2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
Recently, there was an alleged quote from a seminar of a Freudian psychoanalyst circulating on the net: "Any self-disclosure of the analyst is the seduction of the patient." I don’t know how accurate this quote was, but somehow it gave me old thoughts
Here we see several notable features.
First, the word "any". Which tells us that there is an intervention, which in itself - regardless of its content and context / situation - will have a predetermined and inherent meaning.
Secondly, it is said that self-disclosure is not "experienced" by the participants in such and such a way, but - "is" this and that. That is, the author takes the objectivist position of arbiter of reality, believing that he has access to some "true" nature of the intervention (which it "is").
[I must say right away: I leave aside the fact that in some psychoanalytic schools the therapeutic procedure itself is structured in such a way that the therapist is simply not required to self-disclose for effective work. We are not discussing views of the therapeutic process here. And only the meaning that is attributed to a particular intervention]
Self-disclosure = seduction. For any analyst. For any client. In any psychoanalytic situation.
It seems to me that this is a wonderful illustration of the dividing line between positivist (objectivist) and constructivist psychoanalysis.
In the constructivist approach, we do not know how this or that action (or inaction) can be experienced in isolation from the subjectivity of the perceiving person. And out of touch with the current context.
It is the interactive matrix (or the intersubjective field - call it as it is convenient) that determines which sets of values will give the psyche of both participants in the therapeutic process to a particular event. It is always the pair's unique intersubjective fingerprint.
The same form of interaction can be experienced in very different ways by different clients with different therapists at different points in therapy and in a particular session. How something will be experienced depends on a number of factors, only a small part of which is available to our consciousness. Among these factors: the past personal history of the therapist and the client, their personality traits, the state of consciousness at the moment, a specific point in therapy. Etc. etc.
The therapist's self-disclosure can be experienced as seduction. Like a return to reality. Like an intrusive assassination attempt. Like soothing care. Like masochistic submission. As a supportive presence. As a manifestation of fear. As a validation of customer experience. As an expression of concern. Like exhibitionism. And myriad more options.
The therapist's silence and anonymity in certain contexts can be experienced in an equally seductive way (and sometimes even more). As well as asking questions. So are the interpretations. No intervention is immune from "oedipal seduction."
[This is not at all a characteristic of the intervention, but of the conscious and unconscious motivations that stand behind it and are played out in pairs]
Every experience is ambiguous. There is no “true” meaning inherent in any intervention that will accompany it in any situation for any person.
But why, in some psychoanalytic schools, is this intervention literally welded to seduction? Because they perceive the therapeutic situation and the therapist's position in it in a very specific way. The analyst and the client for them are residents of an exclusively "Oedipus" universe, which is saturated with appropriate connotations. For example, a constant desire to merge in an incestuous impulse, where only the so-called "paternal function" of the therapist ("third" in the traditional psychoanalytic sense) will prevent this from happening. In this case, the interaction becomes charged with oedipal desires and their vicissitudes, about which the therapist needs to be constantly on the alert.
Is it true? Sure.
But this is only part of the truth. As if from a very complex nonlinear kaleidoscopic picture, only one face was identified and they look at everything only through it.
In an office with a therapist there may be (sometimes one, and sometimes several): an "oedipal" child, teenager, adult, infant, baby's mother, child's dad - and also a whole company of states of the client's self - where each one with his own own, different, desires, fears, needs, etc., through which the client in different contexts can experience himself. Once again - not only by the “age” criterion, which I displayed above, but also by the quality of experience that is held within the framework of a particular state of selfhood. This, for example, may be a rebellious teenager, or it may be cooperative and eager for support.
Will the same therapist's intervention have the same meaning for all of them? No.
When we think about intervention, it is important to consider who in the therapist will communicate it to whom in the client?
[It should be noted that there are always several therapists in the office, as well as clients]
Some modern Freudians have provided us with invaluable clinical wisdom, sensitivity to all sorts of nuances and nuances of malignant forms of fusion and parental use of the child.
But that's only part of what it feels like to be human.
That is why the problem for me begins where this or that psychoanalytic school begins to objectify its collective "truths."
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