There once were
moments in the dim dark past when I was subversive and immoral, and would read the
other clinicians’ client progress notes. This exercise in disrespect for
confidentiality would last all of a few hours, to be answered by a year or two’s
cleansing abstinence. This was not because I’d come to my senses (I may not
have those senses), but because the notes were always so god-awful dry-throated
boring. Every single one was a tedious journalistic log of what the client had
talked about in the hour (fifty minutes). I need not give you examples from memory:
Clients talk about all sorts of things. What never appeared in any note was the
slightest hint of actual psychotherapy carried out. The descriptive terminology
would often be there (“Shane had a hypomanic episode over the weekend”), but
never a strategy to reach something in the person, and even more never
the slightest speculation on cause: What was the client’s wound? At most, “encouraged,”
“reflected,” “supported.” This sorry state of misery obtained whether the
writer was an intern, Master’s level counselor or social worker, or PhD or PsyD
psychologist. No one possessed the shadow of Yalom, Janov or Freud, or even of
Robin Norwood (Women Who Love Too Much) or Dear Abby or Dr. Phil (“your
parents are mentally abusing you!”).
Why were – or let’s
go there: are my fellow clinicians so emptied of deep and investigative
thought? What happened to my profession when I wasn’t looking (in their files)?
My notes talk cause and healing, pain and
regression, meaning and identity and flawed parents. While there may be some airy
theory woven through the action that I believe to be relevant, the spirit of tectonic movement is
there! I wonder: What is the spirit, the ardor that should stir other therapists’
brains when they’re with the client? What are they doing in their room?
I think the
cause of this en-boring is the devolution of psychotherapy to the ubiquitous Cognitive
paradigm, similar to the simplemind-ification of classical music from the
abyssal Baroque to the thin-souled Classical aesthetic of Stamitz and Mozart
and Haydn. A therapist could be as profound a wight as Kierkegaard, but if she
misunderstands people to be in the here-and-now rather than peeping up from the past, to be alpha-and-omega the
adult whose thoughts are the engine and steering wheel of their lives, then all will be the moment
and its feelings, actions and events. All will be the surface of the pond. We can
blame Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck for the atrophy of my art, as we can blame
Donald Trump for the reduction to nausea of the social contract.
This sickens me,
and I’m glad my office has a door that I can close on that world.
Stick with it, TPS. Men especially don't like to regress (including psychologists!), rather they build stronger walls (out of rationalisation also!). That wound, barely scarred over, prevents use of words like baby, infant, child, toddler....temper, resentment due to humiliation, annihilation of that precarious developing self.....or how about - internalising an empty or distorted shell!! Like its some kind of black abyss that its better not to even peek over the edge. My own experience tells me that one has to at least peek over the edge, perhaps with a kind adult at your back (or your own internalised re-parented adult) just to make sure one doesn't descend in that dark abyss without the chance of clawing oneself back out). I, too, sometimes shake my head at the resistance to exploring the feelings of childhood (especially those lousy feelings that cause us all so much trouble). Maybe I'm over-egging this seeming resistance, on reflection, there was Winnicott, there was Bowlby, and of course, Janov. And ACES are being taken seriously hopefully to be taken into account in the schools of the future. There is hope. Just not yet! ;)
ReplyDeleteWe were separated at birth, Unknown (though I had to look up ACES).
ReplyDeleteYes, even one cell dividing into two is a kind of separation! This could be the well-spring?
ReplyDelete