Yoda and Columbo

Therapy is whatever people want it to be, and the therapist is, too. Some are looking for a spiritual/behavioral guide, others a detective. Some want a therapist to dress up and play the consummate professional; others are more comfortable with the cargo pant look. It is the difference between Detective Joe Fontana of Law and Order, who wore expensive shirts and asked pointed questions, and Columbo, an average guy in a crumpled hat and raincoat, who asked unassuming questions to solve the crime. Columbo even seemed a little slow. Therapists act like this, too, a little slow, like we’re just not catching on. We want the patient to tell us more, is all. The patient knows the answers, so we put a lid on our own thoughts and poke around in his.

Whichever methodology, no matter our school of thought, we are out to detect sources of pain and anxiety (diagnosis) and relieve it (treatment). It’s not all about the money (a little professional humor, here, a disarming tool, meant to relax the patient).

As are many detectives, we’re married—to some theory or another, perhaps several. There are many such theories; some even explain why therapy works. One builds upon the genre of relationship therapy, only that it is the relationship with the therapist that matters, or the therapeutic relationship. A weekly or bi-weekly schmooze with a nonjudgmental, wizened, objective, empathetic guru never hurt anyone. We all need a Yoda in our lives.

Not that the guru has to be your therapist, of course, but if you can kill two birds with one stone, why not? The force, any self-respecting guru will tell you, is within you. Therapists are only one cloth available to help you not only find it, but use it.

Whether the patient needs guidance for the present, or a fresh eye to the past, therapists who have had any professional training within the past twenty years see everything psychological as biological, too. That means our experience is in the here and now, which is why a visit back to the past to solve the mystery isn’t quite enough, even when the past is clearly riddled with trauma. A trigger may have originated in childhood, but the patient is suicidal today, and the family will certainly look at us as accountable if we don’t prevent it.

Whether it is the past raising its ugly head, perhaps the anniversary of the death of a child, or the memory of a sexual assault, or the thought of father pounding mother, or a nasty confrontation with a pit bull last week, therapists are quite worried about the state of the patient’s brain in the moment, the organic variable, or organicity—no matter our theoretical preference. Or we should be. The crime may be old or new, but the imprint is relevant today.

Thus the patient walks into therapy, for the first time maybe, or for the first time with a new therapist, and he is aware that he has issues, perhaps really old ones, or maybe new ones, or some relatively new, hoping to find experience and wisdom, at least one of the two, preferably both. It would be unnatural not to be skeptical under the circumstances, at least a little, and reticent, reluctant to spill the most intimate details of life, past and present, to a perfect stranger.

That perfect stranger’s ability to dispel anxiety quickly will influence the entire process, even if his skills are otherwise lacking. This explains so many bad therapeutic experiences: a prospect of great therapy, come to find, the therapist doesn't quite cut it.

And yet, to put a new patient at ease from the very start takes skill. Personality does matter. The relationship with the therapist matters, but training matters as much, perhaps more, in the end. Which is why we have consultants.

The goal remains, no matter the style, whether ala Columbo, unassuming, open, clueless at first, eventually annoying (like most good parents), or like Yoda, wizened over the years, to establish a safe, drama-free setting. And we want you to want to come back, naturally. Nobody likes to stop in the middle of a good story.

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Those Active Therapeutic Agents

The research is likely to be weak and suspect. A sample of six hundred bloggers out of twelve to sixty million, basically tell us that blogging is therapeutic.

In all honesty, the concept is not that far off the mark. There is likely to be a great deal of truth to the idea; that purging thoughts, issues, events, annecdotes and stories, the whole gestalt of writing and publishing, people hearing us, feels good. Not just in the short run, either. Make it a habit, and who knows?

On the other hand, Hemingway killed himself.

But when it comes to blogging, it's that complaining thing we've been talking about that matters. The talk dynamic in therapy, the narrative, is the active ingredient. That and a few psychotropics on occasion.*

Anyway, who cares about research validity/reliability of a survey? Blogger references ENT in the post.

Bean Jones tells us that Blogging Is More Than What it Seems; it's good for you. So concludes the 2005 AOL survey about the reasons people blog. CNN followed this year, you might remember, with other research and a wink in our direction. It was a good week.

I have to write that book that Empath Daught told me to write ages ago. If only people still read books.

Wait. Maybe they do. Even though it's likely you watch YouTube whenever you can steal away, and even though you read blogs when you're not whipping up a gourmet recipe or eating pizza, my hunch is that most of you read books, too.

Here's a bit of what Bean Jones tells us over at the Blogger website, Simple.ology

Lately I've been worried over what to blog about. (Chalk it up to my brain going fuzzy from decongestants.) But then a friend gave me a link to an article discussing the results of a 2005 AOL survey done by Digital Marketing Services Inc. and I found myself energized.

A total of 600 bloggers--men and women aged 18 and above--participated in the survey.

About 48 percent of the bloggers revealed that they kept a blog because "it serves as a form of therapy" while around 40 percent stated that blogging "helps them keep in touch with family and friends."

Bill Schreiner, Vice President and General Manager of Community Programming for America Online, observed: "In a way, blogs serve as oral history. When it comes to sharing blogs and reading other people's blogs, we like to connect with people, learn about their lives, and find common ground."

An inspiring CNN article affirms blogging's therapeutic benefits. In it, journalist Anna Jane Grossman cites the results of the polls done by the Pew Internet and American Life Project in 2006. The results revealed that "roughly 12 million Americans have blogs...and many seem to use them as a form of group therapy."

Indeed, many blogs have transformed into informal support groups. They range from the low-key Everyone Needs Therapy to the bold and busy TreeHugger.


Bean goes on.

For those of us who like attention, this was a very nice thing, Simple-ology's recognition of a low-key (what could be better description than that) blog.

Hmmmm. Do you think that this might be one of the reasons people do it, blog? Could it be that attention thing?

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*There are many active ingredients in therapy that works; the greatest of all, for sure, something we call a therapeutic relationship with a therapist.