Malcolm Welland  MA, Dip CTP, Member CAPT, Clinical Member OSP

An Interview with Therapists

What follows is a series of quotes from a variety of psychotherapists. Their voices state certain things about therapy which are direct, clear and evocative. They represent a variety of approaches and styles in psychotherapy, but from C. G. Jung to contemporary therapists, such as James Hillman, they all have the same basic approach to what is important about therapy and its process. I have put these quotes together in a question and answer format in order to give the selections some context. The questions are basic questions anyone might ask about therapy. In the answers, I have smoothed out the wording for the sake of clarity and simplicity.

Questioner: What is therapy about?

Therapist: "Psychotherapy … is about how you live with your emotions. It is about the perspectives you bring to relating with the people who matter to you. It is about what you aspire to in your life and how you may unwittingly make it harder for yourself to reach those goals. It is about being helped to see that the change you seek is already within you. … Psychotherapy is not about what you think; it is about how you live with yourself right now."¹

Questioner: Why does therapy sometimes take a long time.

Therapist: "Each person has his own space; moreover, one cannot expect a complete display of a basic problem until there is space to it. A basic problem is a painful confusion. It seems to fill a person's whole life, being of enormous weight trailing off-shoots and attachments throughout his growth. It has neither beginning nor end, and it cannot be dealt with unless a great deal of psychic space has been allowed it. It is, as well, kept in a psychological space of its own characterized by an atmospheric tension, a mood of depression or nervousness, of bitterness or longing. No one can take up a basic problem except by going into and living within this atmosphere in which the problem is kept. … Since problems in psychology are not something people have but something people are, it is not uncommon to work with people for many weeks - even as long as a year - before getting close to what the real matter is, near the reason why the person has come to therapy at all."²

Questioner: In dealing with problems, what does the therapist keep in mind?

Therapist: "Naturally, a [therapist] must be familiar with the so-called "methods". But he must guard against theoretical assumptions. Today they may be valid, tomorrow it may be the turn of other assumptions. … To my mind, in dealing with individuals, only individual understanding will do. We need a different language for every patient. … The crucial point is that I confront the patient as one human being to another. Therapy is a dialogue demanding two partners. The therapist and patient sit facing one another, eye to eye; the therapist has something to say, but so has the patient."³

Questioner: Psychotherapy sometimes deals with the unconscious. Why should one pay attention to the unconscious? What does it give us?

Therapist: "Patterns emerge, meanings are discovered; one senses a vital connection to the past, one's own past and that of one's family and people. … and through emotion one is moved to experience that things matter, matter very much indeed! And choice counts. And what we do with ourselves, our bodies, our hearts and minds, counts so much that personal worth, dignity, and the importance of my own individuality, my own person, grow from each new bout with the unconscious. … In particular, through the dreams and through entertaining fantasies and receiving the inner world, it occupies more space in my life and has more weight in my decisions - that is it gains more substantial reality."⁴

Questioner: You mention dreams. Can you say more about dreams?

Therapist: "[T]he main way in which we stumble upon the unconscious is the dream. The dream… joins in itself the conscious and the unconscious, bringing together incommensurables and opposites. … Every morning for a moment or two while we are in the dream we are living the symbol, living it in, united in an existential reality, true to life as we are at that moment … We stumble upon our dreams - too often to kick them aside."⁵ "As I grow familiar with my dreams I grow familiar with my inner world. Who lives in me? What inscapes are mine? What is recurrent and therefore what keeps coming back to reside in me? These are the animals and people, places and concerns, that want me to pay attention to them …"⁶

Questioner: What then is one to do with dreams if we stumble upon them?

Therapist: "'Befriend' the dream. To participate in it, to enter into its imagery and mood, to want to know more about it, to understand, play with, live with, carry, and become familiar with - as one would do with a friend. … They want to be known as a friend would. They want to be cared for and cared about. This familiarity after some time produces in one a sense of at-homeness and at-oneness ... It is [important] that the dream is brought into contact with daily existence, that the subjective reality of the dream is admitted, allowed, valued,"⁷ "The first thing, then, [with] the dream is that we give time and patience to it, jumping to no conclusions, fixing it in no solutions. Befriending the dream begins with a plain attempt to listen to the dream, to set down down on paper … in its own words just what it says."⁸

Questioner: What about interpreting a dream?

Therapist: "Interpretations and explanations are too often rationalizations."⁹ "It is an attitude of wanting from the unconscious, using it to gain information, power, energy, exploiting it for the sake of the ego: make it mine, make it mine. … These rationalizing interpretations, … actually drain the unconscious, to reduce its size, to empty it out - all of which are hostile acts. This not befriending the dream."¹⁰

Questioner: Why is it usually the case that a person can't figure out their own dreams?

Therapist: " In a recently published series of lectures, originally given at the university of Leuven, [ J. H. ] Van den Berg recounts his therapy with a bright middle aged man who … ruined a happy, five year long relationship ... He suffered from a recurring nightmare … The patient was able to put his life back in order again once he had understood … his nightmares … The question Van den Berg posed himself … was why his intelligent and otherwise accomplished and mature patient had been unable to discover for himself the obvious meaning of his dreams. Why had he needed the assistance of a psychotherapist to come to an understanding of his plight and to put his house in order? The interpretations of his dream required no inordinate hermeneutic skills and the problems he had created for himself in his relationship to the woman he loved were only too obvious. Why then had he been unable to make a clear assessment of his own situation? "The answer to that question is obvious", writes Van den Berg. "The correct interpretation of his dream would have placed the patient before problems he could not face by himself. He was in need of someone outside his present circle, someone capable of standing by his side. This is true for psychotherapy in general; it constitutes the very heart of it. The patient is someone who comes to seek clarity. He comes so as not to stand alone while facing a difficult decision in his life. He comes to understand the dream the moment he no longer stands alone (Van den Berg, J.H. 1996 Geen Toeval; Metabletica van de Geschiedschrijving, Kapellen:Pelckman's Kok Agora, p. 46)."¹¹

Questioner: Given this then, what sort of training prepares a person to be a therapist?

Therapist: "The psychotherapist, however, must understand not only the patient; it is equally important that he should understand himself. For that reason the sine qua non is the analysis of the [therapist], what is called the training analysis. The patient's treatment begins with the therapist, so to speak. Only if the therapist knows how to cope with himself and his own problems will he be able to teach the patient to do the same. Only then … When important matters are at stake, it makes all the difference whether the therapist sees himself as a part of the drama, or cloaks himself in his authority. In the great crises of life, in the supreme moments when to be or not to be is the question, little tricks of suggestion do not help …"¹²

Questioner: What last words word you like us to remember about therapy?

Therapist: "Understanding oneself requires not merely the resources but also the presence of more than one person. Or, put differently, self understanding is not the achievement of one person, or even of many persons, it is the achievement of a particular relationship between persons. This is the kind of understanding called for [as] … psychotherapy's fundamental task … that of … enacting such enabling alliances as are capable of disclosing a human world to us. Van den Berg writes that the patient came to him in search of what in Dutch is called ‘bijstand’. We may translate that term as "help", or as "assistance." But the term literally refers to the act of standing by, or standing with someone in facing a difficult situation … These metaphors for assisting, helping, or supporting someone all point to what is perhaps at the same time the most basic and most essential of human relationships. This most profound relationship permits us to be human by giving us access to a human world. The art of psychotherapy concerns itself with understanding and cultivating this most basic of all relationships.¹³

Cited texts

Bugental, James F.T. Psychotherapy Isn't What You Think. Phoenix: Zeig, Tucker & Co., 1999.

Hillman, James. Insearch: Psychology and Religion. Dallas: Spring Publications.

Jager, Bernd, et al. Metabletics: J.H. van den Berg's Historical Phenomenology. Pittsburgh: The Simon Silverman Phenomenology Center, 1999.

Jung, C.G. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. New York: Vintage Books, 1961.

© Malcolm Welland 2008 May not be duplicated or distributed without permission of the author.

I have two locations. My office in Guelph is an easy drive from Hamilton, Kitchener-Waterloo, Orangeville and many other locations in south-western Ontario. Here's a map to my Guelph location. In response to many client enquiries I am now opening an office in central Toronto here at 154 SpaadinaRoad. 

My other articles on therapy are available at my subdomain.

¹ James F.T. Bugental, Psychotherapy Isn't What You Think (Phoenix: Zeig, Tucker & Co., 1999) 1.

² James Hillman, Insearch: Psychology and Religion (Dallas: Spring Publications) 31.

³ C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (New York: Vintage Books, 1961) 131.

⁴ Hillman 65-66.

⁵ Hillman 57.

⁶ Hillman 57.

⁷ Hillman 57.

⁸ Hillman 60.

⁹ Hillman 58.

¹⁰ Hillman 59.

¹¹ Bernd Jager et al., Metabletics: J. H. van den Berg's Historical Phenomenology (Pittsburgh: The Simon Silverman Phenomenology Center, Duquesne University) 1-15.

¹² Jung 132-133.

¹³ Jager 1-15.