In choosing to enter fully into each patient’s life, I, the therapist, not only am exposed to the same existential issues as are my patients but must be prepared to examine them with the same rules of inquiry. I must assume that knowing is better than not knowing, venturing than not venturing; and that magic and illusion, however rich, however alluring, ultimately weaken the human spirit.
Never take away anything if you have nothing better to offer. Beware of stripping a patient who can’t bear the chill of reality. And don’t exhaust yourself by jousting with religious magic: you’re no match for it. The thirst for religion is too strong, its roots too deep, its cultural reinforcement too powerful.
Julius rode the crest of a robust protest vote. In addition, to his great surprise, he immediately was embraced vigorously by virtually all the Jewish students, about 30 percent of the student body, who had heretofore kept a low, apolitical profile. They loved him, the love of the timid, hesitant, make-no-waves Mason-Dixon Yid for the gutsy, brash New York Jew.
We need to go even further: the therapist must strive to create a new therapy for each patient.
Therapists must convey to the patient that their paramount task is to build a relationship together that will itself become the agent of change.
Above all, the therapist must be prepared to go wherever the patient goes, do all that is necessary to continue building trust and safety in the relationship.
A few weeks ago, he had invited a young physician friend, Sigmund Freud, to accompany him for an entire day. A mistake perhaps! The young man had been attempting to decide on his choice of medical specialty, and that day may have frightened him away from the practice of general internal medicine. For, according to Freud’s calculations, Breuer had spent six hours in his fiacre!
My point is that every course of therapy consists of small and large spontaneously generated responses or techniques that are impossible to program in advance. Of course, technique has a different meaning for the novice than for the expert. One needs technique in learning to play the piano but eventually, if one is to make music, one must transcend learned technique and trust one’s spontaneous moves.
Heidegger spoke of two modes of existence: the everyday mode and the ontological mode. In the everyday mode we are consumed with and distracted by material surroundings – we are filled with wonderment about how things are in the world. In the ontological mode we are focused on being per se – that is, we are filled with wonderment that things are in the world.
Psychiatric cure is the “expanding of the self to such final effect that the patient as known to himself is much the same person as the patient behaving to others.
Life cannot be lived nor can death be faced without anxiety. Anxiety is guide as well as enemy and can point the way to authentic existence. The task of the therapist is to reduce anxiety to comfortable levels and then to use this existing anxiety to increase a patient’s awareness and vitality.
In unele zile, cand merg pe Kirstentsrasse si vad douazeci, treizeci de curve aliniate, sunt foarte tentat. Niciuna nu este mai draguta ca Rachel, multe au gonoree si sifilis, si totusi sunt tentat. Daca as sti sigur ca nu m-ar recunoaste nimeni, cine stie? Poate! Toti ne saturam sa mancam acelasi lucru. Stii, Josef, pentru fiecare femeie frumoasa exista cate un biet barbat care a obosit s-o mai reguleze.
In fact, the effective therapist should never try to force discussion of any content area: Therapy should not be theory-driven but relationship-driven.
Take advantage of opportunities to learn from patients. Make a point of inquiring often into the patient’s view of what is helpful about the therapy process.
A heavy silence descended.
To my mind, personal psychotherapy is, by far, the most important part of psychotherapy training.
Excessive attachment either to material goods, to other individuals, or even attachment to the concept of ‘I’ is the major source of human suffering. And doesn’t it follow that such suffering can be ameliorated by avoiding the attachment?
Self-exploration is a lifelong process, and I recommend that therapy be as deep and prolonged as possible – and that the therapist enter therapy at many different stages of life.
How shall we live? How to face our mortality? How to live with the knowledge that we are simply life forms, thrown into an indifferent universe, with no preordained purpose?
I believe there is no better way to learn about a psychotherapy approach than to enter into it as a patient.