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I've heard this before, but the major flaw I find with this theory is this: if we are supposed to attach to a therapist to have a relationship but with boundaries where we don't get gratification, then how are we learning to go out and get the partners we want? In other words, with our therapist, aren't we just teaching ourselves to find a partner who will always draw a boundary and never give us what we want?
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Therapy is a unique relationship - it can actually be the most intimate we will ever have, with a therapist who can really enter into it with us in a healing way. It is therapy so has to remain therapeutic. That means it stays about the needs of the client, not the therapist, but doesn't mean it can't be gratifying. Once it becomes a friendship or a sexual relationship the therapy is over, the client has lost the therapist, there's no going back. It teaches us how to be close, how to trust, what a safe relatioship looks like - and then our job is to move away and find relationships 'out there' where we can have our emotional and sexual needs met. It doesn't mean we can't speak our wishes and desires, it doesn't mean we can't have needs met or that we can't love or receive love, but it does have it's limits in that it will never be anything other than therapy - that is the whole point of it. The frame is such to preserve the therapy. A successful therapy should teach us that we can go out and create a life for ourselves where needs and wants can be met - and having healthy internal boundaries is all part of that.
Remember - not all therapists will or can work this way - many are more cognitive and problem solving and will not work tranferentially - they cannot help us to do attachment based work.
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How do you have an intimate and healthy relationship with someone who only responds in the context of therapy? It feels like a manufactured arrangement that is totally unnatural.
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Yes, it takes some getting used to - it is a relationship unlike any other - but it works. It is the only way we have found that can heal deep attachment wounds - and yes, sometimes it can feel very cruel.
Moon
