How to Choose a Psychotherapist

Andrew Symington, David Symington, Joan Symington, Neville Symington, Andrew Symington, David Symington, Joan Symington, Neville Symington

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367324889
• eBook ISBN: 9780429914621
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

The demand for psychotherapy and counselling is greater than ever. More and more people are enrolling on psychotherapy and counselling courses; the number of different associations in this industry has doubled and everyone knows someone who is in therapy or at least thinking about it. So are standards of practice being sacrificed while we are trying to keep up with the demand? Are the right people training to be psychotherapists? Have you got the right psychotherapist?

Chapter One
The purpose of psychotherapy

The aim of psychotherapy is to cure sickness of the mind. But what is sickness of the mind? What are its causes and symptoms? How does it come to be? What does it feel like to be mentally ill? These questions when applied to physical sickness are easier to answer.

Physical sickness is felt as a pain, be it a sting or an ache or a feeling of queasiness and the doctor cures the sickness by administering an appropriate drug. Physical sickness handicaps the patient in some way and stops the body from performing one of its functions properly. A touch of rheumatism might restrict the neck from turning, a bad dose of athlete’s foot might stop the patient from walking or make it painful to do so. However, very often the body might not be functioning to its full potential although the person feels no specific pain. A man may slip into the comfortable habit of enjoying three hearty meals a day and avoid physical exertion whenever he can. He is likely then to grow fat. He may for many months not notice any problem and will feel quite comfortable with his portly self. However when it happens that the elevator in his office stops working and some extraordinary physical exertion is required he may then suddenly become aware of how inadequate his body has become. Of course he may be lucky and never need to depart from his routine and place undue strain on his body.

There are also much more serious physical conditions like pneumonia or cancer that require specialist knowledge for their treatment. An ordinary layman may know the remedy for the less serious conditions, but not for these bodily catastrophes. In these cases someone with knowledge is needed.

Mental illness can also be a serious handicap. Sometimes it may be something quite mild and a friend or concerned neighbour may be able to suggest a remedy that will help, but there are cases where something much more serious occurs. A patient may be suddenly overcome by a deep and terrifying sadness which has no apparent cause. It may be a sadness that is so intense that it assaults the personality. The person finds he cannot think properly, cannot remember things or finds that he has forgotten how to drive. Or it may be that he finds everyone around him being horrible to him. Something like an explosion has gone off inside him and all he knows is the effects of it. The afflicted person finds he can no longer function like he used to.

The mind like the body has many duties to perform and it can be affected in many different ways. So what duties does the mind perform?

1. It reasons logically and coherently arranges thoughts.
2. It creates through the use of the imagination.
3. It stores experiences in memory.
4. It is the storehouse of our emotions: love, guilt, hatred, envy, etc. Mental illness can affect any of the above functions. Mental illness is most apparent and obvious to onlookers when it affects the first of these functions. When someone does not appear to think logically we then make comments like, ‘‘he must be crackers!’’

However if someone isn’t functioning to their full creative capacity or if they are emotionally disturbed, it is much more difficult to detect. Unless you know someone intimately, you would not know whether they are functioning to their full creative potential or not. Emotionally too, a person may seem to be functioning well. He may have a harmonious marriage and family. But like our fat man who did not discover what his body lacked until forced to use the stairs, a marriage or a family may only be held together while the winds are favourable. It is not until they face serious trials that fatal flaws are discovered. Such weaknesses, of course may never be discovered and the family or the marriage may continue undisturbed until death. When a mental illness affects a person’s emotional life or creativity, people may know it but they won’t think of it as a disease. An artist’s work deteriorates and people may not notice.

KEEP AWAY FROM HER OR YOU MIGHT CATCH SOMETHING

Everyone knows someone who is incredibly shy or is unbearably pompous, but such people are not seen as suffering from a disease like a person who is not able to reason. Rather we just see them as abnormalities in the person’s character. Usually we would say that if someone is shy that is simply how they are and nothing can be done about it. To the therapist, though, such peculiarities of character are signs of mental disorder which can be cured. Some people may not worry about these handicaps in their character until they seriously interfere with their functioning. A man is fired from his job, a woman loses all her confidence when a relationship breaks up and they turn then to a psychotherapist for help.

A breakdown has occurred and people do not notice—they may even, if the person is an artist, think it is an artistic breakthrough, not a breakdown.

THIS IS A REAL BREAKTHROGH . . .

As far as society is concerned, mental illness is only a problem when it threatens social harmony. Most annoying to society is when the first function of the mind—the inability to think clearly—occurs. Such mental confusion renders people agitated and worried. Society requires people to do their jobs efficiently. From this perspective it does not matter if, for example, an office worker in a government department is not functioning to his full creative capacity so long as he is doing his job. Society regards him as a nuisance, however, when his frustration starts to impair his capacity to work.

HOW MUCH LONGER

In Australia there was a recent example of this. A judge was failing to process his cases because of depression. People were waiting for three or four years for their case to come before him in the courts. Likewise, a marriage which functions but lacks passion or real understanding between the husband and wife, is of no concern to the wider society as long as the man and the woman continue to perform their respective roles adequately. It is only when the marriage breaks down and the man and woman become irascible and depressed and start to perform less well that it becomes a problem, not only to them but to others.

Most mental treatment is a loyal servant of Society and aims to cure behaviour which disrupts social stability. It might prescribe sedatives to the frustrated office workers and aphrodisiacs to the husband and wife. If that returns them to doing their normal jobs again, Society is satisfied.

Therapy, on the other hand, is concerned with actually treating the cause of the mental disorder. Therapy goes beyond what society demands of it. To use our analogy of the fat man, instead of installing a lift in his home, therapy demands that he take the much more difficult and time consuming solution of exercising and losing weight. As far as society is concerned, though, the lift solved the problem and restored the fat man to his role as a cog in the machine. An extended period of exercise is simply an unnecessary waste of time to bring the butterfly out of the chrysalis. Psychotherapy is concerned to bring someone to his full potential. In the case of someone who has had a serious mental collapse good psychotherapy can help to reverse the situation and turn it into a new beginning. We are concerned in this book to help you to find a psychotherapist who will enable you achieve this.

BUTTERFLY EMERGING FROM CHRYSALIS

Summary

Mental illness, whether mild or more serious may affect a person’s ability to function adequately. They may be unable to think coherently, to remember clearly, to use their imagination, or to function well emotio...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction: the psychotherapy explosion
• CHAPTER ONE The purpose of psychotherapy
• CHAPTER TWO How does therapy work?
• CHAPTER THREE Therapeutic tasks
• CHAPTER FOUR Why therapy fails
• CHAPTER FIVE The inadequate therapist
• CHAPTER SIX Defining the good therapist
• GLOSSARY
• BIBLIOGRAPHY