My friend Sarah Luczaj posted this at her fine blog, Counselling Resource, earlier this week and I wanted to repost it here. I love the Keats' quote on negative capability she opens with, which is also a good approach to writing and other art-forms, in my opinion.
What’s the Point? The Key Question in TherapyI am a great fan of not knowing, or, as John Keats put it in 1817, “Negative Capability [...] when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason”. In 2008, we even could add “or woman”!What are the key ingredients in therapy that work in difficult situations? Fact and reason? Or a therapist willing to be with the client in the darkest places where we humans have to admit that we don’t know what the point is, and that we cannot fix it?
I am more and more convinced that this is the key quality needed in good therapists. Of course there needs to be good communicative contact, trust, empathy, realness and all the rest of it for any therapeutic relationship to be possible at all. But when there is contact, trust, empathy, unconditional respect and realness, I am not as convinced as Carl Rogers, founder of Person Centred Therapy, was that this will inevitably produce the desired “therapeutic movement” or real, positive change in the client’s life. I can agree that with all these factors present there has to be some movement, as being accepted and listened to and respected are such powerful things.
But when the situation is complicated, the most accepting counsellor may be unable to really go into how the client works, inside, if they have got that “irritable reaching after fact and reason” bad! While respecting the client and understanding in a broad sense the emotions they are experiencing, they may be unable to get to the root of what the client experiences simply because they have their own overriding need to make it fit into a sensible framework for them. The itching after facts can be quite unbearable, I know from experience. As a therapist by definition you hear only one side of the story. By definition, too, every story has many sides.
Go read the rest of Sarah's post.
I'm not yet a therapist, and I don't even play one on TV, but I agree with her position here.
Being a personal trainer is like being a bartender or a hairdresser -- many of my clients share their lives with me in intimate detail. That's cool, everyone needs a safe place to unburden. I seldom give advice (unless it is to suggest a line of questioning to explore), but just being present to my clients while they share whatever is bothering them is quite useful, at least in what I have seen. I am happy to be with them in that place of not-knowing that Sarah describes.
I don't know if I'll be able to maintain that perspective when I am a therapist, but I hope so. As much as I don't like Thomas Moore much of the time, I think he is right on target when he says the soul needs to exist in negative capability, no matter what our rational minds may want.
Tags:
No comments:
Post a Comment