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Originally Posted by BudFox
Agree, therapists are going to be diverse in their views. But I think you are being disingenuous here. We all know the transference construct is pervasive. Find a paper or book or client forum where this and related concepts are not dominant. Impossible.
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No, I'm being totally sincere and not disingenuous in the slightest. I am not sure why you are suggesting that I was talking about the transference construct - I was responding to this question that you asked:
Quote:
Originally Posted by BudFox
Am I to understand that in the minds of therapists it's considered reasonable to rouse intense erotic feelings in another human being, pathologize those feelings with a hateful and vile term like "malignant", and castigate the client for not having the proper response to the analyst's twisted "depriving stance"?
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I stand by my statement that I believe there is likely to be a wide variety of opinion on this. Surely you can acknowledge that there is bound to be diversity of thought?
Quote:
Originally Posted by BudFox
As for the "malignant" thing. I did a quick google search and found at least 5 papers or books from different professional authors that mentioned this. These sorts of ideas are well established an accepted.
That a particular therapist does not subscribe to such things doesn't, in my opinion, change anything. I don't see any of them publicly and openly denouncing such horrors as "malignant erotic transference" so they are complicit.
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I googled "malignant erotic transference" with the words in quotes and came up with 17 results (Google having omitted duplicate results), most of them referring to the Akhtar article. The top result was from an Italian researcher who seems unaware of the Akhtar article and uses the term in a different sense. If I google without the quotes, the top result is about "malignant erotic countertransference", which is depicted as a very bad thing and which is clearly a different problem altogether.
This really doesn't seem a widely-used term at all. I suspect one reason for the lack of therapists denouncing it is that many of them have never heard of it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BudFox
Also, even if a therapist claims to bring their true self, it's a con. They are NEVER going to show up with all their needs, aversions, judgements, neuroses... because then it would not be therapy anymore.
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Yeah, but you say that like it's a bad thing!
I want my therapist to stuff down all his personal crap for our session time. I don't believe it's a con because we both openly acknowledge that he's doing it, and I understand it's necessary for the whole construct to work. This is like the best part of seeing a therapist for me - an hour of someone willing to put aside his own crap and focus on me, me, me... but I digress.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BudFox
Re: your other post, I have not done any buddhist-based therapy, though I did do a study on my own of buddhism and was practicing for a short time. I'm not looking for a therapist or a teacher though. I'd rather just be around peers and have free exchange of ideas without payment, hierarchy, etc. Have not heard of Paul Gilbert, thanks will look him up.
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Oh yes, I wasn't thinking you would like to see a Buddhist therapist, just that I think they have made some contributions to thinking about therapy that you would really appreciate, and that do respond to some of the egregious things you criticize.
I am actually also uncomfortable with some of the things you find objectionable about therapy. And I have no desire to defend therapists as a group- I think a not-small number of them are people I wouldn't want to be alone in a room with. But I think there might be more diversity of thought about this stuff than you realize, even among therapists.