Whose Need Is It, Anyway?

Being trustworthy is the most important quality a therapist must have. This means that therapists must constantly work hard to bring to consciousness their old, unconscious, unmet need. Therapists must be capable of being clear enough of their old need to look after their legitimate needs in the present. This means they will not use their clients to satisfy themselves.

Old, unconscious, unmet need is the driving force behind our most troublesome, disconnected behaviors. When therapists act out their unmet need on their clients, these clients suffer.

Our therapist's need can collide with our client's need in many subtle ways. When we need to feel successful we may see more clients than we can really be rested and clear for. A therapist's need to feel insightful and clever interferes with the client reaching their own truths unimpeded. We may need our clients to make "progress" that interferes directly with the client's need to go at their own pace. In my experience it is the client that sets the pace if true integration is to occur. This does not mean that we do not use all of our skill to assist our client. It does mean that we need to be in touch with feelings of frustration or disappointment when clients do not connect the way we would like them to. This is an opportunity for us as therapists to take responsibility to feel through our need. I am not talking about being perfect or completely clear all the time. I am talking about observing ourselves and taking responsibility for our feelings.

The most heinous acting out that I have heard of in my over twenty-six years of experience as a therapist is when therapists use their clients to satisfy their own sexualized need from the past. In every case I have heard of, the therapist has delivered a "double whammy" to the client by telling her or him that what they are doing is to satisfy a need of the client. This is such a rip-off, since what the client requires is the opportunity to feel through their old need that is being transferred to the therapist at the time. Thwarted in this task, the client is left not only hurt and used in the present, but set back in her or his therapy because an opportunity to connect with old need and feel it through has been lost. Without good, safe help these clients may never understand or work through their early violations - or this later one.

Helping people connect with their past trauma, feel it through and integrate it is an awesome responsibility. As therapists and facilitators, connecting with our own unmet need from the past is an equally awesome responsibility.

Janice Berger and Harry Hall are the authors of Emotional Fitness: Discovering Our Natural Healing Power, published by Prentice Hall, Canada, 2000. Janice and Harry are psychotherapists practicing Deep Emotional Processing Therapy in Newmarket just north of Toronto, Canada.

This article appeared in the Spring 2002 IPA Newsletter.