Sunday, October 25, 2009
What if your psychodynamic counsellor is crap?
From me, who is pro-psychodynamic counselling...What if you think your psychodynamic counsellor might be not very good? What if you raise it with her and – because s/he is psychodynamic – she ALWAYS turns the question around, back onto your own psychology? If the issue is the client’s, that’s fine in principle, though it might not feel fine to the client. But what if the client has a point? Who is the counsellor accountable to? It must be one of the only paid-for services left in the modern, customer-oriented world, where the regulator explicitly allows the provider to turn all queries back on the ‘customer’, indeed structures the service so that that is the only option. Sure, the counsellor might get supervision, but the client has no way of knowing what is discussed. And the odd time the client might get to see the notes, s/he might find the issue presented very differently to the supervisor, heavily filtered by the counsellor. A strong client might just walk. A less insightful or less confident one might feel the counsellor must be right and think the problem is with themself. Isn’t there an inherent danger here?
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1 comments:
I think this is a very important point and one I have heard another friend raise in connection with psycho-analysis, where the therapist can be so completely unquestionable and seemingly also without liability. I guess in Jacob's view, the therapist, if psycho-dynamic, might agree to working with the client towards working through the ending with them, hopefully giving the client chance to review the therapeutic process. However, with the practice of treating the top layer, i.e. what the client brings to the session, as it were, it could well be that many clients never venture comments on the counsellor's performance, preferring to not go there, and to just walk away. Perhaps they just feel that it isn't appropriate; so many of us have an ingrained respect for 'professionals' that is difficult to sidestep, especially if, as you say, that professional might turn it around scarily so that the spotlight is on you!!
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