Moving past fear/guilt

[Adam Blatner]

Hi Anath,
     okay, so it seems to me we have a spectrum.

On one side, we have people who want relief of symptoms but have little psychological mindedness, and indeed, are pretty resistant to any hint that their deepest motivations and many of their attitudes might be not only mistaken but misleading. They have a strong shame barrier. 

On the other extreme we have seekers for truth, and they are willing to suffer a fair amount of humility, confrontation, recognition of their follies, as a price they must pay to make headway. They expect it, even. >From these folks, resistance is more likely to be because perhaps the therapist is mistaken. 

So what is the distribution... 
      Your point about private practice is good, because folks who pay for themselves tend to be more group two. 

   An interesting question: I wonder if anyone has ever researched it. Warmly, Adam
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: thana ag 
  To: adam blatner ; regina sewall 
  Cc: list at grouptalkweb.org 
  Sent: Sunday, August 09, 2009 9:12 PM
  Subject: RE: Moving past fear/guilt


  Dear Adm,
  I am obviously lucky,having been in private practice for decades.In my exoperience the people I see ,may come originally b/c of an unpleasant precipitating situation/predicament,but al lchose to evolve rather that get  relief,or present themselves in the role of a sick person.
  anath

   


------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  From: ablatner at verizon.net
  To: sewell.2 at osu.edu
  Subject: Moving past fear/guilt
  Date: Sun, 9 Aug 2009 12:31:34 -0500
  CC: list at grouptalkweb.org



   Dear Regina, 
      Thanks for your reasoned response. Yes, I substantially agree with you, though my sense of how much good we do through therapy is perhaps more tempered. 
      I see our culture moving towards a greater penetration and integration of practical psychology. (That includes practical social psychology and applied sociology.) It was a tiny inroad fifty years ago, is still a small inroad, but there's a penubra of consciousness-raising and psychological-mindedness hinted at in all the advice columns and columns in women's and some men's magazines and the thousands of self-help books; the increasing number of books on business that are really about psychology, creativity, promoting innovation, managing with more finesse; in education, etc.  I see this trend as what Moreno might have been thinking about when he envisioned sociatry. But 94.9% of the methods and concepts have nothing to do with Moreno, though I would like to see Moreno's ideas more widely appreciated. (I'd like the 5.1% to expand to 12.9%!   maybe even 18.4%!)
       I am hopeful that psychological literacy will become as mainline and normal---what everyone is expected to know--- in two or three generations. 

  aB In your last email to me and grouptalk you said:
   RS:  We can help people move past their fear and guilt, their shame and their anger using sociodrama and psychodrama.  We can help people imagineer...   visualize what could be.
         This is a very sound principal in the martial arts.  You don't hit the board, you visualize yourself hitting through the board and the board snaps easily.  If you hit the board, you can break your hand.  Same w/ baseball...   look toward where you want the balll to go.  If you look to right field, it will go there.  

             AB: This merges with thoughts I've been having about the resistances to consciousness-raising or maturity-development, what they are and how they might be thought about. I'll soon post a paper on my website on this. Would you or anyone else like to see a draft and to comment, make suggestions about what should be revised or added? I was just writing about it this morning and adding some new elements myself.
          The key point is how specifically can we help people move past fear and guilt--- especially regarding warming-up to becoming more psychologically-minded.
         Of course we do so implicitly in building a treatment alliance with those who go out of their way to seek help. (i.e., they voluntarily enter the sick role). Even then, a significant number of patients, as Fritz (Perls) noted, "... don't really want to stop being neurotic; they just want to get better at it." I take this to mean that many patients suffer from the consequences of deeper character patterns, misleading aims, entrenched games they play---which they don't experience as mistaken; but they want relief from the anxiety and depression that follow being fired, having their partners or friends leave or give up on them (disgustedly, hurt, bewildered, angry), and so forth. They don't want to look at why they were fired or abandoned, note, but just don't want to feel so bad. I wonder what percentage of clients you see who would be more like this? 20,  40,   60,   80% ? 

      So envisioning our goal is good, but we need to envision quite specifically, concretely  If we envision an abstract idea it won't work. 

      Well, about your role as a sociometrist: I've been having some further ideas about that issue---in part because I've become increasingly impressed with how deep the associated sociodynamics and psychodynamics of tele are!--- so let me know if you'd like to pursue that. Warmly, Adam

             
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