{"id":251,"date":"2009-12-09T22:48:23","date_gmt":"2009-12-10T06:48:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/?p=251"},"modified":"2009-12-10T19:28:40","modified_gmt":"2009-12-11T03:28:40","slug":"does-knowledge-dilute-the-magic-of-therapy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/?p=251","title":{"rendered":"Does knowledge dilute the magic of therapy?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"flower2\"A reader named Kim wrote<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I do tend to be cerebral and look for stuff on the internet like this blog to try to get more insight into what my therapist is doing. I am curious, do you think this dilutes the \u201cmagic\u201d of the therapy somewhat, or do you think it is helpful or both.<\/em><\/p>\n

Good question. My short answer is that therapy isn’t magic. It doesn’t rely on distraction, illusion, or diverting your attention. It need not be surprising or even unexpected to effect change. You won’t ruin, hurt, or dilute anything by understanding how therapy, or therapists, operate. \u00a0Moreover, knowledge is power: \u00a0An informed consumer can better judge whether a given therapy is legitimate, and whether it is likely to be helpful. \u00a0Feel free to read up on therapy, learn about it.<\/p>\n

The longer answer is a little more interesting. A few years ago I wondered a similar thing myself: Does being a therapist, and thus knowing a lot about how therapy is done, help or hurt one’s own therapy? \u00a0I re-read a paper I saw some years earlier, “Psychological Mindedness as a Defense<\/a>,” by Gerald I. Fogel. \u00a0It’s a very good paper, written in technical language aimed toward mental health professionals. \u00a0Dr. Fogel’s basic point is that an intellectual understanding of one’s problems, or ease in placing one’s issues into conceptual categories, doesn’t move one’s own therapy forward. \u00a0On the contrary, comfortable ways of knowing and understanding oneself must be shaken up and disorganized in therapy in order to re-form them in a healthier way. \u00a0Facile use of therapy lingo (“psycho-babble”) can actively interfere with real experiencing in therapy, and therefore hinder true insight.<\/p>\n

A more nuanced answer, then, is that learning about therapy online or elsewhere may help at a conscious level to produce a better mental health “consumer.” \u00a0Conversely, it may hurt if it refines and strengthens the defensive use, conscious or unconscious, of psychological-mindedness.<\/p>\n

In most instances, though, I suspect it neither helps nor hurts. \u00a0Intellectual knowledge exists on a different plane than the interpersonal work done in dynamic psychotherapy. \u00a0There is a big difference between knowing something intellectually and knowing it deeply.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A reader named Kim wrote:<\/p>\n

I do tend to be cerebral and look for stuff on the internet like this blog to try to get more insight into what my therapist is doing. I am curious, do you think this dilutes the \u201cmagic\u201d of the therapy somewhat, or do you think it is helpful or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[31],"class_list":["post-251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-psychotherapy","tag-insight","odd"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=251"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":262,"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions\/262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}