Posted by backseatdriver on June 4, 2009, at 14:19:18
Hi Babblers,
Is it ever right for the therapist to engage in emotional withholding in therapy?
For instance: Scenario is a male therapist and female patient. (My own situation, in other words.) If the therapist tears up at a patient's story, which is being related in an admittedly somewhat emotionless and dissociated fashion, and then refuses to explain what's happening with him at that moment, is this therapeutically defensible? How so?
I'm thinking it might be, in case the patient is having trouble staying with her *own* responses and tends to subordinate them to the therapist's and to caring for the therapist (who would seem to need care at that moment).
But I'm thinking the withholding might also be severely painful for the patient, who would then be out of touch with both her own material and the therapist's response to it. And it might also represent a missed opportunity -- the therapist's response might be a way *into* what the patient was said without feeling it.
Your thoughts?
BSD
poster:backseatdriver
thread:899397
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20090515/msgs/899397.html