In preparing for a workshop on working with emotion and psychotherapy,  I re-read an article on emotion by Stolorow and Socarides in Psychoanalytic Treatment:  An Intersubjective Approach by Stolorow, et. al. (1987) This is an important article, which throws more light on the essential importance of emotion in the lives of all human beings.

The final step is helping clients learn how to use their emotions skillfully and appropriately in their everyday lives.  Emotions are always experienced in a particular context and clients have to learn appropriate ways to deal with them within the contexts in which they arise.

This method was pioneered by Fritz and Laura Perls, the founders of Gestalt Therapy, but has been used  by therapists from numerous other theoretical orientations.  Research has shown it to be a powerful method for helping clients become more aware of and to express thoughts and feelings toward others that have been suppressed.

I become concerned about the current emphasis on marketing in younger therapists to the relative exclusion of how one grows into becoming a good therapist; and in continuing to grow.  As a psychologist who is expert in marketing has been quoted to me recently, marketing means doing good work and then talking about it.  But how does one get to be doing good work?

In working with people who are blind to some or all emotions, I go through various steps.  But I must state a caveat:  this is not a linear process.  Dealing with emotion takes place all through an intensive psychotherapy and I almost always focus on what the client brings up in each session rather than have some content agenda. 

Many therapy clients of mine through the years have come with very little awareness of the emotions they were experiencing.  This includes many who achieved much cognitive insight in prior treatment with previous therapists  but little awareness of the impact of unacknowledged and unexperienced emotion that were at the root of their problems.

In this posting I shall discuss how the great changes over the years in the psychotherapeutic professions  have affected me since I started practicing in the 60’s. I will also discuss why I am an integrative therapist and why, no matter what method I am using, I see therapy as a collaborative venture.