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THERAPEUTIC ASSUMPTIONS
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My work as a psychotherapist is guided by the assumptions of a professional group that calls itself Control Mastery. Their beliefs are:
1. Though cognizant of the useful information contained in diagnostic categories, Control Mastery plays down this pathology-focused way of relating to their patients, even in the way they think about them.
2. They assume the suffering person has an unconscious game plan of their own to heal themselves, which the therapist must discover, follow and facilitate, creating a living healing psycho-drama in sessions instead of a diagnostic chart. It is literally like the fairy tale of the prince making his laborious way through the bramble bushes to kiss the princess, waking up the whole castle—where the ‘bramble bushes’ represent very specific unconscious traumatic emotional experience that the therapist must decode in order to respond at the critical moment in the session in a corrective emotional way, thereby revealing the possibility of reprieve that expands exponentially. Verification of this healing is provided by new information suddenly being revealed by the patient, something never heard before.
3. Control Mastery assumes that every psychological symptom has a traumatic source. This assertion of trauma as the creator of emotional dysfunction is not meant to blame anyone. It’s meant simply to acknowledge that for the child things happened that traumatized them, most likely without anyone knowing it was taking place, or why it was happening. For survival the child adapted to a caregiver’s fearful need by becoming something false and symptomatic for the child.
4. This belief in traumatic origins removes all blame for the patient for having psychological symptoms—an essential first step in making the therapy safe for them in a world that still believes having symptoms is something to be ashamed of.
copyright© 2007–2011 Don Fenn. All rights reserved.
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