Author Topic: Daphne Merkin's "My Life in Therapy"  (Read 8349 times)

Dr. Richard Grossman

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Re: Daphne Merkin's "My Life in Therapy"
« Reply #30 on: August 18, 2010, 08:07:40 PM »
Hi Lollie,

I posted the story in a separate thread:  Bad Dream    http://www.voicelessness.com/disc3//index.php?topic=9607.0#new

Richard  
« Last Edit: August 19, 2010, 08:50:50 AM by Dr. Richard Grossman »

teartracks

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Re: Daphne Merkin's "My Life in Therapy"
« Reply #31 on: August 19, 2010, 04:28:57 AM »




Hi Dr. G.,

Thanks for not throwing me in the briar patch.  Brer Rabbit probably doesn't want a neighbor anyway  :lol:]  !

I see the point you were making now about Ms Merkin's experience in the world of therapy in NYC.

Thanks for sharing your "Bad dream" on the other thread.  Sounds like it gave you advance foresight with excellent timing...

tt




« Last Edit: August 19, 2010, 05:12:01 AM by teartracks »

sKePTiKal

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Re: Daphne Merkin's "My Life in Therapy"
« Reply #32 on: August 19, 2010, 08:42:12 AM »
You know, for each of us the definition of a "good therapist" is probably similar to the definition of a "good enough parent". There has to be some kind of match between the two - whether it's speaking the same language, being close to the same age - and therefore having social eras & philosophies in common... or perhaps one is looking for a parent-substitute to help analyze & process the actual parent-child relationship and work through unresolved issues.

Before I found Voiceless, I used to participate on After Silence - a support site for rape victims. Even though my experience was so far in the past - I found that I needed to work thru the same things as others there, whose experience was excruciatingly recent. What's relevant here, is that so many people complained about the therapists they were with. Whether it was lack of training, or lack of empathy and truly understanding the experiences these women (and men) had gone through; discomfort with a different gender T... the reasons were all over the map. After awhile, I started to realize that people needed to "go shopping" for a good match - and this was recommended a lot. There's no easy way to do this. Even if there's a website and some discussion of philosophy and style of therapy is provided - there's still the issue of chemisty and the fact that if one is faced with the need/realization that one needs to try therapy, the reasons for that need (often unconscious) can cause the client to feel pretty helpless and powerless, even self-blaming if the progression of therapy doesn't seem to go anywhere useful. And to stay longer than makes sense, when the mismatch in the pair just isn't working. After all - we show up that first day not knowing what to expect except the media stereotypes, a little scared and a lot embarrassed at "needing therapy" (that stigma you know) and basically hand ourselves mind, body and soul to this "expert" trusting implicily that they know what they're doing, are professional, and are going to magically "fix" us.

Those expectations get people in trouble - and I think, are a little unfair to the T's. But then, the clients can't usually exactly say or pinpoint what their expectations are at the very beginning, can they? Not as adult children of emotionally unavailable or abusive parents or people with insecure attachment issues... I didn't have a single clue "what was wrong with me" or what I needed to work on - despite having written as much of "Twiggy's Tale" as I remembered to hand over during my initial consultation (who me, anxious? anxious to please? I thought it would save us both some time... I can giggle about that now!). My referral was for stress and anxiety, via my doctor and the university's psychologist. What I ended up working on - still am working on - is the real root cause of my low stress tolerance and anxiety, though the topics are far, far from the meaning of those words.
Success is never final, failure is never fatal.

Dr. Richard Grossman

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Re: Daphne Merkin's "My Life in Therapy"
« Reply #33 on: August 22, 2010, 05:36:24 PM »
Hi everybody,

Thanks for all your comments!

Some more semi-random thoughts re: "My Life in Therapy" and choosing a therapist:

We are still recovering from the Freudian era when therapists were trained to be as opaque/neutral as possible.  Unfortunately, all that training did was to make therapists believe they were being opaque/neutral. And make it even harder to decide, in the first few months, whether one had made a good choice or not.

In that era, the best one could do was to go a therapist with a good reputation amongst his/her peers.  You went and assumed from day one they knew more or better than you did.  Of course, there was never any objective test whether this was true or not.  And anything you noticed that bothered you or was hurtful was, of course, transference.

And credentials?  When I first went to Mass. General Hospital, I was young and naïve (23!), and I assumed since I was going to one of the best hospitals in the world (Harvard Medical, etc. etc.), my mentors would be among the smartest/wisest therapists in the country.  While they were all relatively bright, and certainly accomplished people, what they turned out to be were the most politically astute therapists in the country.  Furthermore, just as in graduate school, one could not ask challenging questions or practice in a different way without being labeled as a troublemaker, an ingrate, and/or a dolt behind one’s back (and, of course, behind closed doors).   Nor could you ever get ahead in the “system” (i.e. better credentials) unless you were political.  For example, I was told by my unit chief that essentially there  was little chance of my getting ahead (credential-wise) unless I worked in the head of psychology’s private consulting business.  When I asked how that could be, he said: “Welcome to the adult world.” Whether or not this was true, I never learned.  But what this meant was:  choosing a therapist on the basis of credentials was likely not only pointless—it was possibly downright self-defeating.

So how to choose?  Get a name from a friend in therapy?  In the 30 plus years I’ve been doing this, maybe twice did one of my patients (reluctantly) offer my name to a friend (who never came in).  (This reminds me of a variant of the old Henny Youngman joke:  "Take my therapist, please".)  This may mean I’m a lousy therapist—but if you ask my patients, they will say they simply do not want to share me (and, of course, complicate matters with their friends), although they will break down and occasionally send beloved family members to me.

So, how will the Daphne Merkins of the world finally find a “good-enough” therapist? As you might have guessed, I think the Web has great potential for this purpose.  So much can be revealed about a potential therapist, for better and for worse, if they only wrote essays with human sentences (skip the psychobabble), and revealed themselves.  The problem is:  very few therapists are doing it.  For fun (?) recently, I visited 10 or so therapist web sites in Massachusetts.  Boring and completely un-revealing.  I certainly couldn’t choose a therapist based on these sites—because I discovered almost nothing about the person behind the credentials.  Perhaps Board members have discovered sites where the therapist is revealed.  If so, definitely post them so that we can take a look.  I think the Web is the best opportunity the public has for making good matches with therapists—if only therapists would have the courage to reveal themselves as human beings.

Richard





« Last Edit: August 26, 2010, 03:06:40 PM by Dr. Richard Grossman »

teartracks

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Re: Daphne Merkin's "My Life in Therapy"
« Reply #34 on: August 22, 2010, 10:16:13 PM »





Hi Dr. G.,

I found this as a definition of therapist:   
Quote
a person trained in the use of psychological methods for helping patients overcome psychological problems.
I can't seem to get my wings flapping with this definition.  Help!

tt




sKePTiKal

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Re: Daphne Merkin's "My Life in Therapy"
« Reply #35 on: August 23, 2010, 09:35:05 AM »
You know, perhaps Ms. Merkin's long list of therapists coincides with her own transitions and growth and needs as she changed. Maybe it's not a 100% correlation. And maybe there were some mismatches, too. Perhaps there are valid reasons, even, for changing therapists along one's journey, rather than establishing a life-long one on one relationship. Yet, some people will be more comfortable maintaining that single relationship.

tt: Keep looking; maybe you'll find a better descriptive definition. I suspect that the reason you're having difficulty finding something that sounds like a human interaction, is that the process itself is highly customized to the individual situation. And perhaps the reasons for the vagueness of websites, is intentional - avoidance of creating an expectation or guarantee...

I can see the ads now (this is a joke !):

Is your life a mess? Don't know where to turn?
Call now for this life-saving information that will help you turn things around!
The first call is free! If we agree to work together, subsequent appointments and payment plans are available.
Treatment is absolutely painless and you won't feel a thing.

But WAIT - THERE'S MORE!
We'll send your our free catalog (50,969 pgs) of pharmaceutical methods for changing your emotional and mental state, complete with an appendix of the the side effects of each. ASK your DOCTOR* if one of these drugs could help you... and never mind the side effects. YOU aren't a statistic.

Call NOW - we guarantee that you'll be happy as a clam after just a few sessions and you will live the "good life" happily ever after. Or your money back!!

* Disclosure - the therapist(s) of Fairy-Godmother Psychiatry do play golf and tennis with all the MDs in town to help raise money for charity. And that's ALL... they never talk to each other, refer patients, or collaborate in treatment.

-----------------------------
But seriously - you know the publicity Dr. Oz, Phil, Laura have gotten. I find a lot of their advice a bit shallow - and dangerous, in the wrong hands. You know what they say about a "little bit of knowledge"? But on the other hand, at least there is some mainstreaming (dreadful word) of therapeutic ideas to the masses. This is the way that things become acceptable and commonplace - and not stigmatized - in our popular, group consciousness, cultural mind. Unfortunately, so far the format is Jerry Springer-based and so is the sensationalism.

But what if there were a website that pooled the different approaches of several therapists together and provided a dialogue between them of different approaches to the same case study? Around a group of issues - say, Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families (broaden or limit the scope??). Discussion, debate, even disagreement would reveal some of the inner workings of therapy to people hesitating and wondering if they could benefit?

Have you seen the TED website? Now, there are even TEDx sessions... smaller groups focussed on specific topics. These are recorded 18 min. lectures or presentations and the audience on site then participates in discusssion. There is strong support for interdisciplinary discussion - and many good, even new creative things have come from this. I haven't been there lately, but one of the things I want to see if it exists on the website - is way to comment on or get involved in discussion of some the topics, after the fact or on an on-going basis. Perhaps the idea above could be explored as a TED session first...
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Guest

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Re: Daphne Merkin's "My Life in Therapy"
« Reply #36 on: August 23, 2010, 04:14:21 PM »
PR
a website that pooled the different approaches of several therapists together - sounds like a great idea, if you could gather therapists together like that.
I love the idea of TED. It's one of the things that exist that make life worth living, unlike so many organisations (including many charities!).

Dr. Richard Grossman

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Re: Daphne Merkin's "My Life in Therapy"
« Reply #37 on: August 24, 2010, 12:14:52 PM »
Hi Dr. G.,

I found this as a definition of therapist:  
Quote
a person trained in the use of psychological methods for helping patients overcome psychological problems.
I can't seem to get my wings flapping with this definition.  Help!

tt

Hi tt,

How about this definition:  "a person trained in the use of psychological methods for helping patients overcome psychological problems, and then throws out those methods and tries to discover what really works."

Does that help?   :wink:

Richard
« Last Edit: August 24, 2010, 12:23:57 PM by Dr. Richard Grossman »

teartracks

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Re: Daphne Merkin's "My Life in Therapy"
« Reply #38 on: August 24, 2010, 03:40:04 PM »
Ahhh, you're cute, Dr. G.! I  like your definition, especially the  :wink: which says to me that a person's  therapist shouldn't take himself too seriously, but that he should take his work seriously, remembering that beneath what he/she sees outwardly,is often a hurting and perhaps highly confused (insert your own description) person/soul/spirit resides.   

tt

« Last Edit: August 24, 2010, 10:36:01 PM by teartracks »