Practising Existential Therapy: The Relational World by Spinelli Ernesto

Author:Spinelli, Ernesto [알 수 없음]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc.
Published: 2014-11-16T15:00:00+00:00

An Exercise Exploring the Therapy-world

1. Together with a partner, explore the idea of a therapy-world as it has been presented above. How, if at all, does it assist you in clarifying the importance of contractual and frame conditions? How, if at all, does it assist you in clarifying the existing evidence focused on the importance of the therapeutic relationship as well as general non-specific factors as determinants of beneficial outcomes?

The Dumbo Effect

As has been argued above, existential therapy offers the possibility of a far more flexible range of setting conditions that is worth acknowledging and considering – particularly if the therapist is principally working in the public arena where practical issues of spatial and temporal settings are of constant concern to units and their managers. However, it would seem to be the case that many existential therapists continue to practise from a more traditional set of conditions. Habit and convenience provide possible answers as to why they choose to. Let us consider another by exploring what I have somewhat facetiously termed the Dumbo Effect (Spinelli, 1994, 2001).

Anyone who has seen the Disney cartoon Dumbo (Disney, 1941) will recall that Dumbo the elephant is able to fly because he has convinced him self that he possesses a magic feather that grants him this ability. At first, Dumbo believes in the power and significance of the feather as the sole cause of his new-found ability and, as well, of his self-esteem. The loss of the magic feather during a critical sky-diving performance initially leads to Dumbo’s panic. However, much to his astonishment, he discovers that he can still fly and, with that, the magic feather is recognised as possessing nothing that is inherently necessary or magical.

I would argue that therapists’ reliance upon a particular and rigid pattern of contractual and frame related settings serves the same function as Dumbo’s magic feather in that while such patterns have no special or magical qualities in themselves, it is therapists’ belief in them as essential factors in their ability to ‘be’ a therapist and to ‘practise therapy’ that makes them significant. In addition, it may be the case that clients, too, hold values and beliefs about ‘being a client’ and experiencing the benefits of therapy that rely upon the Dumbo Effect as expressed through issues of setting, frame and contract. Indeed, as the evidence for the pivotal importance of non-specific factors in determining the effectiveness of therapy highlights (Duncan et al., 2010), there may be very little in, or about, the practice of therapy as a whole that is not a Dumbo Effect. This conclusion is not intended to suggest that, therefore, ‘magic feathers’ are unnecessary or even potentially problematic. However, what may be a challenge to existential therapists in particular is to question their reliance upon certain magic feathers to the extent that they may no longer consider them to be magic feathers at all, and instead have come to view them as rigid sedimentations that, in turn, rest upon unnoticed dissociations in their

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