So, what is better therapy—better than preplanned, mechanically precise, and, eventually, algorithmic?
- Better therapy involves, under relatively controlled conditions, being deeply and actively understood—known—by another being who is also in the human predicament, like you.
They can therefore truly identify with you, at least to a sufficient degree.
Identification is a root of empathy. Identification can go awry, but that’s what therapist training and self-reflection is for—correcting any ways that it could or did go awry. When therapists are doing better therapy, they identify with you more strongly by 1. just being human and 2. comparing their nature, background learning, experiences, strengths, and weaknesses to yours, while certainly not assuming they are the same.
Computers just notice cues and patterns. They cannot identify with you. They have zero experience of what it is like to be a human body-mind that is mortal, a body-mind that wants and needs things while also hoping there is more to life than just that.
The ability to identify is key, while also avoiding a simplistic but tempting assumption of being identical. In fact, therapists detecting differences also helps them to identify with you by comparison and doing their best to put themselves in your shoes. Another way this occurs is in therapists remembering and contacting (internally) their own rough times, mushy spots, joys, and sharp edges.
For example, while therapy is not theatrical acting and should not be, I keep thinking of what some call the ‘inside-out’ method of acting.
If the actor has not experienced something the character has to go through, the actor is going to need to recall life situations they have had that provoked a similar emotion. If that doesn’t work, they imagine the absence of life situations they have had and how they would feel then. Or, they might imagine what it would be like if they never resolved what they still want to resolve in their own life. And so on.
Therapists actively, carefully, and privately keep mindful of the above things and then use them in service to you. Much of it happens quickly, almost automatically, but in addition to the easier and more immediate aspects of identification, they can use the above methods as an empathic touchstone, so to speak. When used with humility, such tools do help deepen and intensify empathy because the details of your troubles may be different, but the basic human concerns underneath apply to everyone.
- While allowing themselves (under control) to identify with you as fully as they can to increasingly know you, the therapist also has the emotional capacity, self-awareness, and training to detect and minimize confusion between themselves and their agendas, and you and your agendas.
That stance allows them to detect / define your injury or unhelpful state and then aid your healing and developmental process. They can dare to be curious, observational, aware, and compassionate, when you (and anyone tightly woven into your life) are having trouble doing some or all of those things. All of that helps to boost effectiveness and avoid harm.
- Over time, through a mostly unaware process, you digest these therapist ingredients, integrate them into your psyche, and practice (use) more of them for yourself.
That is made possible by having repeated interactions with a therapist who consciously and unconsciously uses such capacities with you. There is no instructional video you can just watch over and over to learn this purely by rote. It is based upon repeated, mostly unconscious, ‘modeling’ (as some put it).
By talking this way, I’m opening a discussion about things we call presence and process. Those aspects of therapy go well beyond the content and structure everyone says they know ‘about’, and far beyond prepackaged plans or robots.
More next time…
Photo by Sebastian Bill on Unsplash