Posted by fallsfall on October 22, 2005, at 18:28:48
In reply to Re: Counter-transference : a novel / » fallsfall, posted by Tamar on October 21, 2005, at 18:37:40
> To what extent does his problem of your discussing therapy with other people constitute counter-transference?
His experiences at the hospital are coloring his responses to me. He is not objectively looking at my situation and assessing it. He is assuming that my situation is like the situation at the hospital and reacting to the situation at the hospital, rather than reacting to my actual situation. The degree of intensity in his reaction is out of proportion to my actual situation. It isn't that he can't/shouldn't object to me talking about therapy - the problem is the intensity of the objection and the lack of flexibility in discussing it.
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> I think he’s made some valid points. It’s true that we’re never there in the room with other people and their therapists. But when people are upset they need to talk and therapists aren’t always there 24/7. So people talk about it with their friends, or they come to places like this.He seems to have a hard time reconciling my right to talk to others with his "need" for me not to (both from his own comfort's standpoint and from his believe that it is anti-therapeutic for me to talk to others about therapy.) Or at least I can't see how he is reconciling these two things.
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> To be honest, I think Babble is a good place to thrash these things out, because almost inevitably someone will reply and say, “You need to talk about this with your therapist.” And with that encouragement, hopefully, the client will feel able to raise the issue in session. Friends who haven’t been in therapy may be less astute than Babblers!He does support the "You need to talk to your therapist", and also identifying when a patient is being harmed by their therapist. But I can't quite figure out how to allow those benefits without risking the "bad" stuff.
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> One further thing: even if he admits there was some countertransference in his response, it probably doesn’t alter the fact that you experienced what you call ‘critical transference’. And perhaps you need to continue to talk about that, and he needs to listen. (He’ll probably hate me for saying that…)And we will continue to talk about the critical transference thing. Usually, it means that I am hearing criticism when there isn't any. In this case, I heard criticism and he agreed that he WAS being critical. It is OK for me to hear criticism that is there! So If I'm hearing critism that is there, it isn't transference on my part, it is accurately reading the situation.
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> Just my two cents!
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> Tamar
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>Thanks for your thoughts, Tamar!
poster:fallsfall
thread:570043
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20051018/msgs/570582.html