Among the community of psychotherapists, according to Dr. Marion Arom, a psychotherapist friend of mine, “it is common knowledge that in many traditional therapies, if the therapy fails — if the desired change doesn’t occur — it’s due to client resistance or lack of motivation to change or unconscious motivation. The role or skill of the therapist is not examined, ever.”
Dark Age Ahead by Jane Jacobs has a chapter about the failure of highly-respected professions to police themselves.
Directory of Twilight of Expertise posts.
And, if the desired change DOES occur, it just can’t be due mainly to something unheard of, such as Seth’s discovery about seeing faces early in the morning. Rather: the change must be due to the therapy, or chance, or remission, et cetera.
Yes, so very true. As a practicing therapist and director of an organization dedicated to promoting healthy psychotherapy and counseling, I can tell you that the inability of some therapists to self-examine is a big issue. As a general rule of thumb I believe that if the therapy is not going well, then there is a part in the way. The part may be an aspect of the client, but it is just as likely to be an aspect of the therapist. A good therapist makes an effort to know themselves and to be conscious of how parts of themselves may be interfering with the clients work or reacting to the client in subtle and significant ways. It’s an excellent subject to talk about and one that we at goodtherapy.org are trying to being more awareness to. Thanks for the blog post… I look forward to reading more and exploring your blog.
Noah