Quote:
Originally Posted by Argonautomobile
I think the analogy works there. In either case, it involves a great deal of trust to let yourself be physically or mentally vulnerable around another person. If you can't help but be vulnerable, because that's just where you're at, you can't help but invest trust, either.
Would it be going too far to say that whenever you trust someone you hand them power along with the faith that they won't abuse it?
Maybe. Seems sort of cynical.  |
But who or what are you trusting? When I had surgery this fall, I didn't so much trust the surgeon as that a) there would be other people in the OR to observe and correct any wrongdoing, and b) there would be legal and professional consequences for the surgeon if she made any mistakes. I trusted in her skill at surgery, sure, but I did not trust in her innate goodness as a human being (or whatever); I trusted the apparatus in place to make her behave a certain way.
It seems like a lot of trust placed in therapists is placed in them as a person, not regulations governing their profession, and I think that is one source of their perceived power.