Psychotherapy: Theory vs Intuitive Practice | Dr. Igor Weinberg

when clinicians go to school I know that clinicians also have to do clinical practicums or I don't know what thank God uh because I would guess that just going to school and sitting in a classroom and reading the theory when you actually walk into the room and start or the room or the zoom room these days and start doing clinical practice it might be a nice little anchor that you find sometimes at sea or whatever but it's not you just gotta now you're in it now you got to figure it out is that correct of the experience of I mean the relationship between the two and I think it's a little bit like you how you ride a bike you can read million books how to ride a bike but when you have to ride a bike you have to start riding a bike I remember when I met my first patient that was three weeks into my clinical training whatever Theory I knew was so abstract that it probably had no relevance to what this person told me during the first encounter I had to reinvent my own Theory I had to come up with what's going to work and I found that a lot of theories that are helpful in understanding but they mean not ultimately be what I will be doing and that's why I actually found it very helpful to have supervision that involved recording of my sessions my earlier supervisions recorded all of my sessions and then it was reviewed very carefully and I realized that what I was thinking about what was happening in sessions and what was actually happening in those sessions were many times two very different realities I suspect I evolved since those days this was probably back in my early 20s and today I probably have a little bit more idea but I'm also humbled by this understanding that I really don't know everything and I don't know sometimes what's really happening and it takes a lot of effort to understand what's really happening between two individuals a lot of what is happening could be very intuitive and what I suspect is the reason for change ultimately may not be the only one and may not be the main one for Change and and that's something to just be open to that sad Theory could be quite helpful because it could generate alternative ways of thinking and approaching the reality as long as I'm not treating it with certainty as if I treat it as a gospel that gives me all the answers and this is the only way to approach patients Etc but it could work also as a helpful device right I don't know if you can think of any example that is far enough or like a modulated away from reality where you can show you know the art of it because um I mean I think one of the one of the questions that we talk about is that the relationship between the science of psychotherapy and the Art of psychotherapy and a lot of times people talk about that there is a science and they talk about research and then talk about art and they talk about more intuitive aspect of psychotherapy people wrote books about this and um and I think that both parts are really important um with intuitive aspects of psychotherapy it does happen sometimes that we have a particular sense of something being different or off or unusual about the patient even though the therapy session may be progressing as usual and sometimes if we pay attention to this it could be quite important I had a patient that was describing a social interactions that that I felt that there was something very different about how this patient was describing those social interactions and there was something unusual that made me actually worry that I felt that there was something not connected or different and I remember asking this patient what was that about and after a pause we found that this patient was developing a very serious and lethal suicidal plane that actually was developed in the previous few months and I've heard nothing of that from this patient even though we talked about everything else and that was life-saving for this patient that we had a discussion I learned that paying attention to those very little details and my personal reactions an intuitive sense of something being off or being worried and not feeling that things are connected was really important in this particular treatment but it's important in many other treatments we can't always notice those things we miss a lot of them but when we do notice them I think it's important to to think it's your job but it's my job yes that's true

Channel: BorderlinerNotes

Views: 2,407

Keywords:

Id: YLmSOGsOZq4

Length: 4min 51sec (291 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 12 2023