Quote:
Originally Posted by anilam
I really don't think her reasons could be established here... From what you've written I dont necessarily see her behaviour as unprofessional. She offered you a session to explain yet you refused to go and now are trying (desperately) to get your answers here. Why not go to the session and get some closure?
|
Agreed. The description of what happen is just too vague to make conclusions of any kind or to go wild with speculations as to what the therapist was thinking and why she did what she did. The devil is always in the details and the details are not provided here.
It is lawful for therapists to terminate at any time if they believe they are not competent enough to continue working with the client. In fact, not only it is lawful but also ethical. It's considered unethical for a therapist to continue to work with someone if they feel they don't have enough skill to work with that person, and, no, therapists don't always know that from the start. The work could start well and then it may become challenging and the therapist may decide he or she is not up to the challenge. This can be painful for the client to deal with, but that's what the psychotherapy laws and ethics say, at least, here, in the US. But I see you are in Spain, and I don't know what kind of laws pertaining to psychotherapy Spain has.
I must say, however, that if the therapist decides to terminate the work with the client, he or she should give them referrals. They are required to do so both legally and ethically, but, again, this is how it works in the US. Have no idea what Spanish laws say about that.
By the way, you don't have to attend the termination session if you don't want to. It's totally up to you.
As far as the counter-transference or the intolerance to criticism is concerned, these are the factors that contribute into the therapist's inability to work with the client, and so are also valid reasons for terminating the work and referring the client to a more capable practitioner. To put it simply, if the therapist starts feeling aversion toward the client, they should refer the client out, because it's unethical to continue working with them with this kind of feelings toward them, because those feelings will obviously make the work impossible. And, yes, of course, in the ideal world, therapists are not supposed to take anything personally, but in the real world they are humans and have their human limitations. This simple fact is well considered in psychotherapy laws and ethics. Professionalism in psychotherapy is not when a therapist is devoid of all human shortcomings and vulnerabilities, but when he or she is aware of his/her limitations and works within them.
High expectations of therapists often lead to clients' being traumatized. Unfortunately, therapists contribute in creating those high expectations by presenting themselves as all-knowing experts on the human soul, who are perfectly enlightened and void of human passions...but that's an entirely different topic for discussion.