A Focus on Feeling

• Mission Statement by Jessica Broitman, 11/9/96
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    • THERAPIST AS ALLY by JESSICA BROITMAN, 12/19/96
      
      

I agree as many would that the alliance between therapist and client is truly the crux of the healing. I didn't want to set up a straw man kind of discussion about the pitfalls of an unyeilding confrontational approach. I find it very useful to learn more about what is similar and different about CM compared to other approaches. For example, the concept of pathogenic beliefs seems conceptually related to Malan's triangle of person where the points of the triangle are the Therapist-Current Person's in the Client's Life and Past Person's in the Client's Life.

You had noted that anxiety rarely makes people feel safe enough to remember and understand. This is a highly ambivelent area for me! On the one hand, the exagerated concept of provoking anxiety via confrontation has little appeal to me. However I have found the concept of Malan's other triangle of conflict (Defense, Anxiety, Feeling) to be useful as a way to get at feelings. Leigh McCullough's writings about gently confronting defenses have held some appeal. This is probably because I tend to see some crusty older long-time smokers who have been able to resist 30 years worth of anti-smoking compaigns in the US! How does CM deal with affect, particularly in helping clients to understand and express feeling?

There is a book by Gerald Alper where he uses Winnicott's notion of the true and false self of the therapist. His primary point in that section of the book (I thought) was to point out how therapists can use their false self and/or false techniques which are non-therapeutic. He uses the example of the hot seat in Gestalt therapy in which powerful affects emerge, but in a sense they are almost theatrical.

As a newer therapist, I don't feel particularly wedded to any approach, although I try to educate myself about different theoretical approaches. Yet I conduct clinical research which (in order to obtain funding) necessitates that I make my clinical technique operational. None too easy...and what with my inability to find the one true model offering all the answers, egads, I think I will just go home.

I will look forward to responding to Lynn's thoughtful posting and talk more about this in other issues in 1997. Happy New Year.

• Control Mastery and Affects --what about feeling by Lynn O'Connor, 12/29/96