It's in the trauma books. There is discussion about "gently" withholding what a client needs to allow things to be worked through. And what a client needs is usually the stuff they were deprived of in childhood. That's what draws transference feelings out the most.

Gently being the key word here. For example, if a client always seeks validation, then withholding it will get at that need, process deep emotions, and let a client understand why she needs it and how it affects her etc. It's a common technique, I believe. However, this doesn't mean you withhold all validation for weeks, months at a time. It doesn't even mean you do it an entire session.

I know my therapist had been doing that with me for quite some time, though not "gently". And he withheld all at the same time, not just one thing at a time to work through something. Just blatantly withheld mirroring, validation, empathy for a period of time. That technique was not meant to be used that way, in my interpretation, just general common sense. So things got worse, and my therapist used a clinical term to show how things were worse because it was my fault, so I researched this. I found one of my therapist's papers about a technique in treating a child. The article was only in a psychoanalytic pay journal, and I couldn't access it, so i pulled up one of the articles he cited. The cited article was available in PDF on Google Scholar.

I felt sick when I read the article. It was written by one of his colleague therapists who had a practice venture with him some time ago. It talked about 2 patterns in relating to power imbalance (as if the entire population is either/or), and it said for one way, the therapist should withhold mirroring, empathy, validation, and there were a couple more things I forget. I realized he had been using that on me!! I was horrified and confronted him. I told him that the paper that recommended the technique was Freudian, which was a time when people believed it was healthy to deprive oneself or children, and that the authors (his colleagues) did not use any sources within the last 40 years!! And that I hoped he was not using that technique with me. I said this in a really confrontational and confident way.

He mumbled something to the effect of "yeah, I never really though that was [didn't make out the rest of the sentence]". The thing is, he's not even Freudian, so wtf? Anyway, since I called him out on that, he lightened up. That was extremely destructive. I can't believe he didn't see how dangerous that could be. I wonder what the outcome was with the child he used that technique on. I might pay to access that article.

I've seen that article written by his colleagues cited only a couple of times in related literature, so I don't think that extreme method is even credible. It looked entirely fabricated, made up by someone who wanted to coin something 'new'. I just get that impression....But anyway, he seems to have quit doing that in such an extreme way. I told him he took that concept wayyy too far.

I can really be a detective sometimes but need to expand my journal access. I have some institutional access, but most of the psychoanalytical articles are difficult to get.