Posted by cricket on August 16, 2005, at 20:40:50
In reply to Re: Terrible Session » cricket, posted by alexandra_k on August 16, 2005, at 16:39:40
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> I think it is amazing that you told him about your dream :-) I'm far too chicken to talk about stuff like that...Hi Alex. Yes, I guess it was brave and not exactly wise. Sometimes kids are like that too.
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> I think... Kids are scaired. And vulnerable. But she reached out to him and he was speaking a different language and rather than just being there and being kind he said one of the most hurtful things anyone could say:
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> > Today we are going to talk about the time of the child. From the beginning, we should understand that the child is stupid
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> :-(
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> > So my therapist's interpretation:
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> > I think he is stupid. (from his words the child is stupid in the dream)
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> ???
> Not sure how he got to that... I would have thought that it shows that you are scaired that he will think that you are stupid...I think he was probably interpreting the dream in a Jungian way (he talks about Jung a lot), as compensation for a conscious attitude. Jung once said he dreamed of one of his patients and she was way up high and he had to bend his neck backwards to look up at her so Jung knew that in reality he was looking down on this woman and that was part of the problem he was having with the analysis. So if in my dream my therapist was saying I (or a part of me) am stupid, in reality I was saying he is stupid.
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> > I don't think he is genuine. He puts up some officious front like a social secretary and that's all I get. (From when the alter did get through, she got some sort of assistant who manages his affairs and the only part of him she got was a lecture).
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> Hmm. Did you tell him that?
No, he kept on probing. Well what was the person like who answered the phone finally? At this point, I knew he was upset about the dream so I was shut down already and just said I don't know it just wasn't you. Which is really all that little girl wanted was to hear his voice and not someone else's.Of course, I think I have called him officious here on Babble at some point. It seems highly unlikely he would ever be at a place like this though.
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> > My therapist was very upset. He said there are things revealed by this dream which it is hard to discuss in any context. I was bracing to hear them but then he ended the session.
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> > I think what he wanted to say was I'm really not capable of doing this work. He edged toward them by saying "You think you are hopeless. You think therapy is the stupidest thing in the world. You wonder why the h*** you are here." He said all this with such coldness that it felt as if he had put "I" in the place of the yous.
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> Sounds to me like he is feeling scaired and undervalued. So maybe I'm projecting... But it does sound more about him than you...
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He also said it was a very negative transference. Maybe, I don't give him a lot of positive feedback and I certainly don't make much progress. I did notice when I came in that his eyes were all red. I immediately thought he had a cold, but he didn't seem sniffly so I thought that he was upset about something. I actually was stupid enough to think that maybe the dream might cheer him a bit. Let him know that somebody really wanted to talk to him.
> Hopefully he is more interested in giving you what will be helpful to you rather than giving you what you want.
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> I read something somewhere...
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> About how the nature of the therapy relationship is that it is time limited.
> That it brings up the memories of trauma.
> They will leave.
> They will do that which traumatised us the most.
> We are the helpless victims from the start
> And they are damned if they do this
> And damned if they don't
> Not a very nice place to be
> But there is still no excuse for lashing out.
> The interpretation of dreams isn't hard
> Because the ego has split
> It is all there open to view in the alters.
> You don't have to dig quite the same
> The apparant complexity of that
> Means all lies open to view
> Embarrasingly...
> I don't think...
> That with this disorder...
> You are supposed to dig
> Because all lies open to view.
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Maybe that's it. Sometimes, as I think I've said before, I'm not sure he has all that many actual miles logged dealing with people like me. He has a private practice probably in one of the most affluent zip codes in the United States.
> :-( I don't know what to say... I think you should try and tell him. Even if you have to write it down and give it to him. About what you would have liked him to say. About what you think the dream means (maybe focus on the nice bits). About how what he said hurt you.
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> That you want to keep working with him (if you still do)
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> Maybe he will learn to change...
> I don't know.
> I'm sorry :-(
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Thanks Alex. I don't know either. Maybe he does realize he needs to change. Maybe the way he jumped to such a defensive posture is perhaps a bit of guilt on his part that my parts can't often access him and he does present as officious and formal much of the time.Since he's been throwing Jung at me. I actually went and looked for that part about Jung's dream. It's in his autobiography "Memories, Dreams, Reflections". I also found this
"...in any thoroughgoing analysis the whole personality of both patient and doctor is called into play. There are many cases which the doctor cannot cure without committing himself. When important matters are at stake, it makes all the difference whether the doctor sees himself as part of the drama, or cloaks himself in his authority."
And this, "The doctor is effective only when he himself is affected. Only the wounded physician heals. But when the doctor wears his personality like a coat of armor, he has no effect...It often happens that the patient is exactly the right plaster for the doctor's sore spot. Because this is so, difficult situtations can arise for the doctor too - or rather, especially for the doctor."
So maybe he is having a bit of his own crisis. Maybe this is all too much for him and he knows that deep inside I know it too.
poster:cricket
thread:542514
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050813/msgs/542703.html