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- Room with a View
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May
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2 comments:
I think there's huge therapeutic benefit simply in having someone call 'shenanigans' when we start to delude ourselves, as evidenced in the following hypothetical exchange:
Patient: "I know that my partner lies, cheats and steals, but he/she keeps coming back to me, so they must love me."
Therapist: "Shenanigans!"
Patient: "Now that I think about it, you're absolutely right. I delude myself because change is painful and I don't want to be alone."
Therapist: "Much better."
Who better to do that than a therapist, who can offer neutral and educated perspective? Plus, you'll have like an office with books and stuff. That'll make people take you real serious-like.
That's not to say it'll work every time, but it's certainly better than the a-pill-is-better-than-an-ill mentality that pervades North American society.
Of course therapy is artificial. Then again, if we're using the strict definition of the word, what about our lives isn't "artificial"? Supermarkets, education, cities, public transportation, television... it's all artificial, to some degree.
Try to look at it this way: picture a car which is slowly but gently heading towards the shoulder of the highway. You're going to try to nudge it back on-course, so it can keep going forward towards its destination, right? That's what I see as the role of a therapist: steering-wheel-nudger.
(Then again, if your client is totally bat-shit insane, you might just have to crank the wheel.)
Also, in unrelated news, I would like to point out that I'm eating a salad at the moment, not with dinner, but as dinner. I've got some Romaine lettuce in there, red pepper, a bit of cheese, croutons of course, and some reheated chicken with a dash of this nice mandarin-and-poppyseed dressing. It's doing a pretty good job, all in all.
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