Being Reminded

 


The Psychic Warrior by Dr James Johnston  

 

In the next slide, we see that it is the therapist’s own mother that he is concealing, his own Keeping Mum. We then see the therapist with his own mother being revealed to him and he says: ‘Ah yes, my mother’.

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    
The psychic warrior by Dr James Johnston  

 

In the final cartoon in the circular sequence, the therapist is now sitting with Mr Jones again saying ‘I sense you are hiding something’.  

 

We are back to the beginning of the narrative in that the therapist is again inviting Mr Jones to reveal something of his own self. This circular narrative underpins the idea that the therapist has to begin to work something through in their counter-transference in order to help the patient work something through in the transference.

 

Being reminded

Dr James JohnstonThe idea that I have of psychoanalytic work applies to psychiatry too in that effective clinical work involves the practitioner engaging in looking at what their patient reminds them of in themselves which may not be identical to the patient’s experience but will allow them to engage with their patient empathically through recognising something of the patient’s predicament and what it evokes in them.

 

This implies a mutual process of conscious and unconscious work, the professional working through in the countertransference involving an emotional struggle on behalf of the patient.

 

I see this as a mutual process of being reminded for both patient and therapist and at this level we have a human encounter which in my mind is at the heart of psychiatry and psychotherapy.  

 

 

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Updated: 07 July 2011
© 2011 Royal College of Psychiatrists