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Old Sep 23, 2009, 12:59 AM
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Remember this unresolved discussion from almost four months ago?
Quote:
Originally Posted by deliquesce View Post
...devil-woman said that the therapist should call the px's bluff and ask them why they don't just kill themselves right that day.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fool Zero View Post
I'd love to read/hear/watch where Linehan said that and especially, in what context. So far it sounds completely at variance with what she says in her book...
Thanks to the link Trying & Caring just posted, I found a reposted New York Times article where an unidentified therapist (apparently not Linehan herself, though her picture appears nearby) is quoted discussing suicide with a patient as follows:
Quote:
"I've been going through this since I was 11 years old," the young woman said, "I'm backed up against the wall. Either I need to do this therapy or I need to die."

"Well, why not die?" the therapist asked.

"Well, if it comes down to it, I will."

"Uh-huh, but why not now?"

This aggressive cross-examination is a signature technique of what has become one of the most popular new psychotherapies in a generation...
-- "With Toughness and Caring, a Novel Therapy Helps Tortured Souls," by Benedict Carey, reposted by TARA from The New York Times, July 13, 2004.

I suppose with a good deal of taking out of context and stretching, that quote could be turned into something like an I-dare-you. It sounds to me, though, as if the therapist is only inviting her patient to notice for herself that she does in fact also want to live.
Thanks for this!
pachyderm, phoenix7, Rapunzel