November 2023
In recent times I’ve been thinking a lot about the space we therapists hold with clients. It is a tangible tension that we have; you can feel it when it’s there and when it slides by. Usually, I’ve found, the tension is lost when our connection is impaired in some way, as when I’ve missed the mark and assumed an understanding when there wasn’t one, or I’ve got impatient and have stopped careful listening: it’s about focussed listening, and much much more.
Freud spoke of what a therapist needs is an “even hovering consciousness,” a consciousness not subject to the extremes ordinarily elicited in the human encounter. Buber says the psychotherapist needs a detached presence. This is a skill I use all the time with clients, and quite often in other places as well. Recently, I had to hold the space in a legal case. I was both looker on and supporter of a friend. I was listening and watching what was going on, not speaking, just being there; essentially holding the space. I took into my awareness the body language of the others, the questions asked, the feeling expressions, and so on. It was intense, and very interesting.
As therapists we need to occupy the space holding us together and, paradoxically separating us. We need to be consciously aware of what is arising in the client, and taking note of the things arising in our own and their unconscious. If we are overly conscious, we fail to be aware of the nether world that surrounds us. If we are paying too much attention to the unconscious, we are missing the mark of here and now consciousness. Both need to be present.
We hold polarities of rationality and feelings, ensuring that neither dominates. We must be able to enter into the client’s world and feel the world from the client’s perspective, and we need to hold all that according to our own developed science based, art and craft skill set. Psychotherapy isn’t an easy job; it isn’t us just sitting back and listening. It is a mix and meld of things.
Richard Hycner sees the profession as essentially paradoxical. Paradox as a descriptor of psychotherapy is exactly right. What we do is elicit – and hold – the tension of polarities. There is the paradox in the tension between the subjective and objective. We must be both deeply personally present in the subjective experience of the client, and maintain an objectivity. The balance of these is absolutely critical. We have to acquire, and keep on acquiring scientific theoretical knowledge about individual and interpersonal behaviours, yet none of this can be separated from our own self awareness. If our knowledge base is to keep on growing without the presence of our own self awareness then we’ve missed the boat, and cannot work effectively with anyone. A subjective awareness and an objective one must be masterfully blended. To achieve this, most of us know that to do the work of psychotherapy with others, we must also work on ourselves in therapy and receive good clinical supervision throughout our career.
A good therapist has to be practical and also have a philosophical bent. She needs to recognize practicalities, and think beyond those to the greater human drama. Mental wellness isn’t just an individual matter, it’s sociological and political as well. Pathology and health is affected by income, poverty, ideology, drug use, belief systems, sleep patterns, work requirements, education, etc etc. We have to be aware of the life story of our clients, as well as our presumptions. All these matter.
What we also need to realize is that life is ambiguous, and our work itself is ambiguous. It is always unfinished, there is always something more to be discovered. Working with clients and receiving therapy is only limited by choice, time, and certainly money, but the beauty of it is that it can be picked up and continued for as little or as long as both decide to do it. While we live, we have the opportunity to live better and feel better living. Therapy helps.
