I have
been seeing my psychotherapist for nearly eight years. We have had a very profound,
intense relationship with varying degrees of transference and
countertransference. At one point in treatment we had to stop so that he
could deal with his own issues and countertransference. During treatment
in order to help me with my eating disorder we began to have dinners together
and talking outside of the office led to his sharing information with me
about himself and another client with whom he was having difficulty. He has
been a very important part of my life, and we have discussed friendship after
therapy. I have seen him outside of the office for other occasions, always
respecting the boundaries of therapy and for therapeutic reasons. Our
conversations began to feel as if we were friends, and we would process this
in therapy. He has always said that I did not come for friendship and I agreed.
I have become very attached to him. Recently this other client attempted
suicide and on that particular day I was his first patient. I saw that he
was a mess, and we talked about the situation instead of my having my session.
So he revealed to me his turmoil and personal feelings. A few weeks later
he abruptly told me that he could not see me outside of the office and that
our relationship would change. He could only see me for sessions and I could
not leave him phone messages any longer as I had in the past. At any rate,
I have had an enormously emotional reaction to all this. We had some very
hostile sessions and volatile exchange of words, raised voices, and nastiness.
He is in supervision and I have felt betrayed, abandoned, angry, outraged,
sad, depressed, and in total despair. I have continued my sessions with him
with a two week break and he seems still torn apart my his inability to deal
with this other client and to keep his boundaries clean. I feel ripped off
and still at odds with myself and him. When I see him this is all that we
have talked about for the past month. I am starting to resent paying him
and scared to stop treatment. I need some guidance here.
As sad as it is, your experience illustrates several
interrelated points about psychotherapy and the psychology of the
unconscious.
First, it makes
clear the fact that
psychotherapy
with a student under supervision may be less expensive than treatment with
an experienced professional, but it is not always competent psychotherapy.
Now, I understand that students can learn only from direct experience—in
fact, I had to learn this way myself—and so supervised training is an
important part of a student’s training; still, the
consumer should
be aware of the risks involved. Many students not only are caught up in their
own personal issues but also they lack the sophisticated experience necessary
to avoid the unconscious traps into which clients can draw them.
This leads to
the second point: your unconscious desire was to
seduce—that is, to
control—your
psychotherapist. Let me explain. An
eating disorder
has its roots in the desire to “be in control.” By controlling
your own body both through food intake and through food expulsion (vomiting,
laxatives, or exercise) you symbolically control your feelings of vulnerability
and helplessness in not being able to control a parent who emotionally
manipulated you. Thus, when you are motivated by the unconscious desire to
be in control, all your relationships become stained with your need to control
them—and it’s no different with your psychotherapeutic
relationship.
This leads to
the third point: you can get drawn into a dysfunctional relationship because
of an unconscious desire not just to control the other person but also to
rescue the other person through love. This love, though, is not true
love—that is, the selfless giving of kindness, compassion, forbearance,
and patience without asking for or expecting anything in return. No. This
love that snared you is the
common love of
romantic fantasy, and it has at its
core the desire to manipulate another person to get whatever you
want—whether it be bodily pleasure, emotional security, financial security,
social status, or any other personal satisfaction. In your case, your attachment
to your psychotherapist derived from your unconscious desire to rescue him
from his “mess.” And what would you get from this desire? Well,
you would get the symbolic satisfaction of reversing your father’s
inattention to you and of drawing him back to you emotionally through the
person of your psychotherapist.
This leads to
the fourth point:
anger. Because
it’s unconsciously based in a desperation to feel accepted, and so is
focused on the self, not on the other person, romantic love cannot cure childhood
emotional wounds, and so it eventually must confront the frustration
of its own failure. When that happens, common love
flip-flops
right into rage. Instead of wanting to rescue the other, you want to
“kill” him—that is, get rid of
him.
And this leads
to the fifth point: guilt. Feeling so guilty about the effects of your anger,
you remain tangled in a dysfunctional relationship; that is, because you believe
that the other person needs you, and that protecting your dignity with healthy
boundaries would be cruel, you stifle your hurt and continue to put up with
abuse.
So what can you
do?
Well, you can
realize that now you know what psychotherapy isn’t. It isn’t
the process of acting out any of the above points.
Once you know what it isn’t, then you can seek out real psychotherapy
with someone who won’t let you seduce him. A competent psychotherapist
won’t let you get entangled with him like any other person. He won’t
create the illusion that he is your friend and
confidant. Instead, he will reveal to you your
unconscious. He will help
you feel the pain of having been manipulated like an object when you were a
child, and he will help you learn how to let go of your unconscious need to
control the world. In all of this, you will learn real love and
forgiveness—and
then you will be “fixed.” You will be freed of the illusion that
the other person needs you to rescue him. You will be freed of the allure of dysfunctional
relationships. You will be freed of your rage at your
father.
Go back, therefore,
to the first point and find a competent psychotherapist. Then work through
the other points properly: instead of acting them out, speak
them within the process of real psychotherapy.
Finally, there is one
irony to be pointed out here. Whatever you need to in your psychotherapy now is what
your so-called psychotherapist failed to do in his own psychotherapy (that is, if he
ever had any). After all, this whole mess started because he was entangled in the
illusion that he needed to rescue you.
No
advertising—no sponsor—just the simple truth . . .
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