Chris Larson

I run an outpatient psychotherapy clinic for homeless adults in Orlando. Here for the psychotherapy content, esp. the MBT and broader psychoanalytic stuff.

[Chris Larson @Chris_a_larson]

Rightness of mind is only to be at home in the place and the life you were given.

Wendell Berry

[Chris Larson @Chris_a_larson]

--are structured to promote joint reflection on the interpretation as a hypothesis, rather than structured to promote submissive acceptance on the part of the patient.

[Chris Larson @Chris_a_larson]

Thoughts on using interpretations in a mentalization-promoting frame. No idea how much these make sense or how much I stand by these. Just some thoughts, as interpretation is semi-frowned upon by MBT theory.

Interpretations are necessary to promote mentalizing when they...

[Chris Larson @Chris_a_larson]

--deepen the patient's affect--though not necessarily the affect they are feeling at the moment prior to interpretation.
--are presented as disclosures of the clinician's own mentalizing about the patient's mind, not as authoritative or distant statements.

[Chris Larson @Chris_a_larson]

Choices can be made where compulsions lived before.

And yet the cultural throne that therapists have willingly taken for themselves is a throne with a lot of turnover--the guru, the Wise Man, the Spiritual Leader.

We are ill-suited to this task.

[Chris Larson @Chris_a_larson]

There are infinite posts like this these days and I really should just ignore them. But something about this really got me.

Therapists do not know how to live a fulfilling life. We do not have a pathway to peace. We do not have a prescription for the Good Life.

[blue @bluewmist]

A therapist said if you self isolate
when overwhelmed you probably had to solve a lot of your problems alone as a child

[Chris Larson @Chris_a_larson]

In theory, what makes therapy a unique space is its aggressive refusal to prescribe the Good Life. The innovation of technical neutrality is that when another assumes (as best they can) a persistent intent to do nothing but understand, psychological change can occur.

[Chris Larson @Chris_a_larson]

@JohnSmithupmq Not sure how eastern/western I would want to classify it, but the whole endeavor is often baptized in a kind of pop neurology and trauma mysticism for sure.

[Chris Larson @Chris_a_larson]

“Somatic” therapists are often committed, unreflectively, to a rather extreme philosophical dualism.

[CatBush @FeistyKittyPie]

Also a lot of folks seem to think that only attention on the body makes therapy not abstract but experiential. I call bull. There's nothing abstract about catching yourself using the same repeating phrases to describe past and current situations. It's spooky as hell.

[Chris Larson @Chris_a_larson]

@yalexos The more abstract, the further into pretend mode, the farther from real psychological change.

[Chris Larson @Chris_a_larson]

@DrGipps Phew! Post-Cartesian stuff really feels like a "use it or lose it" sort of language. Haven't been reading it heavily since my undergrad and I'm getting lost real quick. ;)

Haven't read Merleau-Ponty in a while. Good place to pick him back up?

[Chris Larson @Chris_a_larson]

@DrGipps And while I'm unsure whether I agree with them, it certainly seems that some (more theistic) mystics would argue the same can be applied to desire and to love. 2/2

[Chris Larson @Chris_a_larson]

@DrGipps Hmm. I suppose that leads me to wonder whether the same applies to thinking. Is it not possible for the object of a thought to be thinking itself? And there are experiences where we seem close to simultaneously to have a thought and to be aware of having that thought. 1/2