Quote:
Originally Posted by naia
Attachment was a psychoanalytic concept, but has now been accepted as science. T's are required to keep up with the field. They have to take classes or workshops to keep up. It's required to keep their licenses. So if a T has not accepted that attachment is part of therapy, then there is a problem.
This may be straying off topic from the original poster's questions. Not sure. Just don't think that what has happened is ethical or legal. Also don't think it is muddy.
Client abandonment is not OK. Doesn't matter if there are different points of view. If the client is in distress from the T's behavior, the client has a right to say something about it.
There are studies that say that the client, not the T, has a better sense of what works, what doesn't, and what the T is doing that is wrong. The client may not have enough information, but they still are more sensitive generally and are often not wrong.
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Attachment is part of human development and may play a part in one's pathology if crucial needs weren't met. However, attachment does NOT have to be a part of one's therapy, whether you have attachment issues or not. Ts learn about a myriad of therapies over the course of school and their field experience, but there is no requirement that they have any coursework or in more than one type. And they do not have to have any special training at all in any modality. There is also no formal requirement for Ts to receive therapy of their own. Some counseling masters programs may require it, but licensing boards do not. What is required of all masters level clinicians is supervision, which for some Ts may look like therapy. Much of the time, however, it does not.
Traditional psychoanalysis has fallen out of favor among most Ts, at least where I live, on the east coast. Psychodynamic therapy is the closest type of therapy to analysis and there is no special training or requirements for it- it is simply talk therapy, done with whatever theoretical perspective the T prefers. What that exactly means is very, very muddy, since there are very little in the way of a "standard operating procedure", for lack of a better term. So again, if the appropriate steps were taken - termination and referrals - then technically this would not be considered abandonment. By moral standards it might be, but not by professional or legal standards.