Do therapists make good parents..

oh what an interesting article I am reading into days Guardian Newspaper.....

Honey, I shrunk the kids
Do therapists make good parents? Emma Cook should know - her mother was one. Here she explores what it's like growing up with the Oedipus complex and Santa as a phallic symbol - and why playing with your hair at the dinner table is a bad idea
Emma Cook
Saturday April 12 2008
The Guardian

I am 15 years old, standing at our kitchen window. I stare intently at a woman parked in her car just outside our driveway. She is slim, smartly dressed in a business suit, probably in her late 30s. I see her each week at this time, five minutes early for her appointment. She sits and waits, arms folded, staring straight ahead. Every so often, she glances in the mirror, adjusts her hair. What has brought her here, I wonder, to our house, to my mother? Has her husband been unfaithful to her? Is she depressed, suicidal even? I strain to gauge her expression. Does she look miserable, anxious, or relieved that she's about to confide in someone? It's difficult to tell from where I'm standing, my nose pressed up against a world of adult problems that are compelling, but largely beyond my teenage comprehension.

The car door slams and my mother's 4pm appointment walks resolutely up our drive. The buzzer rings and she glances in through our kitchen window. I do what I always do: swiftly duck and crouch below the kitchen sink, hoping she hasn't seen me. It isn't professional for a patient to witness personal details, which is why Mother, a marital counsellor and therapist, has a separate entrance to her consulting room at the top of our house - and why she always reminds me not to stand like this in front of our kitchen window.

She wants to keep her role as mother separate from that strange business upstairs, but I'm curious to cross the divide. I want to know what they talk about up there, even though I know she can never tell me.

People usually make one of two assumptions when you tell them your parent is a therapist. There is either admiration, along the lines of: "How marvellous - someone who can really understand you. Who could be more qualified to empathise with all your problems?" Or the opposite: "Poor you. What a nightmare - did they try to psychoanalyse you all the time?"

Therapists, and they would be the first ones to agree, don't make "better" or "worse" parents. As Thomas Maeder pointed out in his fascinating book, Children of Psychiatrists and other Psychotherapists: "It is harder to be a good parent than to be a good therapist. The good effects that therapist parents have on their children are predominantly the result of their personalities and affection, not the consequence of theoretical training."

Yet surely they do have the opportunity to be "better" parents because of the unique insights and expertise they accumulate during the therapeutic process. Yes and no, says Dr Avi Shmueli, a psychotherapist at the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships, in north-west London. "The potential for a good experience is greater, and the potential for a bad experience is greater too," he says. "One of the things therapists develop is giving their mind to someone, focusing on them - that's something they learn over time with training. And children can benefit from that. On the other hand, they can feel that the therapist's mind is often on something or someone else more exclusively than them. It really depends on whether the therapist has the capacity to separate themselves off from their work and their life at home."

Inevitably, the boundary between therapy and parenting can be more blurred than in other professions. As Maeder writes: "The truth is that psychotherapy is not just a job. The psychiatrist's education is designed to change the way that he thinks about his own, and other people's, behaviour. This in itself sets them apart from other workers."

This is partly down to the way that therapists are trained to assess and analyse others, including their own "unconscious" behaviour. I grew up, like many therapists' kids, listening to conversations peppered with therapeutic terminology - words such as "dependent", defensive", "in denial" and "depressed" were always in the air. Inevitably, it affects how you view other people; how you judge and classify behaviour. It's fine if you're the one with the authority and power to issue these judgments, or if you're a patient paying to hear them, but not so good if you're a child on the receiving end.

"Both my parents were Kleinian analysts and I did feel they overstepped the line on quite a few occasions," says Kate, 38, an art history lecturer living in Bristol. "I was always given the role as being the youngest, slightly wayward child. In reality, I was rather swotty and obedient, so it was a complete myth. But it took me a long time to put my fists up and say, 'That's your story, this is what I'm really like.'"

As a teenager, Kate became more sceptical about her parents' attitudes. "It took time for me to feel confident enough to think a lot of it was hokum. My dad always had fantastic theories. One, I remember, was about Father Christmas being a phallic symbol coming down the chimney, which was vaginal. I thought it was rubbish. Also, if ever his patients were late, he'd often say it was unconsciously deliberate. I wanted to say, 'Look, it's not always psychological. There are actually real traffic jams in the world.'" Which brings us to that most problematic of areas for many children of therapists: their professional habit of identifying reasons for your behaviour that are entirely mysterious to you. Kate says, "When I had my first baby, my dad would say, 'Oh, you're in the love affair part at the moment and he's going through this stage with your breast,' or some statement like that. It made me so furious. I wanted to say, 'Get your nose out of this. This is my baby.' My reactio
n as a parent is not to invade my daughter's space. I'm very mindful that she is a separate person with her own innate characteristics."

Mostly, my mother managed to resist the temptation to analyse me, except for a memorable time when I was 17 and stayed out too late. Understandably, she was worried and upset I hadn't phoned to tell her where I was. Then, days later, I heard her relating the incident to my sister-in-law on the telephone. I stood outside the door listening to her theory that I was displaying unconscious hostility; that I was clearly resentful I was about to be usurped as the indulged youngest child. I was furious that my, albeit thoughtless, behaviour had been given a charged meaning that had never crossed my mind - consciously anyway. Yet the more I denied it, I was aware, the more I unwittingly supported her theory.

These days, therapists know that, even if it's a struggle, it is best to keep any analytic interpretations within the consulting room - or at least to yourself. But it hasn't always been this way. When psychoanalysis was in its infancy, famous analysts of the day spent hours focusing on their children, who were viewed as fodder for their work, as Maeder describes in a chapter of his book. Melanie Klein, who developed the technique of play therapy for children, analysed all three of her own children. She would, according to Maeder, subject her five-year-old son to daily hour-long analytic sessions: "Something he later looked back upon with displeasure and which ... turned him into a troubled and withdrawn little boy." Most famously, Freud analysed his youngest child, Anna, who went on to become a child psychoanalyst herself. Neither Freud nor Anna would discuss the details, but as Maeder says: "In light of her personal idiosyncrasies and her fanatical devotion to her father ..
. [the analysis] clearly had not properly dealt, nor could it, with the crucial issues of her relationship with her father. That Freud psychoanalysed his own daughter deeply shocked psychoanalysts when the fact became known years after his death."

Nevertheless, today many children of therapists and psychiatrists can still feel overly scrutinised. Rachel, 36, remembers her father, a professor of child psychology, studying her and her brother throughout their childhood. "He would often test out tricks, such as how to get us to do what he wanted. He had a theory that if you gave young children enough options, they would always pick the last one. So he would suggest an outing to the zoo, the circus, the seaside, the cinema or the local park. We'd always go for the local park because it was the only one we could remember. We didn't realise he was using us in his research."

For other children, that sense of being quietly observed could feel overwhelming. "It's that feeling that they've got this deep knowledge of the human range of behaviour that can be oppressive," says Helena, a 33-year-old full-time mother living in Sussex, and daughter of a child analyst. "I think there was a fear of being over-interpreted, even though my mum was extremely good at respecting boundaries. It was more of an undercurrent; that whole belief that the unconscious is deep and complex. There's something undignified when you feel someone can understand more about you than you do yourself. Especially when you're a teenager; you need that self-knowledge first. The way I got round it was to keep lots to myself."

Therapists' children, it seems, have different strategies. Lucy, 34, who lives in Exeter, dealt with her mother's interpretations by training as a child psychologist. "I think I wanted to give a voice to the child because she focused on the adult world." It also helped her to feel equipped to tackle her mother's theories. "My mother trained as a therapist when I was in my teens," she says. "She was so excited by all these new ideas. The problem is they were all interpretations that sounded horribly oedipal, involving my father - which no 17-year-old wants to hear. With the best will in the world, I want to make my own revelations about me by myself."

Like many therapists' children, both have vivid memories that focus on the sanctity of the consulting room. "It was an unbridgeable gap in our house," says Helena. "I think it's such a powerful memory because my mum was usually very present and accessible, yet here she was still in our house but so inaccessible. I would have to have broken a leg before I'd felt I could have interrupted her."

To a child of any age, it's a strange concept to grapple with, that at certain times during each day, in a room next door or upstairs, your parent is giving themselves in an emotional way. As Janet Reibstein, professor of psychology at Exeter University, says: "It really does belong to the childhood mind that there is such a thing as the perfect parent and the perfect therapist and children think, 'They're up there getting it right for someone else, but not for me.'" Maybe that pressure comes to bear on therapists who are parents too, especially if they feel their family is less than perfect. Caroline Dalal, consultant family therapist, has seen it in her consulting room when she has counselled families where one of the parents is a therapist. "There is a common social belief that somehow if she's a therapist, she should be able to get her own life in order. Some take on board that story and feel doubly bad if their own children do have problems."

Yet there can be tremendous positives, too, and among the handful of therapists' children I interviewed, as well as myself, they feel the benefits outstrip any negatives. Some of my mother's more creative interpretations could be irksome (I still wince when I think of a certain Sunday lunch during my adolescence when, fiddling with my hair, my mother informed me this enduring trait was clearly a "masturbatory habit"), but I am grateful for being encouraged to view the world in a more analytical way; always questioning other people's behaviour as well as my own. Rachel agrees: "My dad put a lot of thought into parenting and that was linked to being a psychologist. I think it meant he took a lot of interest in us and spent a lot of time with us." As Kate puts it, "At particularly stressful points of your life, like when you first become a mother, it's so useful to have access to those psychological tools; to know what it means to be in charge of your emotions. Now I have childr
en, I think how fortunate I was to have rather sentient and understanding parents, even though I'll never buy my dad's theory on Father Christmas." As Freud once said, but almost certainly not to one of his six children, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Copyright Guardian News and Media Limited

That Father Christmas story sounds reasonable to me...

I once said something along the lines of my T being a psychologist all the time and she said she wasn't, left her T'ness at work.

I think good therapists would make good parents because they're good at their selfness and struggling therapists might struggle as parents for the same reason.

I have a cousin who's wife is a therapist and I'm not saying this is true for all therapists. She is a child therapist and is totally clueless when it comes to dealing with her 3 kids. They run wild, are rude and I don't see them getting told to behave all that often they do their own thing.

Jbug

Yes, jbug, my sister lived next to a woman like that, a psychologist! She let her kids do whatever they wanted, they were outside with no coats in the winter, etc. They weren't very well cared for. I think some people just don't get it that kids aren't "little adults".

I think what I got from that artical the most, wasn't whether T is or isn't a good parent, its that I realised that I do infact have a "claim" on T like she said.. It always feels as If I am the ONLY one with the curiositys and envy that T's family have her and I dont', but reading about how the therapist child talks about her realising her mother also has an emotional interest in her patients/clients, opened up something for me....kinda like, yeah I do have some of T's time too...time she's with me... :-)

Yah Its sorta like the Auto mechanic who's car is always breaking down....He can keep everybody elses car running but his own.....?

Mouse this was very interesting. Thank you for posting it.

I suppose here, where most T's it seems have an office outisde their homes, their family might see it as any other job where the parent goes off to work.

Yes it makes me appreciate even more that hour that is just for us, me and her.. kind of like an hour-long embrace.

I once commented to T about someone who was analyzing everything I wrote to her about ...and ended up mis-interpreting and ending the long relationship. Her analyzing every innocent thing was maddening to me. This person was not a practicing T but has a doctorate in psychology and has had many years of personal analysis. I said to T, "Surely you don't go around making associations and analyzing every single thing.... Do you?". .. She said she didn't and that it would be ridiculous, sitting a dinner table and having someone ask "Please pass the salt" and handing it to them thinking "I wonder what they meant by that.... " lol

Mouse, that is a really interesting article. Thanks for posting.

Maybe some of those Ts with the home offices might do better in a regular office away from home--seems like it would alleviate some of the children's anxiety and help keep a stronger boundary between work and family. Is that common to have a home office? The four Ts I or my family have been involved with have all had offices away from the home.

There seems something really invasive or incestuous about a T analyzing his own child. Aaaccckk! Often a person's problems stem from their relationships with their parents, so how could a child or teen sit there and tell his therapist-mom about how his problems stem from mom?

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
It is harder to be a good parent than to be a good therapist

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">I like that.

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
There is a common social belief that somehow if she's a therapist, she should be able to get her own life in order.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">That reminds me of what a blow to me it was when I discovered my T, a family and couples therapist, was divorced. It really made me feel hopeless, like if he can't get it right, it's truly impossible to have a lasting relationship for someone as screwed up as me. (He quickly dissuaded me of that idea.) They do have a lot to live up to in their clients' minds.

I recently finished a book by a therapist whose own marriage failed partly because he put too much energy into his clients and didn't save enough for home life. All day he would see clients and be fully there, attentive, empathetic, etc. When he got home from work, he just couldn't bring himself to "be there" for his wife because he was so exhausted. They ended up separating.

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
Sunrise said:
..a therapist whose own marriage failed partly because he put too much energy into his clients and didn't save enough for home life.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">
This seems like it would be plausible. I've often thought, "How the heck to they do it, listening to the problems of one person after another? It has got to be draining.

I don't really think that being a T *necessarily* has anything to do with parenting. I guess it depends on what sort of therapy you do though.

I know though that my old T is an awesome mother. I spent the day with her and her kids and I could tell from 5 minutes just how much she loved them, and how much that love was reciprocated.

Interesting article though, thank you for posting it.

my former t in her trauma class once told us 'i'm a better therapist than a friend - i need ME time!!!"

I think what makes a therapist effective is that they can stay removed from the daily crap that goes on between people. However, they cannot remove themselves from their own daily crap. Also, I think they have the added pressure that others believe they have some special ESP, that may set the expectations of family members a bit higher. I think they have the knowledge to be better parents but MAY not have the distance (objectivity) needed to utilize it in their own relationships. Bottom line they are imperfect people just like everyone else.

Yes I agree with Jacq10 about T's not having to do with anything

on parenting. I think good parenting is taught through the

parenting that the children received when they grew up. Although

I do believe that kids that have come from distressed homes can

become good parents to. It maybe a little harder though...?

These are just thoughts not facts, only my opinions from what

I've seen in life and situations posted here.

Then again I've seen fantastic parents in my life and they raised

there children very responsible but the children later on in life

weren't the greatest parents for their children.

There is no such thing as a perfect Parent in my opinion anyway?

ill ask mine next session and relay the answer she gives