Posted by pseudoname on June 26, 2006, at 10:44:32
In reply to Zeitgeist » pseudoname, posted by Tamar on June 26, 2006, at 7:28:37
Hi, Tamar.
> This sounds intriguing, but I'm not sure I fully understand what you mean by 'dependent-on-my-therapist cathartic dyadic zeitgeist'. Can you explain further?
I guess I should first remind myself that I don't want anyone to shrink from posting and discussing all they want to about therapy in that category.
Also, in describing what I mean, it could sound like I'm being critical of fellow Babblers for being in such therapies in the first place. I don't want to leave people feeling that way. I believe that all people in therapy are doing the best they can, there's very little guidance or good information available to prospective clients, and there are so many unknowns that good results from any therapy often cannot be understood even in retrospect. There are many highly individualistic, idiosyncratic components in any therapy, and careless generalizations by me could throw people off. Even if I'm personally skeptical of these therapies' ultimate overall clinical efficacy, (a) I may be wrong, and (b) people may be getting something valuable out of them other than "clinical" benefit.
I'd appreciate any advice on how I talk about these things.
What I mean.
•dyadic: Psychotherapy that's long-term and focused on the relationship between the client and the therapist. The feelings the client develops about the T are often talked about as "transference" (although that word is often used here in other ways as well).
•cathartic: The experience of supposedly "buried" feelings, as well as (supposedly) transferential and other feelings, is seen as therapeutically essential. Clients may be told that, despite their doubt or denials, they have these feelings. Clients try to feel reactions more fully and freely about childhood experiences and about the therapist. Although this assertion may be challenged, it seems clear that the feelings most urgently sought and fostered are those in the categories of vulnerability and dependency.
•dependent-on-my-therapist: This condition can develop quite naturally in a therapy relationship that goes on for years, focuses on the therapist-client relationship, and highlights feelings of vulnerability and dependency. Clients in these therapies report intense emotional disturbance around issues of leaving the T, getting another T, cutting back on appointments, disagreeing with the T, etc.The therapies are also largely insight-based, seeking to understand that the client feels X now precisely due to specific early life events, which (the theories go) can be identified through nondirective, largely intuitive therapeutic techniques.
Many people will disagree with this statement, but I am firm: These therapies are simply a more freewheeling form of Freudian psychoanalysis with most of the terminology and trappings removed.
---------
I should point out that I've encountered very few hostile responses to my posts about other orientations, and in fact recently I have received explicit encouragement to post about them from more than one person on the Psych board. But general engagement with alternative threads doesn't happen.
And to me the zeigeist is overwhelming. I feel that alternative voices in the discussions are so few and far between. Maybe I'm just lonely in that way.
Thanks for question, Tamar. I hope things are going okay for you.
poster:pseudoname
thread:661472
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20060623/msgs/661579.html