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Originally Posted by BudFox
Failed me also. Did your therapist accept any responsibility for the failure or just throw out meaningless concepts like "negative transference"? it is a very bizarre model, this intimacy in a professional setting that is kinda real but not really.
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No, the "negative transference" is my idea for my part, at least, in the "failure" of the relationship. And no, she seems to have known that she failed and tried to justify it as I said, trying to prop up and maintain her own sense of self, I guess.
Years ago after a therapy would fail I would go back through things trying to find why it was my fault, never taking into account the context of the relationship. Looking back now, finding reasons why it was (all) my fault calmed me down so I didn't feel the uncertainty and rage at how the therapist had let me down (and probably transference of repressed feelings for about my parents -- really, that stuff does have some meaning sometimes, I think.) But it's taken forever for me to (maybe) get to the bottom of it, and in the meantime therapy definitely messed me up worse some times. And even if I have "gotten to the bottom of it" I'm 69 years old!!! Yes, it was a path I chose, starting when I was an adolescent and was told that any problem you were willing to face you could overcome. And when you go for "help" to our society's professional helpers because you feel you can't handle things well -- maybe I've won the battle and lost the war -- but the professional helpers certainly weren't concerned about that!!!
You had a comment about the gap between psychological theory and clinical practice on another thread and I thought a reply might fit this thread better since the topic is more general.
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I'm interested in the theories. But i see clinical application to be a totally different animal. This is where, in my view, clinicians make vast and crazy leaps. As in... this adult patient did not get needs X, Y, Z met in childhood and now I as therapist/surrogate-parent will provide them in laboratory form and the patient will be healed. In my experience most therapists have no process or method, only a collection of jumbled theories and ideas. Hence, they prefer not to discuss. Much easier to just direct the client to start talking, and see what develops.
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Like I said in that other thread, I think Kohut was onto something. I've even tried to use some of his ideas to try to build a sense of self, myself -- thought about changing therapists several years ago but I was still working on "the relationship" with a therapist who seems to have worked according to the model you described above.
It probably sounds like I'm just venting and because I'm so mad it probably affects people like they just want to stay away from me. If I could redirect this energy into something positive that could help poor results like mine from happening again I certainly would.