Therapist-Client: Equality Or Inequality?

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

Therapist-Client: Equality or Inequality?

During their working hours

the therapist must remain vulnerable

and at the same time hold on

within the professional role.

Donald Winnicott

In this article I offer my thoughts on the specifics of the therapeutic relationship.

There is a kind of paradox in the "client-therapist" position:

• This position is vertical: the client is not equal to the psychotherapist;

• This position is horizontal: the client and the therapist are equal.

Overcoming this paradox, in my opinion, becomes possible thanks to the understanding of the dual nature of the therapist - the therapist as a professional and the therapist as a person. Let's take a closer look at these named entities.

The psychotherapist as a professional

As a professional, the therapist is certainly not equal to the client. And this is not surprising. He is equipped with professional knowledge, skills, skills, owns a whole arsenal of various psychotherapeutic methods, techniques and techniques, he has a wealth of therapeutic experience and important experience in personal therapy.

Thanks to all this, he can solve the psychological problems declared by the client in therapy. All of this, of course, is not available to the client and this, in fact, the therapist is important and valuable for the client. Without the professional component of the therapist, the client would hardly be interested in him, and there could be no question of any professional relationship.

So, the professionalism of the therapist attracts the client and creates in him hope for solving his psychological problems, as well as a readiness for vertical, "inclined", "unequal" relationships.

The psychotherapist as a person

Nevertheless, all of the above listed set of knowledge, skills, methods, techniques, techniques, etc. not enough to create what is most important in therapy - a therapeutic contact or alliance. Without it (contact), in principle, there can be no therapy as such. Anything can be - psychocorrection, psychological counseling, psychopedagogy, psychodiagnostics, but not therapy.

Everyone probably knows the statement that has already become an axiom: "The main instrument of therapy is the personality of the therapist." It is thanks to this main therapeutic "tool" that a therapeutic relationship becomes possible, within the framework of which there is a likelihood of a "meeting" between the therapist and the client, as a condition for possible changes in the latter. And for this, the therapist needs to risk appearing on the border of contact with the client, to appear before him without a professional mask, to show him his own experience of his personality, the experience of his soul, and be ready to share his emotional experiences with the client.

Only in this way a horizontal (equal) relationship with a client becomes possible, in which, as mentioned above, there is a possibility for a Meeting with him.

What is this instrument - the personality of the therapist - and what are its main properties?

This is the topic for my next article.