Monday, December 04, 2006

Do therapists believe in their therapy?

To start with, therapists use the therapy that they "grew up with", very much like people practising the religion of their parents and community. Few change, and most stick to what they know best. They try to rationalise their choice of therapy, when in fact they adopted a therapy without rational decision making, and then put the arguments around it.

Most therapists (and more humans) want to get their job done and want certainty in their life. There is nothing more appealing than a set of steps that tells you exactly how to do therapy, and ensures you of its success. Why starting to ask questions and destroy the certainty of your world? Very few are critical.

Therapists need to be uncritical to some degree. They are forced to believe in the therapy even if they dont, because a therapist cannot influence a patient without believing the therapy. So many make themselves believe in the therapy.

Many do not seem to believe that the patients will become much more fluent. They are rather more realistic, and believe that patients "will get a lot out of it", especially on the communication, social, psychological level. In fact, they believe that this is much more important than speech. I wonder whether they do not have it upside down. In fact, they too believe that fluency is the most important, but because they know that it is much more difficult to achieve, they change around the goals, and say that actually communication is the more important. But what they actually unconsciously mean is "Fluency is the most important. But it is difficult, so lets start with the other stuff. But upps I cant say that to my patients, so I have to say that the other stuff IS more important".

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