The motivational worker and the client encounter each other through their contact rebuses, and if a complete motivational relationship is to form, there has to be mutual bonding between them.
It is, in effect, a relationship between a contracting party (the motivational worker), with a well-developed capacity for bonding to other people, and the client, whose abilities in this respect are dysfunctional (Motivational Work, Part 2, The Motivational Relationship, pages 72 – 87).
The three notions of contact rebus, motivational relationship, and protective suit can be combined in one image. The motivational relationship is like a rock in the sea. The waves hammering the rock are the client’s contact rebuses. To tolerate the waves and not be devastated, the rock needs a protective suit.
As mentioned earlier, the client is looking for someone who can affirm him and whom he can trust. Although he desires help, he is suspicious and bears a degree of psychological pain. At the same time, he hopes that the motivational worker will have the energy to deal with his anguish and not abandon him.
In practical terms, this means that the client wants nothing more than to feel the motivational relationship with the motivational worker as a response to his contact rebus. He wants to experience being given commitment, hope, faith, regard, understanding, and honesty in response to his contact rebus.
The six emotional attitudes are, as mentioned earlier, the concrete expression of the life force that the client needs. All his contact rebuses are designed to extract life energy from other people. Each time the client tests with a contact rebus and receives the motivational relationship in return, his life force is strengthened.
The response of the motivational worker to the client in the form of the motivational relationship effects an inner mental change in the client, whose positive core gains an injection of life energy. There occurs, at the same time, a degree of bonding between the two. The client is emboldened to take a step closer and as the motivational worker moves closer too, their relationship is deepened and strengthened.
Case Study
There is thus always a point in creating a relationship with a client even if it is impossible to complete a course of motivational work. The increase in life energy that the motivational worker gives the client makes him a shade less destructive, while the boost to his positive core will render the next contact rebus that he transmits to another motivational worker slightly less transmuted and destructive. This will make it easier for the next motivational worker to detransmute the client’s contact rebus and return the motivational relationship.
Henry, 40, is an inmate of a treatment center for alcoholics. After four months there he starts to drink again, and he is thrown out for breaking the rules. The center helps him to register at a larger shelter, which also has a detox unit, where he will stay until he is clean enough to return.
At the shelter, Henry starts to drink with abandon, leaving each morning to go into town only to return each evening heavily intoxicated. The staff tries to stop him leaving in the mornings and to convince him to undergo detox, but he refuses to listen.
It’s hard for the staff to see him destroy himself day after day with his alcohol abuse, although he has been in the same situation during previous residencies there and always ended up accepting treatment. The staff firmly believe that the same will happen this time too, and realize that they can use the time with him to strengthen his motivation whenever he is in a negative rebound and is destructively demonstrative, and whenever he comes to the detox unit.
The staff hopes that his motivation will increase so much that he will be able, at best, to take even more advantage of the treatment offered by the center. They also plan to invite personnel in from there to mitigate the negative feedback that being discharged entailed.
When Henry is in his negative rebound, he gets himself thrown out of the treatment center and enters a shelter, which is able to take care of him while he is in this phase. They see a purpose to his visit, even though it reminds them of previous occasions. Yet again they have an opportunity to strengthen his motivation so that he can benefit even more than before from the treatment the center has to offer.
They see a meaning in their motivational work, despite not being able to follow it through. The motivational process has a chance of becoming even stronger when the client next turns up at the shelter and when he returns to the treatment center.