Is Aesthetic Relational Knowing a Common Factor in Psychotherapy? A Comparison Among Different Models

This study has explored the construct of aesthetic relational knowledge (ARK) as the intuitive experience of the therapist that emerges from the phenomenological field created in a meeting between therapist and client. A scale to measure this construct has been built and validated. The concept of ARK has been examined in literature and a questionnaire has been developed, composed of 58 items. A sample of 94 Italian Gestalt psychotherapists (Mage = 40.19, SD = 8.15) has completed an online protocol containing the Basic Empathy Scale, the Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness, and a series of questions created ad hoc for the assessment of resonance. Two exploratory two- and threelatent- factor analyses were conducted to identify the variables that best explain ARK. The results have shown that ARK is described by three factors: empathy, resonance, and bodily awareness. They show the best saturation values and the best comparison with the theoretical reference model. Cronbach’s alpha is .844. The