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Dec 12, 2008, 06:39 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by sittingatwatersedge
not sure I would agree with this but it's something I ran across somewhere
“Therapy is an arrangement in which a patient pays a doctor some money which obligates the doctor to listen and keeps him from going away, no matter how badly he is treated or what the patient says to him. After a while the patient gets to feel guilty over the way he’s been acting towards this doctor. After all, even if the doctor is paid to listen and takes all the abuse, he is still a person. So the patient begins to look at how he acts and tries to be nicer to the doctor. And then after a while the patient starts being nicer even to people he isn’t paying to listen to him. And that’s what therapy is.”
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If no one minds, I think I will rewrite this little blurb:
Therapy is an arrangement in which a patient pays a therapist because most people aren't willing to do their job for free. Therapy is also an arrangement in which the patient is simply paying the therapist for a space of time in which the interaction of therapy can occur.
The patient is not a dog. Therefore, it is not like he will stop biting people because he realized he won't get his treat if he continues to do so.
Patients rarely take all of their therapy time to "abuse" the therapist. The "abuse," which I would rather call "anger" comes out at certain times, but is not the whole person-- it is a part of the person.
The anger is a positive thing, as the patient begins to realize that if he/she gets angry at the therapist, it will not be seen as pathological; that is, the therapist won't go away because of it. The anger is also a sign of autonomy in many cases-- the patient is not afraid to pull back, or disagree with the therapist because trust has been formed.
The therapist and the patient then work very hard to find out what is at the core of the anger. Very often it is intense anxiety-- the fear of being abandoned or rejected.
Therapy is an intense, intimate relationship. It is really the overlap of two people giving, and the product of what occurs within the space of the overlap. And that's what therapy is.
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