blank slate?

How would you define "blank slate" in psychotherapy, and have you ever worked with a therapist who utilized it? Also, what were your reactions (if any) to a blank slate, especially at first, and did they evolve over time?

Why are you asking?

I am considering working with a new therapist who I think is utilizing a blank slate. I am experiencing the therapist as a little aloof and distant, and wondered how others have processed a blank slate.

Personally that style of therapist would not work for me. You have to know what you want and need I guess. If it is already uncomfortable, perhaps that's a signal that this might not be the style of therapist for you.

My therapist does that a lot.

I find that it gives me space to feel my emotions more intensely and with more focus or precision. It also encourages transferences, which draws emotions out. If you think of the concept of enmeshment, it's sort of the opposite of that, which really allows you to see and analyze the person you are.

Here is a therapist who explains it much better than I could:

Therapist disclosure: why all the secrecy? | Reidbord's Reflections

I would not like it if my therapist was like that all of the time. But some of the time is ok with me.

I could not trust someone who I knew nothing about. No one and nothing is a blank and to claim they were would make me suspicious of their motive.

Pretty much like ex vivo's T from my T as well and works well for me on the whole. He's not entirely a blank slate - the concept can be taken too far sometimes.

I worked with someone who used something like a blank slate, though I'm not sure the whole idea of that is really possible cuz things show up even if the T is trying not to let it. I thought it was the way things were supposed to go in therapy so I went along.

Honestly, it wasn't good for me. I needed something supportive and warm. For some trauma work, I have found that a much more active and engaged T works better. I felt like I was left hanging all the time, not knowing what he was thinking or feeling, when I needed to focus on my own healing, not him. I felt dropped and abandoned when in need. That was also what I grew up with. I didn't really see why he wasn't able to see that and see that leaving me stranded was repeating early stuff.

This idea is old and has been criticized within the world where people do this kind of work. For some people, a blank slate approach has proven to be not what is called for. It can even leave someone so alone that it makes things worse.

It doesn't depend on what you are working on and how the T uses that technique.

My private therapist has an integrative-relational approach, and says that her work is all about the "relationship" with the client. Yet she is very much a blank slate. I know next to nothing about her. The only thing I know about her private life is that she is married and has two sons, and I found that out by accident when she showed up in my "people you may know" on Facebook. I clicked on her name because I didn't recognise it, and realised immediately that it was my therapist's profile and that she was using a nickname + initials for her surname in order to prevent clients from finding her profile. I let her know that my Facebook had found her anyway, and told her it was probably because she has her phone number or email listed in her information and that Facebook picked it up from my list of contacts (it did freak me out when I first clicked on it, though, I was like, HOW DO YOU KNOW THIS FACEBOOK! HOW!). We had a good laugh, and she said she would change her privacy settings. She did seem a bit unsettled by it, however, which I'm starting to think is due to her wanting to keep her "blank slate" to the point where it bothers her that I even know she has a Facebook.

Not sure if it is related to this technique, though. She isn't psychodynamic. And I don't really understand the purpose of it, because it's not like she's trying to encourage transference of any kind. She keeps herself at a distance. She isn't cold, far from it, but she never talks about herself. I guess that's why I don't feel particularly connected to her, because she never shares anything with me.

She has been very supportive and helpful about sorting out my feelings for my uni therapist, though. I can tell that she really disapproves of her sometimes, though she chooses her words carefully, always, and mostly manages to stay perfectly neutral. However, at times I find her neutrality quite frustrating, because it makes me feel slightly "lost" somehow. I actually appreciate opinions, it helps me to get other people's perspectives on things, but often she seems completely impartial and I don't know what to do with that.

My T didn't talk hardly at all during our first four months; s/he took a lot of notes, but other than a few neutral facial expressions, I thought I was talking to a blank slate. Some Ts use early time w/clients to observe and listen to what the client is saying and how they're saying it. Now, six months in, T is talking more, asking questions, making comments to what I say...more normal conversation.

I could be wrong, but it sounds like your T is observing and listening to you. Personally, I like how my therapy has evolved; when T talks, I get the feeling s/he understands where I am and gives feedback that makes sense to me. It may not be something you like or need, however. Let your gut be your guide...

Ha ha. Mine says I have to know nothing about him for this to work. If only he knew. I know more about him than any of the others I've had, and that actually helped me trust him. Not this blank slate crap.

Therapists who practice psychoanalysis may present themselves as a blank slate in order to encourage transference in client. Most of the time, however, I think Ts do this in order to keep their own "stuff" out of the therapy room. In order to bond with clients Ts might share select information (marital status, children, etc), but most keep it to a minimum. Anything personal a T shares should somehow benefit the client, otherwise it can detract from therapy. That said, I think some Ts have difficulty distinguishing between what is and might not be appropriate info to disclose. It varies so much from client to client that the room for error is huge, so I think a lot of Ts opt to stay neutral to avoid screwing up. They err on the side of caution.

Grrrrr! I hate the blank slate.

The idea is that the therapist should reveal as little as possible about herself so as to make it easy for you to project your feelings onto her. Your reaction to the blank slate is also supposed to be a useful clue as to what is bothering you.

I experienced the blank slate as Madame T withholding her feelings from me. I reacted by trying to see around the slate (to deduce as much as I could from the little I was shown) and to punch holes in it (deliberately provoking her into showing more. In practice this meant making her angry).

My last T was more of a blank slate T, and it didn't work out well for me. In the 5 years I was in therapy, my overall image of her is just sitting in the chair, waiting for me to talk, silent. I was reading over old journal entries the other day, and I realized that she talked much more than the image in my head shows, but still she revealed little about her self, and all I focused on was that she was one step away from being so annoyingly frustrated with me, that she had to kick me out.

She told me over and over she wouldn't "fire" me, but my fears never lessened. I think part of it was we just didn't mesh very well, and another part was her silence. She started every session in silence, waiting for me to bring up a topic, and i HATED it. My mind emptied and I was always so nervous, it was torture. She knew I didn't like it, but never really changed her ways about it. I finally got sick of feeling so stuck, that I quit.

I took a year off from therapy, and now am in therapy with a T who is vastly different from my old T. She is a bit younger, so maybe that helps (?--not sure), but she is so open about her life and she talks WAY more than my othe rT. She isn't afraid to ask me questions to get the ball rolling. I instantly felt way better about her, and my anxiety after 6 months is very low, much lower than after 5 years with my other T!

Thanks so much for all the replies.

On one level, I feel like the blank slate approach frees me to focus on myself. It is also less triggering in a sense, as I often react very strongly (on the inside) to certain nonverbal signals. Since many of those are absent, I am feeling calmer and safer.

However, I also feel a bit distrustful, because the lack of emotional reaction is unnerving. This is not how normal individuals interact with each other....

I would say this is exactly how I feel. I haven't tried to provoke him (yet), but I have stated very directly that I wish I knew what he was feeling. He shows me next to nothing of what's going on in his mind. What he does show, I suspect to be carefully thought about and controlled, and I am suspicious that it does not actually represent his thought processes.

I think just maybe t2 might have been a blank slate type. And that's probably why I couldn't open up to her. There was nothing there to open up TO. For me, that didn't work. I need a t like current t who is very present there with her whole self.

For me a "blank slate T" is a T who won´t share anything or very little about herself and if you ask her (him) questions she won´t answer by telling you but instead ask a question back like "what would it mean to you if I´d answer that?". If you for example asked if she had children.

It´s a T who strives to reach transference and to work closely within the transference relationship because of all the projections you´ll be able to make if it´s a good relationship.

Me personally associate a "blank slate T" foremost with a psychoanalysist and a psychoanalytic therapy.

Blankslatedog!

This the paradox and the tragedy. The relationship is the key to healing, yet they expect you to have a relationship with someone who offers nothing of themselves. The idea is that you can bring all your bad relationships into the room and work on them there. But in the end, there is no real relationship with the therapist. When you run out of other relationships to work on, there is nothing left.

The therapist is the only one whose personality is not in the room.

I have to add that the supposed blank slate idea is very very old. Even psychoanalysts do not believe it at all, not the ones current. In fact, modern psychoanalysis uses lots of self-disclosure, lots of give and take, lots of what might seen as a person-centered approach (Rogers).

That's because infant research on attachment and neurology, which started with psychoanalysis, has now more or less proven that the relationship matters more than almost anything else, except random factors.

To believe that a blank slate is useful in an age when it's been scientifically shown to be negative is just ignoring what is going on, what really matters, what science and just good sense tells us.

I think we had that same therapist! I didn't last as long as you did. I remember calling people on the way to give me ideas of stuff to talk about because I felt so awkward sitting there. Him, silence, holding a clipboard, writing who knows what.

It took me some time to get back into therapy but I told the lady I have now what I didn't like about therapy; I do better having a conversational dialogue and no writing. I generally work against her keeping her other stuff out of the room. She talks about clients (no identifying HIPAA violations), comparatively with me, I remind her of the subjectivity of experience. But other than that she's a nice lady and easy to talk to for the most part.