Cheap Therapy

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Clarissa

December 3, 2012

As a teacher, I love answering questions even when they are not addressed to me. A blogger asks:

However, I’ve given it a lot of consideration over the past few days. Knowing CAT is a “cheap” therapy is a concern; does that make me a snob?

No, it doesn’t make you a snob. It makes you a very intelligent person who has great insight into the nature of psychological help.

Psychotherapy that costs nothing produces very little, if any, positive results. People tend to resist any profound changes in their psychological make up. The psyche perceives change as threatening, even of it is a change for the better. One of the ways to diminish this resistance is to make it unprofitable for a person to keep resisting. When during a session you can feel your own hard-earned money dripping away in a steady stream while you keep silent, avoid answering questions and engage in a variety of avoidance techniques, resisting therapy becomes harder.

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9 responses to “Cheap Therapy”

musteryou

December 3, 2012

I totally agree that anything that comes cheaply tends to be undervalued. I also agree that the ego reads change as “death”. That is why, in terms of shamanism, to change at all, once must “face death”. That can be extremely grueling, and weirder still, since nobody sees the anguish from the outside. I look at photos of myself ten years ago, which were wonderful, but clearly I was an extremely different person back then.

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Z

December 3, 2012

I, of course, wish I had resisted therapy, and would like a stronger ego than I have.

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Karen Loethen

December 3, 2012

Actually, I’m also a therapist by trade…I don’t know a thing about CAT..??

But, of course, you are right. Paying for therapy is earning it too… It’s kind of a complex issue, psychologically, but one you seem to have thought about…

Peace!

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Cliff Arroyo

December 4, 2012

“One of the ways to diminish this resistance is to make it unprofitable for a person to keep resisting”

Of course it could work the other way too as the person could subconsciously think of the costs of therapy as payment for being able to hold on the behavior(s) they supposedly want to get rid of or modify.

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1. Z
  
  December 4, 2012
  
  Yes, this idea of seems to presuppose that getting officially desired results for money is the prime motivator.
  
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2. bloggerclarissa
  
  December 4, 2012
  
  If we are talking about a very rich person, then yes, this is unfortunately likely.
  
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valter07

December 4, 2012

At a party over the weekend I encountered a widespread belief (by people who have not been in therapy or do not want to admit to it) that in therapy people pay to hear what they want to hear. And, having some experience, I regret to say that many therapists are unable to offer anything else anyway. It is not just dependent on the client’s attitude.

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  December 4, 2012
  
  Yes, I know what you mean. Maybe the way to go is to find an analyst who is not North American. Like somebody from Vienna or Zurich. Or like my analyst who is from Africa.
  
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  1. valter07
    
    December 4, 2012
    
    I am not sure non-American training is by default better than the American one. The schools of therapy professing the need to “support” the client at all costs are pretty international. There is nothing wrong with some support in a crisis situation, nobody says that the therapist should whack a disintegrating person into deeper despair, but if the therapist sincerely believes (which is often a dignified way to say s/he is incapable of anything else) s/he should do nothing else but support, this is very wrong.
    And I will be a bit of a dissident and claim that it is not just the method anyway which “works”, it is the personality of the therapist. Good therapist can do lot of good in frameworks other than analysis, and analysts can screw things up while being true to the method.
    
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