Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> On Jun 19, 2007, at 12:13 PM, Carl Remick wrote:
>
> > The alternative to seeking help from hierarchic relationships with
> > priests and shrinks is to rely on the humble time-honored practice
> > of confiding in friends or partners
>
> No, it's completely different from that.
This is not wholly true. You are (I think) presupposing that pscychotherapy = psychoanalytic therapy and of course the vast majority of theratpists are _not_ psychoanalysts (or even psychiatrists). And while psychotherapy is, as you say, sharply different from confiding in a friend the two _do_ overlap.
> You can tell a shrink things
> you can't tell a friend or partner - esp if your problem is with your
> friend or partner. And the emotional dynamics are completely
> different. The distance allows you to project all kinds of things
> onto the therapist, and analyzing the kinds of things you project can
> be very revealing.
This (if it means looking for why) is precisely what _most_ therapists do NOT do, in fact quite consciously avoid doing. I remember my own therapist telling me that if really driven to it, she would engage with clients in mere speculation about the why of their behavior, but always discouraged the practice. The therapist will be concerned not with the whys or origins of behavior and/or feelings (re partners for example) but on how to _handle_ and change that behavior or those feelings. As soon as therapy diverges into interpretation it ceases to be therapy and becomes bad literary criticism. That doesn't mean, however, that it won't help the patient some or many times. First of all, it can be a placebo. Secondly, talking it over can shift thinking patterns even if it does indulge in nonsensical searches for deep reasons.
Also -- transference is neither limited to psychoanalysis nor is it a very mysterious thing. There has been quite a bit of recent research showing its effectiveness in many different kinds of therapy.
Carrol