Posted by tinydancer on April 5, 2004, at 11:18:18
In reply to who has hugged there T's? or anything else?, posted by obSession on April 4, 2004, at 17:26:13
> its so strange as in every day life its the most natural and normal thing, yet in therapy it becomes a "thing" like wowwwwwww a hug!
obSession, have you read "In Session"? This is a decent read about these kinds of issues. I feel it is very important to differentiate between the relationships we have in our social every day and the relationship we have to our therapists. In the therapy room, as the author of the aformentioned book likes to note, everything is "approximated". Which means just that: emotions and everything else are a close copy to the real thing but fail to measure up to the mirror image.
There is a reason that getting a hug from a T is a big deal. A bigger deal than getting a hug from anyone else. The T has a professional role to play, and if he's a good T, he also understands the power and devestation he could wreak through making a bad choice regarding more intimate contact, and the chance for a patient feeling betrayed. Taken on an individual basis, the hug is an important thing, it can mean a lot of things to different people, so especially in the complex relationship between therapist and possibly (in love) patient, its treading thin ice indeed.
Believe me, I know how you feel.
poster:tinydancer
thread:332579
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040402/msgs/332855.html