On Jun 18, 2007, at 2:04 PM, Carl Remick wrote:
> No, I'm not talking about psychologists' "techniques for increasing
> empathy
> in children." I'm talking about empathy between *psychotherapists*
> and their
> patients. In fact, therapists are specifically warned against
> developing
> full-fledged peer relationships with their patients, are they not?
> Isn't
> "countertransference" the ultimate psychotherapeutic no-no? The
> whole basis
> for the therapist-patient relationship is not one of peer empathy
> but one of
> inequality and clinical detachment -- i.e., "Me, high-and-mighty
> medical
> expert; you, lowly neurotic."
No! The patient is likely to put the shrink in that position - "the subject presumed to know" in the classic Lacanian formula - but by all reports the shrink feels all kinds of things for the patient. I once knew a classically Freudian shrink who cried when a patient called to announce he was terminating. It's certainly not a peer relationship (though I once knew someone who went clothes shopping with her Lacanian-feminist analyst), but countertransference is inevitable, and the shrink has to analyze it along with the patient's transference.
Doug