Quote:
Originally Posted by BudFox
I was talking about transference as a tool for manipulation, coercion, control, obfuscation, subjugation... rather than the general phenomenon of transference. And specifically that it can be used to rationalize a failed therapy attachment. If everything is a projection of the client's past, then failed therapy is too, and it only hurts because of past hurts (which of course is utter bullsh*t).
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Yes, I suppose some manipulative therapists could use the concept that way. But I don't buy it -- instead, it just demonstrates to me lack of therapist skill in managing the transference. The licensing boards probably accept it, though, unfortunately.
So the therapists can still abandon you. Though if they can't help you then they can't help you, that's the reality. Kind of like incompetent, abandoning parents. Which if the wounds are deep and from early experience -- well, expecting a client to be able to be "adult" about that is, well, ridiculous!! That's why the client may have been in therapy to begin with!! And if anybody besides the client his- or her-self can understand that, it should be the psychotherapy profession!
We adults with psychological "wounds" had defenses to help us manage our adult responsibilities as best we could. Part of the goal of therapy, as I understood it, is for the defenses to loosen or come down in the "therapeutic relationship". But then the therapist hurts us AGAIN, exactly where it hurt to begin with and is not healed, and then abandon us AGAIN. It's not LESS than the original hurt. Instead it's
exactly the same (at least it was for me). Because the original hurt had never healed.
If you can't stand the sight of blood, then you shouldn't be a surgeon. You will endanger your patients if you open them up and then freak out and can't continue the job.
It's ridiculous to expect patients to know or be able to guess who will freak out at experience of intense emotion and who won't. We go into surgery expecting all surgeons to be able to tolerate it.
Maybe there needs to be some kind of certification for therapists who are going to do "depth" work and open people up? Because dumping us after that with no new way to deal with the world is really, really horrible.
Referral to another therapist, who might do the same thing again for all the client knows, is a really, really stupid, incompetent, insensitive, unempathetic way for the profession to recommend and allow therapists to handle things.