What we do

I found myself getting irritated a couple of times recently about casually dismissive remarks I have heard about therapy and therapists. That therapy is just good listening and if friends could learn good listening skills, then therapy wouldn't be necessary. That and the usual fantasy about therapists getting rich off people's suffering. Listening empathically can and does provide catharsis and catharsis is an element of therapy. But it is only an element, not the whole thing. The inferior and even the worthless belongs to me as my shadow and give me substance and mass. How can I be substantial without casting a shadow? I must have a dark side too if I am to be whole; and by becoming conscious of my shadow I remember once more that I am a human being like any other. At any rate, if this rediscovery of my own wholeness remains private,  it will only restore the earlier condition from which the neurosis, i.e., the split-off complex, sprang. Privacy prolongs my isolation and the damage is only partially mended. But through confession I throw myself into the arms of humanity again, freed at last from the burden of moral exile. The goal ... is not merely the intellectual recognition of the facts with the head, but their confirmation by the heart and the actual release of suppressed emotion (Jung, CW 16, p134) When I enter a session with a patient I endeavor to do so without memory or desire -- which is to say that any d...
Source: Jung At Heart - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: blogs