Do Training Courses For Therapists Allow For This Or Do They Try To Measure And Formulate Everything?
Question: I have been to see several therapists over the years, and confess it has never occurred to me that my personal development depended on the therapist's capacity for empathy (or anyone else's for that matter). Call me ignorant if you like, but I've always thought my destiny and any healing I need to do along the way depends on something much less predictable. Like the trees that appear to grow out of rocks in the Australian bush, I know we humans can thrive even when the odds are stacked against us. And, just as there are trees planted with tender loving care in ideal conditions, that never bear fruit, some among us continue on a path of destruction even when opportunities for goodwill abound. I call it the 'x' factor for want of a better phrase.
Do training courses for therapists allow for this or do they try to measure and formulate everything? I think it was Alan Watts who wrote that some things are not designed for our comprehension, just as water can't be wrapped in paper. I suspect some of you might be thinking "ahh, but we could freeze the water..." cheers, Richard
Answer (1) Great question, Richard and my answer is that it depends on the training course. Some courses try to measure and formulate everything, others are more open. I remember attending a talk in London many years ago with Thich Nhat Hanh - a Vietnamese Buddhist Monk who had spent time in Vietnam during the war there. When asked questions, he would sometimes give an answer, other times he would ring a little bell - he explained that some questions required answers, others were not to be answered but to be reflected upon.
Answer provided by Donald Marmara, Somatic Psychotherapist
Answer (2) Dear Richard a delicious, rambunctious question worthy of Rumi. Were you being ironic with the 'X' factor, just a fan of Strictly Dancing or maybe even raising the big question about our capacity for doing the wrong thing (sometimes misnamed 'evil' aka 'where the arrow fell') even knowing it is the wrong thing? The latter behaviour is also a description of some decisions made by a group or committee known as 'group think' and joked about in descriptions of an elephant ('an elephant is a long snake like, legless creature covered in rough dry skin and spars, grissly hair and has only one opening at the front from which air and water blow forth').
Indeed I often wonder whether we each are a committee disguised as a singleton. We are slowly understanding that personality and our 'self' concept are temporary and even opportunistic organisations, ever in flux, influenced by and responding to the environment, preferring a trial and error method, 're-inventing the wheel' rather than as students of history. Therapy training ideas, its cultures, research, evaluation and training organisations are all subject to the same concerns - depends on what part you've got hold of, for how long you have held the therapy creature and who decides how and whom to train and accredit. My own feeble attempt to address one of the underlying issues can be read in an article on my site.
Answer provided by Peter Fox, Clinical Psychologist
Answer (3) Empathy is the ability to think and feel yourself into someone else's experience, usually by having experienced something at least similar yourself. You don't have to have actually had a broken leg, to know that it hurts. To have someone who is truly empathic with our struggles over time, (parent, therapist or friend) tends to normalise our experience and relieves the feeling of being existentially alone. Thereby reducing feelings of despair and hopelessness, that cause us to merely ruminate and paralyse our appropriate decision making ability.
The experience of someone being truly empathic with us, allows us to utilise the other in a way that Donald Winnicott called, "an auxilliary ego". In short, a helpful thinking and feeling extension of ourselves. In a nutshell, "Two heads are better than one". To be connected to another in this way is a mutual experience of which neither is unaware and permits a great productive intimacy that is the hallmark of a fertile relationship. Without this connection, all is ultimately vacuous intellectual twaddle, which can be all very interesting I'm sure but at the end of the day, makes no lasting impression on how we feel.
Answer provided by David White, Psychotherapist
Answer (4) The world could be your therapist if you go by the belief that we are reflected in everything and everything may be reflected in us. One of the ways of exploring this is by noticing what in nature or even in the very room you are sitting in whilst reading, may be 'flirting' with you. Arnold Mindell describes 'flirts' as evanescent occurrences or momentary mental and physical happenings. Things that seem to catch your attention from the corner of your eye. Allowing yourself to follow and unfold these 'flirts' have a potential meaning and help integrate unconscious dreaming with conscious intent.
Answer provided by Shushann Movsessian, Psychotherapist
