Posted by pseudoname on April 11, 2006, at 14:10:30
In reply to Re: that brand of therapy ;-) » pseudoname, posted by special_k on April 9, 2006, at 4:46:23
I appreciated your concern for me.
You've said a lot in this thread I've not addressed directly. There's so much going on here. I want you to now I am reading it all anyway. ;-)
> I have been struggling a little with different theorietical orientations myself. Sometimes I think I'd like to do analysis... Othertimes I think the whole thing is a crock.
You do seem ambivalent about the ideas. Ambivalence itself is a psychoanalytic theme. ;-)
I too have been *struggling* with theories of therapy. I found a very real allure in psychoanalytic ideas. It didn't make any difference to me at the time that there was an utter lack of any evidential basis for believing them. I knew that. But I saw it as an act of faith, and I expected to be liberated from my bad feelings somehow through examining things like my transference.
I knew that studies show people get worse in analysis than if they do nothing.
I knew that transference had a horoscope-like ability to stretch to cover ANY situation. Love your teacher? Transference! Hate your teacher? Transference! Indifferent toward your teacher? Transference! Keep switching between loving & hating your teacher? Transference!
But it was so reassuring to think that the problems I had would eventually be understable in terms of things I already have access to, namely my own feelings and history. Things I'm intimately familiar with and that are really important to me and that have been dismissed by other people all too often – namely my feelings & fears & ideas & so on.
You said having the CBT person point out your irrational errors or whatever was not “validating.” (I agree!) But the idea of transference is extremely validating. It says, among other things, that your personal history is important, your feelings are important, and you are feeling right now exactly what you should be feeling, given your history.
I think that is a kind of relief.
But I think that the exact same sense of validation can be obtained without resorting to the assumption of transference. Consider:
“We do not know what is causing your emotional reaction because there are too many complex influences and we have no way of sorting it all out. However, we know that your feelings are important and that this feeling is exactly what you should be feeling in this situation.”
That seems more honest to me than invoking transference.
It is a part of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, which endorses the idea that you are feeling exactly what you should be feeling, given your history — and physiology and current situation and 100 other influences.
I don't want to sound like a shill for ACT. I have serious problems with it or at least with its founder and the zeitgeist of its core adherents. But the *mindful acceptance* component solves for me a lot problems about therapy.
The ACT people would probably have no problems with an transference claim as long as it were used to let go of the struggle over the unwelcome emotion. As in…
“I'm in love with Dr Bob because he reminds me of my father only better.”
ACT might say, Whatever, as long as you see you have no control over this emotion and allow it to occur. Maybe call it love-prime, and realize that even while you're feeling it, other emotions can also occur, like “real” love for someone else, or real boredom, and it's all beyond conscious control and it it's all a part of being uniquely you.
That's validating, AND it doesn't make untestable assuptions or prematurely narrow the discussion or cut off inquiry into possible causes and influences.
I'll post this, but I dunno if it makes sense. :)
poster:pseudoname
thread:628935
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20060406/msgs/631774.html