sympathetic understandings

• Psychotherapy is a science by Joe Weiss, 5/15/97
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    • I Would Like to Read about It--Especially Re: CMT by Jim Duffy, 5/22/97
      
      

Jim - I agree with you completely, you are underscoring exactly what I appreciate about CMT. I think that Weiss has taken Freud's theory further along to integrate one's desires for pleasure with the conflicts one fears may result with one's loved objects. There are many ways to understand patient's behavior without seeing human relations in the most negative light. I find my patients are helped by understanding that their actions were based in a desire to find a compromise for or atone for their varied actions, feelings or desires. They are not shamed and are encouraged to find better solutions with more realistic appraisals of the dangers they fear. It Is a much simpler way to understand relationships although it requires a complicated understanding of human emotions.

People want to feel loved and safe, care about and for their loved ones, and gratify all their desires for sex and power- it is very hard to have it all. They become afraid of hurting their loved ones through trying to accomplish their normal developmental tasks. They find ways to deal with these fears and the guilt they experience in relation to their achievements. The maladaptive solutions become symptoms and they become patients and we see them in our office. CMT does not view a patient's symptom as a fixed regression or deficit that a patient is stuck with. It is the way they thought they would be safest for dealing with a pathogenic belief that warned them of a particular danger. A much more sympathetic (to use your term) view!

I am trying to post some of Lynn O'Conner's newest work here. She is very interested in this topics and is writing on CMT for ASCAP She promises to give us her latest article on survivor guilt and evolutionary theory. She is off to Canada at the moment to present this stuff at a meeting of sociophysiological intergrationist! When she returns I will get some material for our forum. The articles about insight are in our bibliography listed on this forum- But let me suggest the following and copies can be requested through our office (on line). O'Connor, L., Edelstein, S., Berry, J., & Weiss, J. The pattern of insight in brief psychotherapy: A series of pilot studies. Psychotherapy, Fall, 1994, 31(3), 533-544. I am also trying to post some excerpts here from this research. I will let you know when I do. Where do you practice? Maybe there will be a conference that will bring us all together in real space!

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