Posted by crushedout on July 30, 2006, at 10:00:41
In reply to crushed..., posted by raisinb on July 29, 2006, at 18:19:26
Thanks, raisin. Yeah, that was a really hard thing I went through--very confusing. I read a passage in this book that I think pegasus recommended ("On Being a Therapist") that I found really interesting re: the differences between my former T and my current one. (As you may have read, my former T used self-disclosure a lot, in ways that were especially confusing for me.)
The passage is in the section called "Uses and Abuses of Self-Disclosure." He writes:
"[T]here are few therapeutic activities that are so abused under the guise of being helpful. Excessive self-disclosure may be done to relieve the therapist's own discomfort with the inherent inequality of the relationship. Afterward, it is easy to find some clinical justification: 'I'm only trying to make the client feel comfortable' or 'I thought he might feel less alone in his pain' or 'I am only being real.' If self-disclosure is not moderated, all the barriers between the personal and the professional become muddled, and the client's fundamental perceptions of therapist competence and empathy may be irrevocably altered. Transference is also sacrificed when the therapist relinquinshes his nonpersonhood in favor of an authentic relationship."
I find the language stilted and the treatment too glib, but it's an interesting passage (I wish he explained it better). I think he's onto something, and that that was a big part of where my last T really f'ed up.
poster:crushedout
thread:668954
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20060721/msgs/671996.html