Trauma and the Unbound Body: The Healing Power of Fundamental Consciousness by Judith Blackstone

Author:Judith Blackstone
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781683641834
Publisher: Sounds True
Published: 2018-12-01T00:00:00+00:00

Part I: The Therapeutic Relationship

When, as therapists, we can experience fundamental consciousness

pervading ourselves and our clients, the therapeutic relationship

is transformed in several ways. Our own presence is more centered,

grounded, and empathic; we can track our internal responses to our

clients more clearly; our perception of our clients is more refined; and we are more open to the spontaneous emergence of the healing process.

The Therapist’s Presence

It is widely accepted, in the current field of psychotherapy, that one of the most healing components of the psychotherapeutic process is the

relationship between the client and the therapist. One of the biggest shifts that has occurred over the history of psychotherapy is in the client-therapist relationship, especially regarding how personally connected we should be when we sit with a client.

Freud recommended that the analyst’s awareness be a “hovering

attention” that does not interfere with or interact in any way with

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the patient’s narrative. He faced away from his patients so they could enter without distraction into a monologue of free association. In this way, Freud felt that the patient’s buried, pathogenic memories would eventually, spontaneously surface to consciousness. Freud would then interpret the meaning of the patient’s memories and dream images and their role in the origin of the patient’s neurosis.

The Freudian ideal of detachment often produced psychoanalysts

who were distracting simply by their lack of engagement. Their emo-

tional reticence and their interpretations of their patients’ lives often took on an authoritarian stance in which they seemed to be above and beyond any sort of emotional difficulty themselves, observing from on high their patients’ anguish.

This detached, authoritarian attitude has been rejected in most

contemporary forms of psychotherapy, as well as in relational inno-

vations within psychoanalysis. Relational analysts coined the term

“two-person” therapy to designate the recognition of the basic equality between the analyst and patient. Many therapists consider their own

emotional responsiveness to be a crucial element in the psychothera-

peutic process. These more contemporary forms of psychotherapy

and psychoanalysis acknowledge that we can never completely sup-

press our personality or our true responses to the client, so analytic detachment is not even possible. Some relational modalities, such as Intersubjectivity Theory, developed by Robert Stolorow and George

Atwood, go so far as to claim that even the client’s narrative is “co-created” by the therapist and client. Even the client’s memories are shaped in part by the therapist’s collaboration and by the therapist’s personal and cultural biases.

Yet, the relationship between the therapist and the client can also

present the biggest challenges or even obstacles to the client’s healing.

If the therapist’s emotional responses to the client are angry, shaming, envious, or sexual or if the therapist’s relational style is withdrawn or intrusive, then the relationship may even be destructive for the client.

Also, if the therapist’s contact with themselves, and subsequently with others, lacks depth or cohesion, or if they live much more in one part of themselves than another, the relationship may be confusing and

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unsatisfying for the client. The client may not feel heard or received because of the limitations in the therapist’s capacity for contact with another person.

The

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