How this idea might affect your conduct of psychotherapy

Challenging patient`s understandings of himself or herself and the world is a critical element in psychotherapy. Part of the struggle is that few people like to see themselves as weak, ignoble, mean, vindictive, selfish, nasty, thoughtless, or lazy (add your own favorite epithet here). Unfortunately, almost all of us are almost all of these things, once in a while. (Hopefully, we catch ourselves before things get too out of hand.)

Sympathy and support are (or at least should be) easy things for a psychotherapist to give to a patient or a client. Advice is easy; seeing the patient`s problems as the result of the patient not being as insightful a problem-solver as the therapist always makes the therapist feel good. It can be easy (and satisfying) to fuss at patients who have done bad things. But telling someone who identifies himself as the victim that he is guilty or responsible is much harder.

Gestalt psychotherapy holds that contained with extreme emotions are opposite extreme emotions within anger is sadness; within sadness, anger; within aggression, fear; within fear, aggression. The term, finishing business, means discovering the buried ideas and emotional no matter how troubling they might be.

For this discussion:

1. Discuss one situation that you have encountered in which your understanding has reversed itself upon closer examination.

- How difficult was it for you to reverse your opinion at that time? Be careful to focus on your response at the time, not on how you feel about it now.

- What would it take for you to reverse your opinion about something about yourself?

2. Discuss how this idea might affect your conduct of psychotherapy.