Some Other Concerns...Then onto more Constructive Comments!!

• A Wish to Share by D.William, Ph.D., 3/11/98
  
  

Thank you Steve and Sue for the encouragement. I was unsure if I would get back only 'defensive' responses. In having joined the case conferences, I am concerned about a number of overlooked issues. There is theory on the one hand and clinical application on the other. Whenever the actual application is embedded in the 'therapy relationship', the potential for falling into an abyss is ever present, as all of our therapy literature suggests. Robert Langs in his own very detailed style (He believes, he too, is describing an essential aspect of psychotherapy) presents convincing (or at least very intersting) evidence on how the patient-therapist relationship is a reverberating spiral of communication on many levels. He discards the terms transference and countertransference, because, in fact, everything the patient and therapist say to one another carry implications about themselves whether the communicators know it or not (and in turn influence what is said or not said). I think studying Langs is important, because what he says carries potent warnings for how we conduct ourselves quite apart from whatever central organizing theory we might use. His use of silence is certainly problematic for "The Philadelphi System', if that is thought more often than not to induce shame.

On a separate issue, it has always been intriguing to me that we are a field that does training and case conferencing all second and third hand- he said, she said- with all the numerous, numerous distortions this leads to. If you can't present literal, extended dialogue from sessions, and if supervisors can't actually be in the therapy room with their supervisees, you've set up a very odd way of learning a craft (but I guess that's a different topic). Again, Lang's makes interesting reading in this regard as well.

• More on Langs, please by Don Nathanson, 3/16/98
  • The Essence of Langs--------I hope! by Doug William, 3/17/98
    • A Bit More on Langs by Doug William, 3/17/98
• Direct Supervision... by Sue Deppe, MD, Burlington, VT, 3/16/98