Psychotherapy as a Space for Resonance

Psychotherapy today moves between scientific method, social change and a question that goes deeper than any school of therapy: what actually happens between two people when one of them begins to understand themselves and their life differently?

The various psychotherapeutic approaches offer different answers. Cognitive behavioural therapy focuses on thoughts, feelings and patterns of behaviour; psychodynamic approaches explore unconscious conflicts and early experiences of relationships, while systemic therapy considers people within their relationships and social contexts. These differences matter. At the same time, there is a risk of understanding psychotherapy too narrowly as a system of methods for addressing psychological problems and reducing symptoms.

A human being is not a problem to be solved. A human being is someone who relates, feels, interprets, changes and responds to the world.

Resonance and the therapeutic relationship

Hartmut Rosa’s concept of resonance opens up a philosophical perspective that is particularly interesting for understanding psychotherapy. Rosa describes resonance as a way of relating to the world in which something touches us, we respond to it and are ourselves changed in the process. It stands neither for complete control nor for passive surrender. Resonance arises where we allow ourselves to be touched without being able to determine exactly what will come of it.

Psychological suffering can also be viewed afresh from this perspective. People often come to therapy not because they simply lack knowledge, discipline or the right technique. They come because their relationship with themselves, with other people or with the world has become fragile. Something that once supported them no longer does. Relationships feel empty, their own body feels unfamiliar, work is experienced only as a function, or their life seems like something they organise but no longer truly inhabit.

In my work as a therapist, I encounter this very experience again and again: people often know a remarkable amount about themselves. They can name their patterns, analyse their thoughts and sometimes even explain very precisely why they feel the way they do. Yet this does not necessarily change anything. Only when a person can truly engage with their experience and, in doing so, encounter someone within a supportive relationship can insight gradually become lived experience. For me, this is one of the distinctive possibilities of psychotherapy.

Therapy can then be more than the correction of dysfunctional thoughts or the reduction of symptoms. It can become a space of encounter in which something that may have been lost in everyday life can be heard and felt again.

The therapeutic relationship itself is central to this. A conversation with a friend can offer comfort, closeness and orientation. Psychotherapy, however, creates a different form of encounter: a protected space in which even what is contradictory, shameful or seemingly incomprehensible can be spoken. As a therapist, I am not simply a neutral observer. I bring my attention, my perception and my professional stance into the encounter. At the same time, I must take care not to fill the space with my own needs, interpretations or answers.

This is a demanding balance. I want to be attentive and engaged without prescribing what the other person should feel or recognise. I want to offer something without being able to determine what the other person will take from it. For me, this is precisely where the connection between resonance and a therapeutic stance becomes particularly clear.

Resonance is not harmony

Resonance does not mean harmony.

A therapeutic encounter does not require therapist and client to feel the same things or share the same perspective. On the contrary, a living encounter can emerge precisely where something unsettles us, contradicts us or is not understood at first. Resonance is not fusion. It requires difference.

This also means that resonance cannot be produced or forced. As a therapist, I can be attentive, make myself available, listen and respond. Whether this makes a person feel understood, touched or safe, however, is not entirely in my hands. The other person’s response remains beyond my control. Perhaps an important connection between resonance and a therapeutic stance lies precisely here: the goal is not the perfect answer, but a willingness to engage with the openness of the encounter.

Encounter in a digital space

This perspective becomes particularly interesting when we consider the increasing digitalisation of psychotherapy. Online therapy can provide accessible and flexible support. It can bridge geographical distances and, for some people, even create a greater sense of safety because they can take part in a session from familiar surroundings.

At the same time, the digital medium changes the conditions of the encounter. Posture, gaze, breathing, silence and the smallest changes in expression are perceived differently through a screen. The other person’s body is present, yet only partially visible. Gaze also changes: looking at the other person’s face on a screen does not create the same eye contact as when two people sit in the same room. Even silence can feel different.

This does not mean that online therapy must be fundamentally less effective or less human. Rather, it means that the conditions under which a therapeutic relationship emerges are changing. For me, the question is therefore less about how to transfer in-person therapy into a digital setting as completely as possible. The more interesting question is what the medium does to the way we encounter one another.

Online therapy may require a particularly conscious form of attention. Voice, pauses, facial expression and small changes in the emotional atmosphere become more significant. At the same time, it requires a willingness to tolerate uncertainty and ask questions, rather than prematurely assuming that one has understood something correctly.

After all, we do not encounter another person through words alone. We encounter them with our whole embodied being.

For this reason, technological progress should not automatically be equated with progress in the quality of therapy. An app can convey information. An algorithm can recognise patterns. Digital services can provide access. Yet whether this becomes an experience in which a person feels truly seen, understood and addressed is another question.

Beyond constant optimisation

This distinction is becoming increasingly important as mental health services become more digital. Prevention, apps and telemedicine can open up valuable possibilities. At the same time, there is a danger of increasingly viewing psychological suffering as something that can be measured, optimised and efficiently regulated.

This brings us to a fundamental question about society:

What happens to a person when even their inner life becomes an object of constant optimisation?

Perhaps an important task of psychotherapy lies precisely here: not merely to restore people’s ability to function, but to create spaces in which it is permissible to ask what a life actually feels like.

Mental health is not exhausted by being productive, resilient and free of symptoms. A person can function while still feeling inwardly removed from their own life. Conversely, a crisis can be painful and unsettling while also opening up a process in which something essential is understood anew.

What psychotherapy can make possible

In this sense, resonance would not be a therapeutic goal that could simply be produced. It cannot be prescribed. It arises where something reaches us and we are able to respond. This makes psychotherapy both effective and humble.

It can offer a space. It can give attention. It can help find words for something that may previously have existed only as a diffuse sense of unease, anxiety or emptiness. It can open up new perspectives and support people in reshaping their relationships with themselves, with others and with the world.

But it cannot force resonance.

And perhaps this is precisely where the distinctive quality of a therapeutic encounter lies. Two people sit opposite one another. One speaks about their life; the other listens. Outwardly, little often happens. And yet something can emerge in this space that can neither be fully measured nor technically produced.

One person feels reached by another – and, through this, begins to reach themselves again.

For me, this thought captures something essential about psychotherapy. It is not only a method for treating psychological symptoms. It is also a space in which a person can experience themselves anew within a relationship. A space in which something that has long been silent, split off or incomprehensible is allowed to find words.

Perhaps this is precisely the significance of resonance for psychotherapy: not that the right answer is always found, but that we can reach one another without needing to bring the other person entirely within our control.

Psychotherapy thus takes people seriously as what they also always are: feeling, interpreting beings, capable of relationships, who respond to the world and can be touched by it.

Further reading

Hartmut Rosa: Resonanz. Eine Soziologie der Weltbeziehung. Suhrkamp. German-language edition.