All Good Things

The therapy relationship contains its ending from the very beginning as every therapy comes to an end eventually. Under ideal conditions, therapist and patient arrive together at the decision to end and they take the time necessary to fully and respectfully end the relationship. It is a ritual of goodbyes — taking the time to look back at what has happened, what has changed. It’s time to look at what has been accomplished and what has not. It is an exit interview and a farewell all in one and ideally takes up a number of sessions. When this happens there are good feelings all the way around, along side the inevitable sadness at saying goodbye. 

I get upset when it is suggested, as it not uncommonly is, that therapists encourage people to stay in therapy because they want the money. I am certain there are some therapists like that. Like there are lawyers or accountants or plumbers or mechanics who place income above ethics. I have been in therapy with a number of therapists myself and I have never encountered this as in issue with any them. And I know that I and the people I have supervised have dealt with anxiety about money in supervision a lot in order to keep that anxiety as much out of the work as possible. 

Good Endings and Bad Endings 

Not all terminations are ideal. Someone asked me recently what it is like when a patient leaves abruptly. Well, it’s hard. Sometimes a patient will call and leave a voicemail saying  they won’t be back. Or send an email or a note or a text. Or not show up and then not respond to calls. Sometimes this is part of a pattern in the therapy and the patient eventually returns. But more often, they do not and we end up not knowing why. And that is hard because it is in the nature of therapists to wonder and want to know what happened.

It’s my job to challenge any changes in our work that patients bring up. It is my job to ask when someone announces they want to leave therapy to ask why now and to raise what I see as possible issues. It is not about wanting to control the patient or protect my income. It is my job. I ask at the beginning of therapy why they are seeking therapy now and we look at that. I ask at the end why they want to leave now and we look at that. 

 I think it is hard to remember that the therapist is a person and that therapy is a relationship. It is a RELATIONSHIP. Patients and I spend an hour or so together every week and they live in my thoughts and occupy space in me beyond that hour. It’s a relationship. So when a patient says to me, “I want to stop now”, I ask why now and I ask that we look at this because it is part of our relationship, because I am a part of this relationship. And if that patient won’t talk about it, won’t look at why and leaves, maybe in a huff and full of mutterings about me, then she leaves. But she will still occupy space in my thoughts as I try to understand what happened and what might have led to this. And when she wants to return, as often happens, my door is open and we begin again and I do so without carrying resentment.  

It all comes with the territory.  

There are all kinds of reasons for ending — money, time, dissatisfaction, discomfort with the process, dislike, or feeling that we have done the work that we can and want to do. But it is the abrupt ones, with no chance to really say good bye or talk through  what has happened, these are the endings that are hard on therapists, and ultimately on patients as well. Ending well is important.  It lets us go forward without lingering feelings and resentments.

Ending is hard. It is hard no matter where in our lives we do it. And we tend to end in therapy in the same style we end other relationships. There are good endings and bad endings and healing endings and wounding endings. And they are all hard. And we can, all of us, learn to do them with more grace when we are willing to look at how we do it and what endings mean to us and have meant in our lives. 

Really? Whatever Comes To Mind?

I have posted before about secrets in therapy and every time I have, questions arise. Often people conflate privacy with secrets. So today let’s revisit this somewhat difficult issue.

Privacy vs Secrecy

Privacy is the state of being unobserved; changing clothes for example — that which I keep private, I am merely withholding from public view. Private matters are those traits, truths, beliefs, and ideas about ourselves that we keep to ourselves. They might include our fantasies and daydreams, feelings about the way the world works, and spiritual beliefs. Private matters, when revealed either accidentally or purposefully, give another person some insight into the revealer.

Secrecy is the act of keeping things hidden — that which is secret goes beyond merely private into hidden. While secrecy spills  into privacy, not all privacy is secrecy. Secrecy stems from deliberately keeping something from others out of a fear. Secrets consist of information that has potentially negative impact on someone else-emotionally, physically, or financially. The keeper of secrets believes that if they are revealed either accidentally or purposefully,  the revelation may cause  harm to the secret-keeper and those around him or her.

So that which is secret often contains an element of shame that private does not. We may keep something private for all kinds of reasons, but most of the time, we keep something secret out of fear and shame of what others would think if they knew. We keep something secret because we believe the cost of telling is so high that it’s virtually not a choice at all. Privacy is voluntary; secrecy is not.

Private: I got terrible grades in high school.

Secret: I forged my degree.

Keeping something private is an act of choosing boundaries and staying comfortably within them.

Keeping something secret is an act of hiding from the pain of disclosing something shameful.

This difference centering around the feelings about the information which is withheld is the principle factor in the difference between what is held private and that which is secret. It is this element of shame or fear attached to the secret that makes it different from something private.

Secrets, like an affair or a gambling problem or some misdeed or money problems — the kind of thing we lie awake and worry about, worry about others discovering — are often a big part of what brings people into therapy and what patients find most difficult to talk about. Shame and fear of judgment fill the room. The carefully cultivated image of respectability or responsibility or moral superiority will surely shatter into a thousand pieces the moment anyone, even the trusted therapist, finds out what is concealed beneath the facade. Each patient with such a secret imagines herself to be alone in the world, unlike and apart from all the rest of humanity, unable to imagine that the therapist has heard similar tales many times before. 

When we carry secrets like this, they become barriers between us and everyone in our lives, cutting us off from real intimacy. Anything which threatens to reveal what we seek so to hide becomes a source of anxiety and must be avoided. Maintaining the facade, the persona which covers the shame of the secret becomes paramount. In Japan I am told there is a saying that first the man takes a drink, then the drink takes a drink then the drink takes the man. The same is true of secrets as the secret comes to own the life of the person carrying it.

Secrets in therapy

Psychotherapy, like the confessional, offers a unique opportunity to break the secret and its hold on the life of the carrier. First comes the mustering of courage to say it, to tell the therapist what has been held in shame, to brave the condemnation and the rejection, the fear of which maintains the grip of the secret. And once spoken, then the work of discerning the meaning of the secret and opening to the shadow. 

I hear from people about things they are afraid to discuss with their therapists, secrets they carry and feel shame about. I know how hard it is to open up the dark corners of our lives and let another see in. It feels like a huge risk. But what is the point of being in therapy if, at some point, the secret is not told? If it remains untold and unexplored, the therapy in a very real sense is a lie because it never gets to the truth of the patients life and feelings. So we say to patients that they should say whatever comes to mind and mean to include the secrets as well.

Here are some of Jung’s thoughts, all taken from Vol. 16, pp.55-60:

Anything concealed is a secret. The possession of secrets acts like a psychic poison that alienates their possessor from the community.

All personal secrets … have the effect of sin or guilt, whether or not they are, from the standpoint of popular morality, wrongful secrets.

…if this rediscovery of my wholeness remains private, it will only restore the earlier conditions from which the neurosis, i.e. the split off complex,  sprang.

All of us are somehow divided by our secrets but instead of  seeking to cross the gulf on the firm bridge of confession, we choose the treacherous makeshift of opinion and illusion.

Jung here underlines the corrosive effect secrets have because there is no way, so long as the secret is held, for its bearer to know that she is not worse than everyone else, that the secret does not make him unlovable. The revelation of the secret within the container of a secure psychotherapy relationship begins the  cleansing effect of exposing it.

Those things which a person decides to hold private, even in therapy, may in fact be secrets rather than merely private matters. Because if there is no shame attached, then why the need for keeping such a thing outside of the secure container of therapy? 

It is by no means easy to let go of our secrets, whether we feel,  that do so would be rude or because we fear being judged or rejected or abandoned. It is hard work and takes time. But it is important to keep at it.

Saying whatever comes to mind is a goal and one it takes work to reach. An important part of that work is exploring the difficulty we have in getting there.

What would I do?

Like many of you the tensions surrounding the election and the renewed intensity of the pandemic sapped my creative energies for a while. So for the past couple of weeks I have been reading, knitting and watching Netflix to take care of myself. I hope that you have also been tending to your needs.

Today I woke up and I feel ready to write again. So here goes as I consider what to do when a patient presents a really thorny issue that might reach into  the territory of a moral dilemma.

A while back, someone asked me how a psychotherapist deals with the situation in which something the patient has come to understand she would really like to do to improve or change her life is likely to cause suffering to someone in that patient’s life? Situations like this are not uncommon, as for example someone wants to divorce her husband, an action which will doubtless cause upheaval and pain for all involved.  

But this questions contains, I believe, a misperception about what therapy is about and what the role of the therapist is.  

A new patient comes to me. I gather a bit of basic data and then ask her to tell me why she is here, to tell the story in whatever way makes sense for her. I listen. Very rarely is what I hear framed as a moral dilemma. I ask and ask many times during the time we work together “What is the life you want?”, because this is a pivotal issue. And as she frame possible actions, I ask if that action will take her closer to the life she wants. And we do that process again and again. I don’t tell anyone what to do. I am not really a problem solver.  

I deal with what is the life the person wants, what keeps them from having that life, and how/if it can be achieved and what the cost of achieving it might be. In my years of practice, to the best of my knowledge, I have never seen a pedophile or rapist or person who engages in behavior that I think is beyond the pale — those people don’t come in for therapy, at least not to me. Once I saw a person who might have been a murderer. I checked with colleagues and the appropriate state agency to see what my responsibility was to him and to the community. I saw him 3 times and discharged him to a more appropriate facility. That was a professional decision not a moral one.  

So how do psychotherapists navigate these waters?  

I don’t give answers when asked what people should do. I can help them look at why they want to do it and what the consequences are and whether it will get them what they want. But I do not make the decision.  

In two sets of conditions, I am bound to act on what I hear. If I am told by someone that they abuse someone or are abused, in most states, I am mandated to report the abuse. If someone threatens the life of another, case law says I must inform the authorities, but statute does not — so I consult and then report or not. Otherwise, my task is to listen.  

I am not Dr. Phil. I am not a priest. It is VERY hard sometimes not to try to tell people what to do. Because the work I do is not short term and because I usually work with people over the course of months, and  years, we have time to sort through issues, to examine them from as many sides as possible. And ultimately what they do is up to them. 

“The principle aim of psychotherapy is not to transport one to an impossible state of happiness, but to help (the client) acquire steadfastness and patience in the face of suffering. “
-C.G. Jung

Fee — another piece of the frame

It’s almost the beginning of a new month with bills to be paid so let’s consider money and therapy.

Therapists that I know generally do not like to talk about money and fees. Most of us came to this work out of a desire to help others. And we often become uncomfortable with the business aspects of being in practice. The training programs I am familiar with make no mention of the business aspects of practice. So most of us went into, and many continue, practice with too little knowledge of and attention to nuts and bolts issues like fees.

I don’t recall ever considering how much money I could or would make as a therapist. In fact I had no idea when I began. That wasn’t a factor in my decision. Certainly that insurance did not cover therapy when I began practice meant that fees were lower and expectations about income more modest.

I recall something the analyst Donald Meltzer said at a workshop I attended years ago. When he was asked about third party payment for analysis, he first said that we must remember that he who pays the piper picks the tune. And though he and his colleagues were at first envious of analysts elsewhere in Europe where analysis was covered by insurance, gradually he came round to seeing that they were not better off as they had to contend with the intrusions of authorities who could change the terms under which analysis was covered without warning. Then he said that anyone entering this field planning to drive a luxury car and make a lot of money should reconsider becoming a depth psychotherapist because this work demands sacrifice on the part of both patient and analyst and that often means adjusting the fee. 

Setting fees is not a science. Fees and the business aspects of private practice are not taught in graduate school. There is not very much written about fees either. So we have to have a sense of what other therapists in our area and with our training charge, what we are comfortable charging, and how to handle those who cannot afford full fee. As someone who works long term with patients,  I do negotiate fees to accommodate need. I went through a process of determining for myself how much is enough, what I am comfortable charging patients. 

Yes, greed plays a role

Greed is an issue here; greed in the sense that no matter how noble some of our motives for being a therapist are, it remains the case that it is how we earn a living. And if we don’t get paid, we don’t eat. Therapists who rely on the compassion of strangers to provide for them are most likely going to have to find a job to pay the bills. I know of only one writer who has been willing to talk about the issue of greed in psychotherapy — Barbara Stevens Sullivan has a chapter on it in her book, Psychotherapy Grounded in the Feminine Principle. Any time I have attempted to raise the issue among clinicians, I have been met with ferocious resistance and complete disavowal of even the slightest whiff of greed as part of what we do in charging for our time.

I learned from Sullivan about the place of greed in the Tibetan Wheel of Life; greed is one of the three root delusions at the center. For therapists, denial of the importance of money and being paid can be a potent source of problems. Being unconscious about the importance of money in one’s life places a person at risk of being in the grip of unconscious greed. Openly acknowledging the importance of being paid and the desire to have enough money to live well creates the opportunity to consciously think through the issues.   Once I became comfortable with the fact that indeed I do not do my work out of the pure goodness of my heart and that I do enjoy being paid for what I do, the whole issue of dealing with fees became much easier.

Like many, I had felt almost guilty charging for my time. And as a consequence, for a long time, I set my fees too low and I was lax in collecting and in dealing with issues with patients about money. In fact, in my own discomfort with the whole subject, I was modeling for them that money was a somewhat taboo topic and I was unconsciously encouraging them to be as reluctant about paying me as I was to acknowledge that I wanted to be paid. My plumber seemed to have no problems letting me know what he charged for the work he did and that he expected to be paid on time. Nor did my dentist or my attorney. So step one was acknowledging that earning a living is what I am about, as much and often more than any of the noble aspects of working with people. This is a tough thing for a lot of therapists. How can I be “good” and openly embrace my desire for money?

Then comes the problem of what is enough? If a new patient tells me she cannot afford my full fee, we work together to find what she can afford. The fee settled on needs to be enough without either being too little or too much. 

What’s it all about?

The medical model would have us believe that treatment is all about placing into remission  or curing disease. We look at the problems with the medical model when used to look at problems in living, but that is for another day. Today a brief look at Individuation. I see therapy as being about assisting the process of individuation, of becoming ourselves. Individuation is a journey, not a destination, a goal which remains forever in front of us:

Individuation means becoming an “in-dividual,” and, in so far as “individuality” embraces our innermost, last, and incomparable uniqueness, it also implies becoming one’s own self. We could therefore translate individuation as “coming to selfhood” or “self-realization.” C.G. Jung

One of my favorite ways of describing individuation comes from Jolande Jacobi in her book, The Way of Individuation:

“Like a seed growing into a tree, life unfolds stage by stage. Triumphant ascent, collapse, crises, failures, and new beginnings strew the way. It is the path trodden by the great majority of mankind, as a rule unreflectingly, unconsciously, unsuspectingly, following its labyrinthine windings from birth to death in hope and longing. It is hedged about with struggle and suffering, joy and sorrow, guilt and error, and nowhere is there security from catastrophe. For as soon as a man tries to escape every risk and prefers to experience life only in his head, in the form of ideas and fantasies, as soon as he surrenders to opinions of ‘how it ought to be’ and, in order not to make a false step, imitates others whenever possible, he forfeits the chance of his own independent development. Only if he treads the path bravely and flings himself into life, fearing no struggle and no exertion and fighting shy of no experience, will he mature his personality more fully than the man who is ever trying to keep to the safe side of the road.”  

And isn’t that what it is all about — treading the path bravely and flings himself into life, fearing no struggle and no exertion and fighting shy of no experience? Though heaven knows, no insurance company will pay for that.

 

Does therapy help?

“… the principal aim of psychotherapy is not to transport the patient to an impossible state of happiness, but to help him acquire steadfastness and philosophic patience in face of suffering. Life demands for its completion and fulfillment a balance between joy and sorrow.” C.G.Jung

This isn’t what most people think should be the outcome of therapy — that happiness is not the goal. One might ask then “Does therapy help?”

Someone who knew me when I was 25 and knows me now would not notice too very many things different about me except that I am heavier, my hair is silver and I am wearing glasses rather than contacts — all external manifestations of age and the life I have lived. Someone who knew me very well then and now might notice that I am calmer, less prone to sarcasm, more contemplative a little less ready to express my opinions,, warmer, maybe more confident. They would recognize my delight in words and that I have a dry sense of humor. That I am a bit shy and reserved, keep a pretty tight zone of privacy around myself. But on the whole, I would likely seem more relaxed.

The changes I have experienced in my life as the result of a long and successful analysis are interior, and though they shape what others see, they are most likely unknown to others. Those inner changes were hard won. The forces against them from my early life were fierce and did not go down without a ferocious fight. Through those hours and hours with my analyst, I began to be able to see the destructive bits and then to be able to not act on them, to let them go by, like bubbles rising in champagne. I still have moments of feeling like I used to feel, but I see it, I feel it when it happens and I now have the freedom to make choices that do not feed those moments and so they do not grow into hours or days as once they did.

How are the changes sustained? they are sustained by my recognition that I have more and more of the life I want. That I have friends who love me. I have a wonderful husband who loves me without reservation, who has never uttered an “If only you …”. I have kids who have grown into terrific adults and are now my friends as well as my much loved children. I have work I love. I changed my family habit of not quite completing big things when I returned to school and got my PhD. I remind myself that I acted on my dream and wrote a book. All of those things act powerfully to reward my efforts every day and so every day that change becomes easier to sustain. It is as if I used to be standing in a room facing the corner, believing that I was in a prison from which there was no way out. Working in my own therapy let me know first that there was a way out, then that all I had to do was turn around and walk out the open door and then that the prison was of my own making in the first place. 

Does therapy help? It can … if you are wiling to stay the course and do the work.

The Vessel for Psychotherapy

I want to spend some time today with what is the vessel, also known as the frame of psychotherapy. Certainly the vessel includes the physical space where we meet but it is also a great deal more. It starts with a place to meet, a room with a door that closes, so that what is outside can be kept outside and the two inside can be free from interruptions. Needless to say, neither patient nor therapist should be answering the telephone or otherwise attending to things breaking in from outside the therapeutic space. 

But what about when the therapy takes place online or on the telephone, you may ask? Even when we do not sit in the same room face to face, we shape a vessel. So when I meet via Skype or Zoom or FaceTime or via telephone, I am always sitting in my same chair, the chair you would see me sitting in were you to come to my office. I make certain we cannot be interrupted by other calls or texts or someone coming into the room. And I ask, expect really that you will do the same. This is how we shape the vessel our work will take place in.

The Proper Container

A proper container needs to be intact, without holes or cracks. What does this mean in terms of doing therapy?

We all know about confidentiality — the therapist is constrained from discussing the patient with anyone without permission. But how often is the patient made aware of her responsibility for also maintaining the integrity of the vessel? How often do patients tell their partners or friends in detail about their sessions? When this happens, the vessel of that work develops a crack and some of the energy leaks out, energy that if it stayed in the vessel would be available for the work of the therapy. 

 When insurance pays for the therapy, there is a crack in the vessel because the insurance company can decide suddenly and arbitrarily not to pay or to reduce what is paid or demand records of sessions. Because he who pays the piper picks the tune.

It took me a long time to really get this more than intellectually. For me it had to do with needing to be willing to risk being alone in the therapy with my analyst. This work is intense and the pressure to punch holes in the vessel is always there. And holes and cracks will inevitably occur. Discovering them and patching them is part of the work. It took me a long time to get all of that on a feeling level. 

Frame, the fixed elements

I have always found the therapeutic frame to be one of the most important and useful concepts in the practice of psychotherapy. The frame is the container for the therapy, the fixed elements that form the boundaries for the work. The frame has three elements: time, place, fee. Optimally these three elements remain the same throughout the duration of the therapy, changed only after careful consideration, because changing one element alters the whole container. Keeping these elements fixed makes it easier to identify when either patient or therapist is acting out and facilitates working through whatever the issue is that gives rise to the acting out.

The frame is for both the patient and the therapist. It provides a structure for the basic elements of the work. There is plenty going on all the time so it is helpful to have something be stable and predictable. The weather changes, mood changes, how we look or feel changes. People in our lives change. And so on. Of course sometimes it is necessary to change the time for meeting or the place, as when the therapist moves or changes offices. But the frame as that structural skeleton still exists.

“the analytic frame is not confined to the room where the therapy is done. It is ideally tacitly in the minds of both therapist and patient all the time. It is there when you open the door or speak on the phone. It is carried with the patient (or not) between sessions: it is internalized. It is conveyed by the therapist’s demeanor, tone of voice, pauses, silences, grunts, the wording of any note or letter which it is appropriate to send to the patient. It is evident in pauses. It is all aspects of analytic space. To maintain the frame is to maintain the analytic relationship. Its essence is containment.“ (emphasis mine) Robert Maxwell Young

So the frame is more than just the physical setting. It is the larger notion of the therapeutic space, that space in which both therapist and patient relate to each other in support of the therapy. It includes sessions on the telephone, or in writing, or in other ways that the two engage in their work together. 

When is it acting out?

Young says:

Acting out is a substitute for verbal expression. It is expressive, symbolic communication, but it is not reflective. The patient is acting rather than reflecting…One feature of acting out is that the therapist is usually put under pressure to do something he would not otherwise do — to go after the patient in some way, e.g., to write to the patient or phone, to reveal something, to move, to change a session, to press the patient, to relent about a decision or take a firm line, even to lose his temper.”

There are purists who hold to a highly structured and idealized sense of the frame. Robert Langs is one and there are others as well. Frame becomes elevated to an almost absurd level so that ordinary human interaction becomes almost impossible — like offering a tissue to a patient who is crying. In a Langsian office, there are no decorations that might provide any hint about the therapist as a person. The environment is very neutral. Often not even tissues are provided as that could be construed as gratifying the patient. It isn’t being anal just to be anal but because every little thing is seen in the light of what it means in the therapy. So as many variables as possible are controlled in order to have a better idea of what is coming from the patient and what is aroused by the frame.

Within the therapeutic community there are variations in how the frame is constructed and maintained. For the purists, a letter from a patient between sessions is an instance of acting out and they would not read it but rather place it on the table and wait for the patient to talk about it. And it is acting out, because it is an extra-therapeutic contact, a kind of effort to gain more time and attention from the therapist outside of the boundaries of their time together, and it is writing rather than putting the feelings into words and speaking them in the session. But that it is acting out does not mean it is useless, meaningless or bad; what it does is signal the presence of unresolved feelings or need. The actual words of the letter may indeed impart thoughts or ideas not expressed in session but it is what drives the desire to write them rather than say them that is probably of greater importance. And dealing with the fear/resistance to expressing those feelings and thoughts directly is a big part of what depth psychotherapy is about.

Writing a letter or sharing a journal is, the strict sense of things, a way to sidestep the heart of the matter — that it takes time and effort to work through our defenses and resistances and to do so in the presence of another human being. If the entire therapy were in writing, and I know that such work does occur, then writing this way could have a place. I know of at least one Jungian therapist who works with some people via email exclusively. It is not a big step to go from that to co-blogging in a private blog.  

The boundary conditions of therapy are more complex than they seem at first glance. And we haven’t touched issues like wanting to reschedule appointments, the patient who wants the therapist to give a hug, or any of the other seemingly inconsequential things that can and do happen in any therapy.

The map is not the territory

I love a book that pulls me back again and again, each time offering me something more to savor and light up something new in me. Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ Women Who Run With The Wolves  is one of those books, one that I dip into several times a year and one that I often recommend to my women patients. Barbara Stevens Sullivan’s The Mystery of Analytical Work is another of those deep and wonderful books. 

It is not an easy book, weaving together as it does concepts from Jung and Bion, two less than easy writers to grasp. I actually have both a paper copy and Kindle edition and both are heavily underlined and highlighted with notes written in the margins. Amazon tells me I have 50 highlighted bits from it and I am certain as I continue to live with this book, there will be at least 50 more.

Map or Territory

One can integrate an aspect of one’s inner reality only by experiencing it. A cognitive awareness of its existence may function as a guidebook or a map; one needs to actually visit the territory to transform it by digesting it. 

Think about it — how much of therapy focuses on achieving insight, of seeing and knowing more about oneself? And how often all of that knowledge fails to translate into deep change. Long ago I recognized in myself that in a way the planning of a trip is more exciting than the trip itself is. When I went to Italy a number of years ago, I loved poring over guidebooks, reading about places we would see, looking at pictures, reading descriptions of hotels and restaurants. And of course, in my mind’s eye, the weather was always perfect, the trains on time, my kids in excellent humor. So the trip I was taking in my imagination could not help but be closer to perfect than the actual experience turned out to be, when we had to deal with rail strikes, teenaged kids being teenagers, outbursts of marital discord, weather less than perfect. The real Italy, the territory I actually visited and experienced was wonderful but it was not the same Italy I found in the guidebooks and my imagination. Not a perfect analogy for what Sullivan is saying but close enough, I think. 

The Goal of Therapy

Anyway, Sullivan offers:

“It is not knowledge of reality that is at stake … reality is not something which lends itself to being known…. Reality has to be ‘been’ …” (Bion). Reality, in other words, must be experienced; life must be lived. It is good to know oneself, but the goal of analysis is to live one’s life fully, to be oneself… Our hope is that in the crucible of the analytic relationship each person will become bigger and take up greater responsibility for herself.” (Stevens Sullivan p. 250)

The goal of analysis is to live one’s life fully, to be oneself. The goal of therapy isn’t about becoming happy or feeling good, though these can and do flow from therapy. No, the goal is to become more, more of oneself. 

Parting is such sweet sorrow

 Today I ended my long Jungian analysis,  The ending was planned, a goal for this being the day set over a year ago. So ending is very much on my mind and in my heart.

The therapy relationship contains its ending from the very beginning as every therapy comes to an end eventually. Under ideal conditions, therapist and patient arrive together at the decision to end and they take the time necessary to fully and respectfully end the relationship. It is a ritual of goodbyes — taking the time to look back at what has happened, what has changed. It’s time to look at what has been accomplished and what has not. It is an exit interview and a farewell all in one and ideally takes up a number of sessions. When this happens there are good feelings all the way around, along side the inevitable sadness at saying goodbye. 

I get upset when it is suggested, as it not uncommonly is, that therapists encourage people to stay in therapy because they want the money. I am certain there are some therapists like that. Like there are lawyers or accountants or plumbers or mechanics who place income above ethics. I have been in therapy with a number of therapists myself and I have never encountered this as in issue with any them. And I know that I and the people I have supervised have dealt with anxiety about money in supervision a lot in order to keep that anxiety as much out of the work as possible. 

Good Endings and Bad Endings 

Not all terminations are ideal. Someone asked me recently what it is like when a patient leaves abruptly. Well, it’s hard. Sometimes a patient will call and leave a voicemail saying  they won’t be back. Or send an email or a note. Or not show up and then not respond to calls. Sometimes this is part of a pattern in the therapy and the patient eventually returns. But more often, they do not and we end up not knowing why. And that is hard because it is in the nature of therapists to wonder and want to know what happened.

It’s my job to challenge any changes in our work that patients bring up. It is my job to ask when someone announces they want to leave therapy to ask why now and to raise what I see as possible issues. It is not about wanting to control the patient or protect my income. It is my job. I ask at the beginning of therapy why they are seeking therapy now and we look at that. I ask at the end why they want to leave now and we look at that. 

 I think it is hard to remember that the therapist is a person and that therapy is a relationship. It is a RELATIONSHIP. Patients and I spend an hour or so together every week and they live in my thoughts and occupy space in me beyond that hour. It’s a relationship. So when a patient says to me, “I want to stop now”, I ask why now and I ask that we look at this because it is part of our relationship, because I am a part of this relationship. And if that patient won’t talk about it, won’t look at why and leaves, maybe in a huff and full of mutterings about me, then she leaves. But she will still occupy space in my thoughts as I try to understand what happened and what might have led to this. And when she wants to return, as often happens, my door is open and we begin again and I do so without carrying resentment.  

It all comes with the territory.  

There are all kinds of reasons for ending — money, time, dissatisfaction, discomfort with the process, dislike, or feeling that we have done the work that we can and want to do. But it is the abrupt ones, with no chance to really say good bye or talk through  what has happened, these are the endings that are hard on therapists, and ultimately on patients as well. Ending well is important.  It lets us go forward without lingering feelings and resentments.

Ending is hard. It is hard no matter where in our lives we do it. And we tend to end in therapy in the same style we end other relationships. There are good endings and bad endings and healing endings and wounding endings. And they are all hard. And we can, all of us, learn to do them with more grace when we are willing to look at how we do it and what endings mean to us and have meant in our lives. 

Therapy Online

Regular readers here know that a portion of my practice consists of working with patients via telephone and FaceTime and Skype. In fact I have been working with people via telephone for more than fifteen years. This past week as efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19, the need for social distancing crashed into the psychotherapy world. It is now the firm recommendation that all psychotherapy be done online or via telephone rather than face to face in person. This has created its own anxieties about what it is like to be in a session away from the therapist’s office. So let’s explore a little.

What is online therapy like?

Some years ago the New York Times published an article on what was then a strange new thing, Online Therapy. And published it in the Fashion and Style section, which might give you an idea of some problems they inadvertently come off as supporting.

When I agree to work with someone who does not wish to or cannot come to my office , I set the same basic frame that I have with people who meet me face to face. We meet at the same time each week, for a set fee, and I expect that as far as is humanly possible we will both be seated in the same place each time, I in my office and my patient in some place where she can expect to be uninterrupted and have privacy. The vessel for therapy conducted by telephone or Skype needs integrity just as that in more traditional settings does. I have often done sessions with my analyst via telephone. When I talked with him, I knew he was sitting in his office in the chair he uses for any session. He didn’t walk around or go off into the kitchen to get something. He was in the same place where I saw him when I was in the room with him. Similarly, each time I sat in the same chair in my house, in space that I knew was private and where I would not be interrupted.

So I was a bit put off by several things in the article like:

“She mixed herself a mojito, added a sprig of mint, put on her sunglasses and headed outside to her friend’s pool. Settling into a lounge chair, she tapped the Skype app on her phone.”

Really? A cocktail and a session by the pool? Is drinking alcohol during a session really a good idea? Does the therapist raise this issue? Does he even know? And what does it mean to do a session out of doors, the antithesis of a vessel, a contained space? Therapy isn’t just another social occasion.

Or this :

“There’s that comfort of carrying your doctor around with you like a security blanket. But because he’s more accessible, I feel like I need him less.”

I’m skeptical. There is even the suggestion that “The anxiety of shrink-less August could be, dare one say … curable?” implying that the pain of vacation breaks need not be felt, much less that working through it might actually be meaningful and helpful.

Different and yet the same

To my way of thinking, therapy via telephone or Skype differs from therapy face to face only in where it is conducted. The rest of the elements of therapy remain the same. My experience has taught me that it is not inferior to sitting in the same room with a patient, only different. Different in that I must rely more on what I hear  or what I see on my computer screen than I do in my office, where I have rich sensory cues as well. I have learned to listen to the rhythms of my patient’s speech — changes that come when more difficult material arises — changes in tone, volume, inflection. These cues too are rich but often paid less heed when we have all that visual material available. It is interesting to me that several people who started on the telephone with me, when we switched to Skype, after trying video Skype, opted for voice only. And some simply never want the video element in the first place and find talking on the telephone less inhibiting.

Some therapists will not feel comfortable working outside of the usual mode of patient coming to the office and they do well not to work this way. As a supervisor once told me, we practice what we believe, and it is important that the therapist be comfortable working in and with the differences that come from working online. Good therapy is good therapy no matter whether in person or via telephone and what makes for good therapy is the same regardless.

There is a Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times”, and we certainly are doing so. If you are feeling anxious and needing and wanting to talk with someone, this is a good time to seek a therapist if you do not already have one. I have openings now — reach me via the contact form on the Home page.