Examples Of Psychodynamic Counselling
Can we leave our past behind? Firstly, on the face of it, I wanted to comment on how strange this question is. Then I “Googled it”, and the search engine came back with 147,000,000 results! Whilst, at the top of the list were examples of essays (it seems that every psychology/psychotherapy/counselling course has this question on the curriculum), it also seems that this question has been on the lips of people (in many cultures) for a very long time. Right up there are quotes from the King James Bible, with one website quoting 70 versus from the New Testament (Bible, 2013). Interestingly, the Old Testament seemed to be less concerned about foregiveness, and more about holding grudges, and the justification of mass genocide.
There are …show more content…
When I first start to read them, they seem to make perfect sense but as I progress through the text, I start to scratch my head as the explanations of the observations become more and more obtuse and then verge on ludicrous. That aside, if one were to utilise the psychodynamic theories like Klein and Eriksons, then one must by default accept that the past, especially events in childhood, being key to where the client is in the present. There is a belief that psychopathology develops from these early experiences and follows us through life influencing the behaviours we display and the choices that we make. It is the core principle of psychodynamic psychotherapy is to prompt these issues to re-emerge in the context of the client-therapist relationship as transference and counter-transference and that any deficiencies from developmental stages are “worked through” and resolved. I am personally not sure how healthy it actually is for the client to be constantly digging up the past, and it seems that psychodynamic therapists certainly do that with their clients on a regular basis and over long periods. Evolution has provided us with a very useful trick of suppressing unpleasant or unneeded memories in everyday life, and then finding them (or their associated feelings) at a moment of need. It could be that the “modern” social human being does not need or desire this survival trick for the most part due to society’s dim view of running away for fighting. It seems that is in our nature to want to leave the past behind but it seems that all we can actually do is find places to
There are …show more content…
When I first start to read them, they seem to make perfect sense but as I progress through the text, I start to scratch my head as the explanations of the observations become more and more obtuse and then verge on ludicrous. That aside, if one were to utilise the psychodynamic theories like Klein and Eriksons, then one must by default accept that the past, especially events in childhood, being key to where the client is in the present. There is a belief that psychopathology develops from these early experiences and follows us through life influencing the behaviours we display and the choices that we make. It is the core principle of psychodynamic psychotherapy is to prompt these issues to re-emerge in the context of the client-therapist relationship as transference and counter-transference and that any deficiencies from developmental stages are “worked through” and resolved. I am personally not sure how healthy it actually is for the client to be constantly digging up the past, and it seems that psychodynamic therapists certainly do that with their clients on a regular basis and over long periods. Evolution has provided us with a very useful trick of suppressing unpleasant or unneeded memories in everyday life, and then finding them (or their associated feelings) at a moment of need. It could be that the “modern” social human being does not need or desire this survival trick for the most part due to society’s dim view of running away for fighting. It seems that is in our nature to want to leave the past behind but it seems that all we can actually do is find places to