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Book: Voicelessness and Emotional Survival: Notes from the therapy underground
Dr. Richard Grossman:
Hi everybody,
Here's the introduction to Voicelessness and Emotional Survival: Notes from the therapy underground
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1790164028
"Sadly, it is the rare person who can enter another person’s world at the deepest and most vulnerable level. One of the main reasons I chose to become a therapist was to learn how to do just this. Naturally, I had expected that, as a result of their training, therapists would be far better than most at entering other people’s worlds, overcoming whatever obstacles and barriers they found in the way. But, over and over again my psychology teachers, supervisors and personal therapists taught me that they were no better than others at entering another person’s world, even though they believed they were experts.
Why can’t most therapists listen accurately and with empathy? And why do all therapists believe they can? This book addresses these questions. The follow-up questions are even more important: Can therapists be re-taught to enter another person’s world at the deepest and most vulnerable level? And, if they can’t, what are current and future patients to do with this dark reality?
But another important question needs to be answered first: Is it critical that all therapists be able to “hear” and enter a patient’s world in this way? In fact, for many patients the answer is no. Many patients are satisfied with practical advice, learning ways of training their brain to respond to distress in a new and different manner, or receiving simple emotional support as they struggle with the omnipresent pain that life and living with other human beings brings. But as I have learned in my own life and by co-experiencing the lives of others, aloneness at the deepest level is often the most troublesome and hindering aspect of “being” in this world. And having another person with you—sometimes in person, but also held in the cognitive and emotional parts of memory—is one of the most important and healing parts of therapy. Because I learned this so early in my “training,” my career has been devoted to studying “voicelessness” and what can be done to help people who suffer as a result of it.
I thought it useful to begin this book with my own personal experience with voicelessness in order to illustrate how “deaf” and destructive the psychology/psychiatry/psychotherapy world—and the world in general—can be, how alone one can feel in it and why I learned to conceptualize and practice psychotherapy in a different way. More importantly, I hope my personal history provides the reader with data and evidence for the concepts I write about in the second part of this book—character, subtext and repetition—concepts that play significant roles in the thoughts, feelings and behaviors of patients and therapists alike, and human beings in general. Finally, I will talk about important issues that interfere with the “process” of finding a good therapist and the need to monitor whether or not your therapist is having a significant positive effect on your life."
Ales2:
:D Congrats to you Dr. G!
Clicking order now....
Dr. Richard Grossman:
Thanks, Ales2! I'll look forward to all of your thoughts and comments particularly after you posted on your "Beware the scorned NM thread" (http://www.voicelessness.com/disc3//index.php/topic,10552.0.html):
"Worst part of therapy is there no way to appear anything less than dysfunctional or feel like I can maintain any self respect in the session. He asks, you answer and come off sounding like a loser. There is no other way about it.
Its what I hated with my last T and never got over it. Oh well. I feel fine when I am by myself and when I interact with other people. Who cares what therapy feels like? Its uncomfortable and unlike the gym, there is no upside to the discomfort.
Oh well. Nobody cares about that."
I hope you'll see after reading the book that I care, and I am really sorry for what you've been through with your therapists.
Richard
lighter:
Congrats, Doc G:
I'm including your book on the next Amazon order. I know you care, and am profoundly grateful that you do.
Lighter
Dr. Richard Grossman:
Thanks so much, lighter! I know you care, too. We have such an extraordinary group of "posters" on this message board--including you! I hope you'll let me know your thoughts/feelings about the book when you finish reading.
Richard
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