Dangerous Method

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Falling in love with a therapist - is it a great honor

When you are in front of her as you are …

These are the unlucky lines written by one patient I know who was undergoing the first analysis in her life, having the trauma of incest mother-daughter behind her and who was in the system of ineffective psychiatric treatment for many years

Indeed, is the uniqueness of this case great? For a more vivid presentation, I dare to suggest a simple word game.

Many of us, in our practice or from personal experience, are familiar with states of depression, when the world is uncontrollably crumbling into pieces and there is no way to do anything about it.

And here is the generally accepted concept of this word: "depressed, depressed mental state." So what? Reflects the essence? Roughly the same is the phenomenon of erotic transference in psychoanalytic practice. From the course of theory taught to us by Professor Freud, we know that the only and very powerful source of life energy in human existence is Libido, the force that unites everything and, on occasion, can destroy everything. A powerful natural attraction, akin to a thunderstorm raging at midnight or an endless, bottomless and calm ocean - whoever is lucky enough. Thus, working with this very His Majesty Libido, the therapist constantly comes into contact with his power. From the theory, we know that only the analyst's skill, his correctness, sensitivity and openness to the slightest changes in the patient makes it possible to direct this force into a useful, healing channel. In contrast, everything within the patient actively counteracts this. But this is only outwardly, it looks like seduction only at first glance, and this is just a tiny tip of a huge iceberg. Oh, how far is this from dry reasoning that in any analysis, sooner or later transference appears on the scene, it may be erotic, and this is a very valuable material for further elaboration.

There is an interesting article on the Internet that tells how much therapy reminds the patient of retraumatization, how vividly he experiences a repetition, but rather many, many times in a row the same pain and horror that accompanied the trauma. And what is the point here? At first glance, again, this is very similar to masochism, because a person pays money over and over again to experience pain, but one that borders on the limit of patience. So the words from the sensational film come to mind: "yellow is a sign that the submissive is approaching the limit of the permissible, red - the pain has become unbearable and the impact must be stopped immediately." It seems that our patients arrive in a color range from red to yellow, so to speak, in a state of orange.

This topic seems to me wide enough and, with all desire, does not fit into the volume of the article, which will allow it to be easily perceived and interesting. Despite this, I would like to highlight at least briefly what is really going on. Based on the recollections of clients who have encountered erotic transference in their relationship with the therapist, we can talk about some patterns.

The "sanctity and inviolability" of personal boundaries always comes to the fore. The analyst, being a master, not an amateur, carefully cultivates an understanding of his limits in the patient, just as a loving mother nurtures and cherishes her baby's body at the beginning, kisses and caresses the legs, arms, tummy, giving the baby an idea of the body, and a little later about the external world and the internal world. The therapist is a "spare mom", a surrogate or something, when it didn't work out with her own.

And then everything is already on the points of fixation. In full swing, the patient is "covered" by acting out, this is if in clever words, but in fact the unhappy person who turned to us for help is trying with all his might to return to the previous situation, but not to repeat countless times, but in order to the new mother therapist behaved differently, did not retraumatize, but canceled repetition, allowed to get a healing experience with a fairly good mother, as the classic would say.

In general, it turns out to be a seemingly confusing, but really simple story: you just need to fall in love with a therapist and seduce, but only in order to get a clear and irrevocable "NO" by all means.