Maybe Not Missing but ..In a Different Place

• Call for questions and comments....... by Jessica Boitman, 10/14/98
  • The Missing Component by Vic Comello, 10/18/98
    
    

Vic you are very clear about your point! We would agree completely about the idea that people develop beliefs about their talents and the kind of work that is open to them. We would also see these beliefs as dynamic and potentially pathogenic. CMT suggests that we focus on the patient's goals as we infer them. A particular person might have either their work life or their love life as their primary focus at a particular time. I think that we are driven at different times developmentally to accomplish different life tasks. In the case of Kathy I do think that her writing was important but until she felt like a decent person, I do not think she could allow herself to fulfill anything including her writing. She had a great need to be a good mother and feel free to be different than her mother. We see people inhibit many life goals out of a pathological sense of danger. We would not see one's sense of ones self, as a talented person as necessarily separate from how they felt about themselves in general. If you felt like you had no right to be alive I think it would be difficult to feel free to create. The work component does interact with the love component in a individual complex way. For some patients it felt imperative to inhibit their ambitions for fear that it will cost them too dearly. We must consider all aspect of a person's plan as we listen to a case. I think where we might differ is in what we thought the patient might be working on in a particular moment, not how important each of the aspects of one's full life are.

• Therapy Complete by Vic Comello, 10/24/98