Posted by pseudoname on April 8, 2006, at 14:47:18
In reply to Re: real feelings » pseudoname, posted by special_k on April 7, 2006, at 20:09:03
You've raised a really interesting question. (I've used the word “interesting” a lot lately. And I'm not even on Metadate today, LOL.)
If transference issues are considered in psychoanalysis, isn't that what the client is paying for? Just as a palm-reader provides the service requested? I guess I would like people to reconsider whether they want either of those services.
> when you are supposed to be in therapy to help you figure out how the past impacts and affects the present (i mean that is what this brand of therapy is about - right? so you have agreed to participate in that process and your therapist is supposed to help you out with doing that...
No way. People typically have no idea what the brand of therapy is that they're about to receive. Studies show people don't even know whether they're seeing a psychiatrist or a masters-degree counselor. I, for example, was referred to a psychotherapist in downtown Chicago. It was only after a few sessions that he mentioned he was “a neo-Freudian”, whatever that means. As I gradually discovered what he was about, my resistance to his ideas was diagnosed as Resistance®, and I couldn't leave until THAT was worked through, too. I certainly never gave sufficiently-informed consent for getting into that sort of quicksand.
If an idea is at best unhelpful and more likely pernicious, those who understand that should be clearly spelling it out for others in the hope that fewer people will “agree” to such a process for themselves.
Transference has a fairly clear technical psychoanalytic definition, but it is also used in very vague senses both by analysts and by many “eclectic” therapists with no real psychoanalytic background. In both cases I think it is counterproductive. It also comes up on this board a lot when people who are not necessarily in psychoanalysis are using the idea of transference in trying to understand and improve their emotional problems.
I'm trying to suggest to them, and to anyone else who cares, that the theory of transference is baseless and distracting. My hope is that people will NOT agree to therapy in which it is seriously considered.
Whew.
(Gets up; staggers around a little...)
Um, what were we talking about?
;-) LOL
poster:pseudoname
thread:628935
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20060406/msgs/630604.html