Whose work is it?
A while back a reader emailed me this question:
"How do I balance my sense of what's right for me to be looking at right now, and what my therapist seems to focus on? How much autonomy is appropriate?"
I was puzzled at first by the question. The basic instruction in depth psychotherapy is to say what comes to mind and how could that be if the therapist determines what should be the focus in therapy?
I remember attending a workshop in Boston taught by Raphael Lopez-Pedraza. He noted in passing that being an analyst meant he spent hours listening to patients talk about business or farming or accounting or any number of things he himself knows little or nothing about and gaining understanding of those things and their importance to his patients is part of the process. This is something we do to become the therapist the patient needs. It is not the patient's task to become the patient we need, but the reverse.
So, a patient may come in for session after session and seem to talk only about superficial things -- meals she prepared or what her children are doing or how her garden is growing. One way of looking at this kind of time is that all of what she is saying is a comment about the therapy process itself -- this is the approach Robert Langs advocated. Another way of understanding it is that she is telling me about her life in the way she knows how. I need to be patient, be curious and listen for all of what she is saying, the subtext as well as the actual content. And if I think she might be avoiding something, I might ask about that. But it wouldn't feel right for me to tell her what she should be focussing on.
That said, there are therapists who specialize in one area or issue rather than work as generalists. So they may not be so open to listen to material that seems not to be germane to that issue.
In any case, the therapy belongs to the patient. So talk about it; raise the issue with the therapist. Let him or her know how you feel.