Posted by Tamar on August 13, 2007, at 14:17:40
In reply to Re: ***** Long, tedious and triggery ***** » Tamar, posted by Squiggles on August 13, 2007, at 9:44:33
> OK Tamar, thank you for being patient with me and explaining these pesky questions. I really appreciate it, because I don't have a very open mind on this therapy thing, and it may be on account of misunderstandings about what is really going on between therapist and patient.
Hey, I’m no expert on what is really going on between therapist and patient! But I’m happy to describe my understanding of it.
> That I understand. My doctor has very tight boundaries; even backed off on sensitive issues like how often do i have sex, and what people have hurt me in my life etc. It has if anything been voluntary information and as soon as he sees me wince, he stops questioning. I think that shows great respect for the individual and I am very fond of him for that. That's because he knows that i am a rational being and will not change just by being told you should have more sex, for example. That's a personal thing and decision depending on life circumstances.
It’s great that your doctor is sensitive about what you feel able to talk about. I agree that it shows great respect for the individual. My therapist, similarly, makes sure he never pressures me into talking about things I don’t feel ready to talk about.
> Well, I might be afraid that if it is deep enough, and a foundation for personality support, that taking it away, may leave you without that support, maybe with separation anxiety.
Yes, and that’s a really important point. In an ideal world, that kind of support would never be taken away suddenly, or without appropriate alternatives put in place. But this isn’t an ideal world, and sometimes therapy ends in unhelpful and very painful ways. And of course patients in that situation might wish they’d never gone into therapy in the first place. On the other hand, having that support when you really need it can make a huge difference to a person’s ability to be able to cope with life.
> That sounds Freudian. I am not sure that if you transfer you actually attain catharsis or rid yourself of things bugging you for good. I just don't know how that works.
I guess it is Freudian (although Jung also used ideas about transference), and I’m not Freud’s biggest fan, but my therapist uses Freudian and post-Freudian theoretical approaches, so I’m willing to go along with it to some extent!
I’m not completely sold on transference: for one thing I’m not sure it’s always *transferred* feelings that happen in the transference. Sometimes I think there are new feelings that still need to be accounted for in the transference. And I take your point about catharsis, although I often see it as some kind of eternal debate between Plato and Aristotle. Do we ban poetry from the ideal society, or do we accept that it can provide catharsis? Or, if transference doesn’t provide catharsis, should we take a Platonic view and prevent it happening? (I’m probably being too simplistic.)
And I don’t think therapy can rid a person for good of the things that bug them. What it can do is to help people to learn better coping mechanisms, and to identify support structures. For example, I have been talking in therapy about the long term effects of several sexual assaults over a period of many years. I don’t think a time will come when I completely get over it. One of the things I’m working on in therapy is to stop blaming my body for what happened, to find better ways of coping than binge eating or self-injury, and to rely on my friends to be supportive when I’m feeling cr*ppy about it. I find it very emotionally exhausting and frightening, and the things that go on in my transference are bizarre: fears that my therapist will assault me, fears that I might *want* him to assault me (I don’t! I don’t!), and a strong desire for him to rescue me sexually in various ways, ranging from beating up my attackers to more intimate things. Meanwhile I also project my pain onto him, so that I imagine him as a victim of sexual assault, and myself as the rescuer. The belief that he can heal me with his touch is particularly powerful. I want him to unrape me; to restore my sexuality so that I can have the sex life I want to have (i.e. free of fear, dissociation and feelings of being violated again). And sometimes these thoughts and feelings make me feel insane. I want to talk about them because I believe my therapist can help me to make sense of them, and that he can be a witness to my pain and distress, and that by working on these thoughts and feelings I can find ways to achieve reasonable goals. He can’t rescue me or unrape, but he can be an agent is restoring my sexual response to some extent: not directly, but through discussion.
> To me a less personal relation implies freedom.
I think that’s very interesting. I’m not sure I feel any lack of freedom in a more personal relationship. But I guess it depends how you define freedom.
> Would like to tell me more about transference? I can look it up but it would be interesting from someone who has been there.
I think the idea (very basically because I’m not an expert) is that patients in therapy transfer old feelings that they have for significant people in their lives onto their therapist. For example, I felt neglected by my father when I was a teenager. I’ve always reacted strongly to feeling neglected in other relationships since then. I know that my response to my therapist’s unreliability taps into that sense of neglect, and we’ve talked about that when we’ve talked about his unavailability. When I was a teenager I was very angry at my father, but after talking it through with my therapist I’ve come to accept that my father’s illness was a major factor back then. I feel more forgiving towards my father, and working on it in therapy has improved my relationship with him: the anger I’ve been carrying for years is less acute (although not altogether gone). I’ve presented it all very simplistically: it’s actually very complicated, but that’s the basic idea.
> For each individual, whatever works for them is whta count at the end of the day.
I totally agree.
Tamar
poster:Tamar
thread:775888
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20070807/msgs/776022.html