Think it’s crucial people who enter the mental health profession especially those who do therapeutic work regularly, to read literature, take an interest in the arts, poetry, film, mythology, religion etc.
human suffering is not something a therapeutic ‘modality’ fixes.
The intimacy may seem as if it is only going “one way,” but both parties in an analysis have an unconscious, so on that level, no, things are indeed going “both ways.”
Theory is important, but it is not everything. Becoming too absorbed in theory can remove the therapist from the intuitive, felt sense that emerges in treatment. Theory is helpful when it allows us to listen more deeply to our patients...each time differently, and with no guarantees! We are talking about the unconscious here, peeps.
Children's drawings, like dreams, must remain close to the child's associations. We must remain open while at the same time, avoid deviating from what the child has brought into the playroom (treatment, analysis).
This one has the @the_mel_jar fans/haters in order: Lacan downplayed his position as a theory builder because he was intent on proving that he remained, despite all odds, true to Freud's deepest insights. Since Lacan was very insistent on keeping Freudian concepts as the raw material of his theory, Lacanian analysts of the second generation have followed in his footsteps and have continued to read Freud to expand the large structure that has been laid out...
-Mathelin
2. Learn to “shut the fuck up” especially early in treatment and early in each session. We all are used to reciprocal conversations that “flow” back and forth. Psychotherapy must have a different flow and most therapists and pts will experience silence as outside of this flow. 5/
Sometimes you win; other times you learn. Sometimes you do not learn or win at all. Or a third thing, no one can predict or tell you, because life is complex, and you decided to live in the reality of not knowing.
I was going to do a thread on the depressive therapist, but then I figured it would be inadequate and everyone would be dissatisfied. So what’s the point.