and education.
In each of these areas, we are inviting people who are committed to join a group of kindred spirits to shape a learning and action agenda that draws on Relational-Cultural Theory in the respective disciplines. Our intention is to provide the basic structure for such an agenda so that the work can emerge organically, based on the needs and desires of those who participate. The three groups that have launched to date are described below. Please join us!
Education
The Education as a Relational Practice Group (EARP) is a community of educators from a range of domains who collaborate and support each other in a continuing exploration of RCT as a guiding force in education.
Psychotherapy
Relational Cultural Theory Psychotherapy Affinity Group is a community of mental wellness professionals who study and practice the healing power of connection and the creation of growth-fostering relationships in the clinical application of Relational Cultural Theory.
HOW HEALTHY ARE YOUR RELATIONSHIPS?
CARE stands for the four basic elements of relational health: calm, accepted, resonant, energetic.
By exploring the quality of the relationships you spend the most emotional and physical time in, you will get a clearer sense of the collective impact your relationships have on your nervous system. Additionally, identifying the degree of safety in your relationships allows you to take relational risks that are more likely to be supported and to improve both the quality of the relationship and the functioning of your brain.
Ultimately, the information from the assessment is used to help you build a CARE strategy and select CARE exercises that both improve your health and strengthen the quality of your relationships. For those who want it, additional resources are available after taking the assessment.
Education as a Relational Practice Group
Relationships are a powerful site and source for learning. And so it follows that RCT informs the theory and practice of teaching and other developmental work such as mentoring. While RCT emerged primarily in the clinical domain, the founding scholars saw the theory’s potential beyond therapeutic practice. “This vision of mutual development includes not only individuals and families, but also workplaces, schools, and other institutions – in other words, all of life,” wrote Jean Baker Miller and Irene Stiver in 1997.
The Education as a Relational Practice Group (EARP) is a community of educators from a range of domains who collaborate and support each other in a continuing exploration of RCT as a guiding force in education. Members share research and readings, and workshop syllabi, curriculum, and research projects. Potential projects include a conference and joint publication. We bring a strong social justice lens and commitment to our work. All who work in education and other developmental roles are invited to join.
Relationship as a site and source for learning
The Five Good Things – energy, knowledge, sense of worth, action, and desire for more connection – provide a meaningful framework from which to understand the essence of powerful teaching and learning interactions and relationships. “These components are both essence and outcome as they form the heart of what goes on in connected teaching,” writes Harriet L. Schwartz, PhD in Connected Teaching: Relationship, Power, and Mattering in Higher Education (Stylus, 2019), the first book to apply RCT to higher education. Central to RCT is understanding how people grow through and in relationship and this emphasis on growth is relevant to education at all levels including PreK-12, higher education (both undergraduate and graduate), mentoring, and adult learning. RCT’s focus on social and cultural identities and context, power, and mutual empathy (which can also be understood as the idea that all people in a relationship are growing) position the theory as highly relevant to understanding teaching and learning, and considering schools and other organizations as complex systems.
RCT-informed courses, degree programs, and K12 initiatives
While RCT helps teachers, school counselors, student affairs professionals and other educators reflect on and develop their practice, the theory is also at the heart of university courses and programs, and other learning initatives. Several universities offer RCT-related courses and/or programs that have been designed and are guided by RCT. For example, University of Cincinnati, Carlow University, and St. Mary’s University offer courses in RCT. In addition, The College of St. Scholastica uses RCT as a theoretical frame throughout the undergraduate and graduate social work programs and Carlow University designed its master’s in student affairs program with RCT as a foundation for student affairs practice.
On the doctoral level, Antioch University offers a PhD in leadership and change through a program that upends conventional models of doctoral education, fostering collaboration rather than competition among students, and power-with rather than power-over relationships between faculty and students. Antioch also offers seminars in RCT and several students have completed RCT-related dissertations. RCT continues to serve as a foundation in dissertations from a range of disciplines including counseling psychology, social work, leadership, and organizational studies.
Additionally, other organizations apply RCT to transforming education and to community youth programs. For example, Open Circle, uses RCT to inform a curriculum and professional development program for elementary schools, drawing on RCT as a foundation for its social and emotional learning (SEL) curriculum.
For more information about the EARP, please sign up using the button below.
Ecology Affinity Group
The Ecology Affinity Group supports the vision of a world where each of us, and the collective WE, live in relationship with our natural world through interactions grounded in respect, balance, mutuality, and genuine community, ever reminding us that “we are nature”.
Mission Statement
We will create and support activities and programs that nurture our connection with Nature, and develop initiatives that foster relational awareness and sustainability with the natural world through partnerships with RCT practitioners, indigenous communities, and interested persons, groups, and organizations.
Invitation
For us, it is clear that Relational-Cultural values of respect, mutuality, and care relate to “all that is”—human beings, the four-legged, winged, crawlers, and swimmers, the plants, plus the elements of earth, fire, air, water, and the heavens. We invite you to join us as we respond to the awareness that our existence as natural beings is distinct but not separate from our interdependent world and that our engagement with all aspects of Nature matters.
Psychotherapy Affinity Group
The group invites members to engage in study and discussion of RCT concepts to advance theoretical understanding and increase practical skill in the art and science of mental health treatment.
To register, please contact Myriam Barenbaum, LCSW-R, at mbeartree@aol.com
