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Books & Published Articles
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"The Therapist's Role
in the Disruption and Repair Sequence in Psychoanalysis"
By
Steven A. Frankel, M.D.
Article published in Contemporary Psychoanalysis,
33: 71-87 (1997).
Synopsis:
Imagine you are holding the rope
that may get you and your companion over this treacherous cliff. You alone have
managed to find your way up the face of the rock since you’ve done this
before, with years of rock climbing and careful attention to the techniques.
But your companion, hundreds of feet below, looks dazed. All she sees is
vertical rock with a small tree growing here and there out of its face. She
took a short course in rock climbing, but since she is terror-struck she has
forgotten all she learned. Cooperation is almost out of the picture.
Ironically, your companion is an excellent map-reader and without her you could
not have made your way here. Just before arriving, you insisted on following a
stream along a canyon. The walls kept closing in, your partner insisted, more
violently each time, that you were lost, but you wouldn’t hear. It was
only as rain clouds gathered, and you realized how quickly a flash flood could
wipe you out, that you even considered listening. But now you both have to get
over this cliff and you are the one who knows how.
The canyon was my
anger. Marty was driving me crazy with his despair and unrelenting accusation
that I was responsible for his suffering. In response I walled him off and
protected myself by charging him for a session he did not attend. It was only
when our trek looked like it would fall apart, be washed away by a flash flood
of emotion, that I took my bearings from him. And then I was in charge.
In most modern dynamic therapy systems the therapist is at least
nominally in charge as the two search for explanations of the patient’s
troubling experiences and for ways to work together. This picture, which
applies in relational as well as traditional Freudian systems, leaves little
room for the therapist simply taking over and moving the patient this way or
that. After all, his opinions are so rife with distortions based on his own
subjectivity that they could hardly be reliable, and the forcefulness of his
actions would rob the patient of initiative. And yet, to pretend that
therapists do not lead, and deliberately so, is to falsify and debilitate the
dynamic therapeutic process. Falsify, because it happens and usually takes up a
good deal of therapeutic space. Debilitate, because no patient would want to be
in a therapy where the therapist does not lead the way, at least from time to
time.
If you wish to receive a complimentary copy of this entire
article, please send a blank email to: role@collaborativepsychology.com
Your copy
will be sent to you by return email within a few minutes.
 
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