What is a therapeutic need?

In order to stop hijacking another thread on attachment I thought it best to start another one.
How do you see need fitting in with therapy? I get wants or desires from therapy or therapist but what do people mean when they say need and therapist in the same sentence. I also understand babies/children have emotional needs but do adults really? I have emotional things I want or prefer, but I don't think it equates need.

Are needs and desires really so very different?
Isn't it just a matter of degree?

But since you ask if adults have needs, let's take an extreme case. A prisoner in solitary confinement is not having his emotional needs met.

I like CE's example of someone in solitary confinement. My T has told me many times that all human beings have emotional needs such as connecting with other human beings, feeling intimacy with other human beings, etc. And he's telling me this because I've isolated myself from any close relationships at all .... for a long time. I tried to tell myself that I didn't need to feel close to anyone. Did not work out too well.

The way I discovered that T is meeting an emotional need for me was through my dreams. While I kept my distance from him, even though he worked very hard to create emotional intimacy between us, I kept dreaming about food. And I never ate any of it. All the dreams were different, but the running theme was that food was available but I wouldn't eat it. Then later I would get hungry and the food would be gone. This went on for months.

Then finally I allowed myself to go ahead and feel a connection with T. I just got tired of fighting it, and decided, what the hell, how bad could it be? Actually it felt really good. It lasted a week and then I imploded, but that's another story. But what I thought was so fascinating was during that week I had a dream where I was eating dinner. I think it was lasagna, and I was just sitting there like a normal person, calmly having a nice, satisfying, meal. I knew as soon as I woke up what it meant. T gives me emotional nourishment - if I can accept it.

So I think this is one actual need that can be satisfied by a T, at least temporarily. I think of it as a transfusion. He's giving me emotional nourishment until I can get healthy enough to get it from people in RL.

I do believe the definition of desire is very different from a need. I also do not agree that someone in solitary is not having his needs met as an absolute. He may not be, but not as a given. His desires are probably not met, but needs are a different matter. In my understanding.

I would not have thought of emotional nourishment as a need. And not one that could be resolved by another person. Interesting for me to think about.

Perhaps you don't want to think of yourself as having needs?

I just wanted to say that I, too, have trouble defining something as a "need".

I think I've learned that some of my needs are:
need to speak freely (or learn to)
need to be heard/taken seriously/and understood
need to feel like I belong (in/out of therapy)
need for trustworthiness
need for consistency and reliability
need for support
need for acceptance
need to move at my own pace
need to be where I am

I can name these because we have talked about them in therapy.

We need to be witnessed by another before we can be a witness to ourselves. Without this we go mad. It's a nonsense to believe we do not "need" an-other. Narcissists fantasy of only needing their own reflection.

I have no idea. My definition of needs is as follows: I need to eat, sleep, breath and use the toilet. The rest are creature comforts and trimmings.

I interpret this to mean that emotional nourishment is something you give yourself rather than receive from others - is that right, or am I misunderstanding? It's a really interesting statement - I'd like to hear more about what you mean, if you wouldn't mind elaborating a little.

There are needs that, if they are unfulfilled, result in quick death. Like the need to eat, drink, and sleep.

Then there are needs that are necessary to fulfill for healthy living. Like basic hygiene, nutritional food, and exercise.

I put positive human contact in that second category.

For me, therapy makes for "healthy" living because it provides genuine human contact. I could certainly live without it, just like I could live without toothpaste and clean underwear. But it does provide a need, one that I have a hard time obtaining on my own.

I don't really NEED anything from T. I want to get better, I want to be heard, I want to be understood.

I do have a need to be near people who love me unconditionally, but that would be H, my kids, my dogs...not T.

Yes. This is basically my concept of need too, with shelter added. Everything else is a desire or want. I think of need as fairly directly linked to survival. Infants and children might need things adults do not. Perhaps I should clarify the difference between a need to survive and a need in order to be something else. I need water to live but I need x to do y. I don't feel I have a need for anything I believe therapy can supply but I do have a desire for it.

Humans are group animals, built to interact with one another. If one does not learn to interact well as a child growing up in one's family unit, one could certainly use/need a specialized teacher to help one learn to interact better, anytime one figures out they are not interacting well enough to suit themselves. As that type of interaction that is not enough or "correct" is often emotionally-based; being able to pick up on social cues, for example; one needs a teacher specializing in emotions to be able to help. Even fact-based learning works better when subjected to experience (I think of geometry in the classroom versus learning/experiencing becoming a carpenter/builder) and the emotional is no exception? That would translate for me to needing to be, recognize, give, and receive emotional responses between one's teacher or therapist and one's self.

I used to be a group animal, was dang good at it too, it came naturally to me. I prefer to have minimal group contact these days tho... I need to go to work, so there's a group I must see, sometimes I hang out with my brother coz it doesn't make much sense watching the same series or listening to the same music in 2 different rooms, AND I feel like having his company. I doubt that I need it tho... But I agree, group behaviour can definitly be learned for people who need groups

So when people here say they need their therapist - it is for a corrective emotional experience that is for that person determined to be a need for the purpose of getting that person something that is missing or that they want? Or is need simply being used as a stronger want? I am trying to see how it is vital rather than merely useful.

I'm sure you're aware of Maslow's Hierarchy of needs but i though i'd post a link, because it explains well what we need and why for emotional and physical health. x

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs

YEs - I know maslow's hierarchy. I am not explaining myself well here. I think I may be more stuck on the definition of need as more strict than I consider possible in relation to another human being once one is no longer a baby or small child.

I understand you clearly SD. A therapeutic desire/want for me, would be a tool to improve my quality of life. Need, nope, don't get it, needs are for survival...

I've thought a bit about the hierarchy of needs and have come to the conclusion that they are correct.

With each step up, new needs do emerge. I, too, used to think of a need in terms of survival. I've changed my mind.

Given that rising in the tiers in the hierarchy is predicated on stably establishing the previous one, it makes sense to have different needs as one progresses.

However, perhaps this given isn't correct - although I simply can't see a starving person seeking acknowledgement of their intellect. I would suspect they would use that intellect to get food first and foremost.

It is also interesting how the both the bottom and the top of the hierarchy are largely based on self-centered needs, whereas the middle are needs satisfied by others.

I'm finding it difficult to differentiate between want and need. Does it have something to do with the consequences if you don't get it? Can something only be defined as a need if you will die if you don't get it? Are needs the things we have to have to stay alive, and everything else is a want? Gah, my brain hurts ...

One does not grow out of emotional need; yes, infants need physical touch and handling or they literally die but the elderly need touch too to "thrive". Same with emotional interaction. You can survive alone (actually, after a bit solitary confinement can drive you crazy) but not well; we need other people, they stimulate facets of us that need stimulating.

http://www.webmd.com/balance/stress-...res/heal-touch

Yes, there can be a need/want overlap where people use the words interchangeably; "I need a steak" is obviously "I really want a steak" and people can say that about needing a person too, when they just enjoy being around the person.

But when we attach or bond to a person, we invest part of ourselves in that person/relationship and separation separates us from that part of ourselves invested in the relationship/other person, the marriage term of "better half" comes to mind. Grieving happens because of this investment, when the person dies or leaves. If need were a "thing" I'd compare it to a magnet. That's part of what I learned in therapy, how to identify and manage my emotions engendered by separation and loss, which we all face, with "things" (loss of an item we love or suspected loss, causes anger) or people.

I do understand solitary can drive someone mad - I have represented people in solitary before.
I am not certain I agree touch about touch and the elderly as being across the board required as a need (I define need as vital and everything else desire or want). It may be for some and not for others while I think for infants it is more universal. But touch and therapy are not usually going hand in hand.
I like some other people and consider interaction to be desirable but if it is not around, I could survive. Therefore I do not see anything relating (for me) to the therapist as a need because it is not vital.

I wanta hug from my therapist. I want to be soothed that way.

I don't needa hug from my therapist. The effect is temporary. Like the advice to teach a man to fish rather than feed him, if I learn to soothe in other ways, if I talk and discover perceptions that cause me grief that needs soothing, etc., then I will have a way to soothe any time I need to, if needed.

Why do you think babies and kids have emotional needs, but not adults?

When does the need end? Once you hit puberty? Once you leave your parents' house?

We don't *need* to wear clothes, really. Especially in the summer. But does this mean you shouldn't put importance on clothing? Are clothes a luxury?

Even the most disturbed people can live without therapy. But simply living is not something most people want to do.

I think I understand where you are coming from, though. People can drive themselves crazy by confusing "want" and "need". I don't need my therapist to live because I have lived almost all of my life without her. If I didn't have her, it would suck for a while--maybe a long time--but I would be able to make it. People with worse problems than me are a testament to the kind of resilience that I know I have too. It's just that I'd rather not try it out right now.