Psychotherapists face a dilemma when it comes to sharing the fruits of their discoveries with a wider public. The technical language, especially regarding psychoanalytic psychotherapy, which practitioners use to communicate between themselves, can be cumbersome, offputting and open to misinterpretation by the uninitiated. Case studies, such as those assembled by Steven Grosz, can be both extremely readable and illuminating, but they do present a problem of confidentiality: even when clients give their consent, some would question whether, within the power dynamics of the relationship, this can ever be freely given yet, the more the details are anonymised, the greater the potential distortion. Susie Orbach is a British psychotherapist, activist and writer who has done much to demystify psychoanalytic thinking (e.g. with several comment pieces in the Guardian, including this recent one on Brexit trauma). Her latest project, on which this short book is based, is a radio series mimicking the experience of the consulting room.
Professional actors were given brief character sketches which they then enacted in a shortened (thirty minutes) session with Susie. Each chapter is an edited script of that session interspersed with commentary on the therapist’s thought processes. The fact that the therapist was often surprised, confused and made uncomfortable within these encounters, is testament to their unscripted nature, rendering the listening experience as near to being a fly on the wall as is possible to get, for example with a client who asks for a relationship outside the therapy (p91-2):
surprise is what keeps the therapist on her toes. We can never know what is coming because therapy is a subversive kind of conversation which can crackle with energy, or fear, or despair or hope. We follow the feelings, the ideas, the tempo, the timbre of the patient’s voice, finding ways of connecting even when we might … refuse what he wishes
These five vignettes – of individuals and one couple on the brink of becoming parents – are poignant portrayals of people in distress, and of people trying to hold that distress at bay. The therapist’s responses explode some of the myths about therapy: some readers might be surprised how little Susie speaks; at the plain language and absence of jargon; at how much, while maintaining the boundaries, she’s moved by her clients (p84):
Therapists, or at least this therapist, always falls for some aspects of the person they are working with. I don’t mean this in a sexual manner but in the sense that a deep affection, a desire to understand and reach the other, a wish to connect and to be helpful are powerful dimensions of my experience.
Misunderstandings about therapy abound, both in real life and in literature. Perhaps because most people will have had at least one conversation with another human being in which one of them was significantly helped, many assume therapy is an extension of ordinary interaction. While the language used might seem ordinary, psychoanalytic therapy is a (p101):
work of deconstructing and restructuring … you don’t just learn a new language to add to your repertoire, you relinquish unhelpful parts of the mother tongue and weave them together with the knowledge of a new grammar. The curiosity of therapist has towards the analysand’s structures designate us as anthropologists of the mind.
I’d recommend this book to anyone curious about therapy but especially to other writers wanting to explore their own creativity. I’d make it required reading for any writer with the temerity to create a fictional therapist, which is extremely difficult to pull off (to my perhaps exacting standards) if you haven’t been there personally. Thanks to Profile Books for my review copy.
surprise is what keeps the therapist on her toes. We can never know what is coming because therapy is a subversive kind of conversation which can crackle with energy, or fear, or despair or hope. We follow the feelings, the ideas, the tempo, the timbre of the patient’s voice, finding ways of connecting even when we might … refuse what he wishes
These five vignettes – of individuals and one couple on the brink of becoming parents – are poignant portrayals of people in distress, and of people trying to hold that distress at bay. The therapist’s responses explode some of the myths about therapy: some readers might be surprised how little Susie speaks; at the plain language and absence of jargon; at how much, while maintaining the boundaries, she’s moved by her clients (p84):
Therapists, or at least this therapist, always falls for some aspects of the person they are working with. I don’t mean this in a sexual manner but in the sense that a deep affection, a desire to understand and reach the other, a wish to connect and to be helpful are powerful dimensions of my experience.
Misunderstandings about therapy abound, both in real life and in literature. Perhaps because most people will have had at least one conversation with another human being in which one of them was significantly helped, many assume therapy is an extension of ordinary interaction. While the language used might seem ordinary, psychoanalytic therapy is a (p101):
work of deconstructing and restructuring … you don’t just learn a new language to add to your repertoire, you relinquish unhelpful parts of the mother tongue and weave them together with the knowledge of a new grammar. The curiosity of therapist has towards the analysand’s structures designate us as anthropologists of the mind.
I’d recommend this book to anyone curious about therapy but especially to other writers wanting to explore their own creativity. I’d make it required reading for any writer with the temerity to create a fictional therapist, which is extremely difficult to pull off (to my perhaps exacting standards) if you haven’t been there personally. Thanks to Profile Books for my review copy.
RSS Feed
