Who am I writing for?
Hi. I am going to write for people who feel they know little or nothing about the world of therapy, but who would be interested in knowing more. I will probably write more from the point of view of the therapists rather than the client.
Why am I writing?
I am writing because I am passionate about the process of therapy and I want to spread my enthusiasm.
How much and often will I write?
I reckon people will get bored after two sides of A4 – I may be wrong; so I won’t write more than that. And my intention is to write once a month – you can check and see if I manage it!
Why will I call it ‘psychotherapy’ not counselling?
There are lots of different sorts of therapists – therapists are people who are aiming to help people. I believe that to help others you have to go on a journey yourself. Counsellors normally go on a three year training journey; psychotherapists normally train for six years. Part of that journey is to be in therapy yourself. Counsellors generally go once a week to therapy for the three years; psychotherapists go for a minimum of twice a week – sometimes four times a week – for something like six or seven years. ‘Analysts’, by the way, go four or five times a week for up to seven years – they are the big beasts!
I’ll do more specific questions later, but I can’t believe you are reading this just to have a few technical questions answered!
What happens in psychotherapy?
Wilfred Bion (one of the big analyst beasts, like Freud, lived 1900 – 1980) said about therapy sessions, “if there aren’t two anxious people in the room, the two being both the therapist and the patient, then there was not much point in turning up to find out what you already know.”
Therapy is about encounter, it is about two people encountering, meeting each other. Each brings what they have. Relating to another person is inherently anxious if it is genuine, because you have no idea what is going to happen. It is like a game that I used to play at parties. One person was blindfolded and reached out their hand; the other person who could see reached out their hand too and they touched at the tips of their fingers. Then the guide led the other person around the room and the house, upstairs and downstairs, around furniture and people. It was really scary as the blindfolded one – you could hear noise and people laughing and you just hoped and prayed someone didn’t lead you into a table – or make you fall downstairs!
Being in therapy is like that, but for both people:
The patient may think: I am going through hell – I am paying for this guy – I don’t know what happens – I better get better – I don’t know how good you are – I don’t know if I can trust you – I’ll try a little bit of trust and see what happens – God, this is scary – they better respond right.
The therapist may think: I don’t know what you’re going to say – where are you going to lead me – you are going to expect me to say something helpful – what if I can’t?
That’s the scary side. But there is also the ‘accommodating baby’ side. I haven’t had children but I imagine that a baby looks/feels for the nipple/bottle when it wants to feed. Mother inevitably will get it a bit wrong. The baby doesn’t give up; the mother doesn’t give up – they both try again, they both want it to work. A therapy pair both want it to work – the client sort of says ‘Not like this, like that’; they get the therapist to try again, to listen more closely, to hear what they are saying.
Would you expect the therapist not to be anxious? Well therapists have studied some theories, some ideas about how people develop and how they are. They can listen and use theory – but then perhaps they are hiding behind theory – putting clients in a box – “You are that sort of person”. That makes therapists feel they know – that makes them feel better; but half the time if the therapist feels better, the client feels worse – “You are listening with blinkers”. One client told me that everyone they had talked to listened from their agenda – she was begging me not to; she might have been telling me that it felt as though I already was listening with an agenda.
And it’s not good enough for me as therapist to say “That’s just how I work,” or “That’s just who I am.” People want me to hear them. I am being paid for it – it is what I believe in. Having said that, of course we do categorise – but this is an invitation to realise that we do, and the limitations of hearing things or people in categories.
Without categorisation there is just …. meeting, relating …. How do we actually relate? What do we do? And is there a ‘What should we do’? Though, to be fair, the therapy meeting often feels one-sided. It is one-sided in content – not many therapists tell clients, for example, that they are going off on holiday with their family. But is the meeting one-sided? Don’t clients meet me? I hope they do. Clients will sometimes say to me ‘I don’t know anything about you’ – but, really? You don’t know me? Anyway, therapy is partly about meeting, and the mystery of meeting.