Chapter 49 Chapter 9 Secret Stories in the Consulting Room

In the history of psychotherapy, there should be countless cases of psychiatrists getting involved with female patients.The earlier famous case is the story of Freud's colleague Bruno and his female patient Anna. Many years ago, a friend of mine said to me: "If a woman patient has tried all kinds of psychotherapy and still can't cure her mental illness, assuming a one-time act with a psychologist can cure her all. For the purpose of mental illness, I am willing to be that kind of psychiatrist.” "You sound like you're saying that your thing outperforms all psychotherapy." I couldn't help teasing him.

"Hi! I'm just guessing, the psychiatrist and the patient are in the same room for a long time, that kind of sexual feeling will inevitably happen." His words actually represent the prying curiosity and conjecture of many people about the profession of psychiatrists.Lonely men and widows live in the same room and fall in love with each other for a long time, which seems to be a matter of course.If I defend psychiatrists here hoarsely and insist that all psychiatrists are the reincarnation of Liu Xiahui, not only those friends who have doubts will not believe it, but even those who have no doubts may doubt that I have no money here. explanation.

In the history of psychotherapy, there should be countless cases of psychiatrists getting involved with female patients.The earlier famous case is the story of Freud's colleague Bruno and his female patient Anna.Bruno used hypnosis to treat Anna's neurosis and achieved good results.But after one hypnosis, Anna suddenly sat up, embraced Bruno's head and kissed him.Bruno was visibly panicked, not knowing why.The incident became public later, and Bruno's wife became so jealous that she forced Bruno to move and leave the city where they lived. As Bruno's good friend, Freud naturally knew the ins and outs of the matter.Following Bruno's move, Ana falls into a phase of depression.But she recovered and became an activist in the European feminist movement.Freud observed the changes in Anna, and he was keenly aware that it was not a bad thing for a patient to have feelings for a psychiatrist.On the contrary, Freud believed that only by trying to get the patient to transfer out the repressed feelings in the patient's heart can the patient's psychological illness be cured.

It sounds like the psychiatrist is deliberately letting the patient fall into an emotion that is transferred from the heart, and then let this emotion grow.When this emotion matures, let it sublimate or disappear naturally.Such transference is seen in classical psychoanalysis as the key to therapy.Freud even believed that if the patient's transference did not take place, psychoanalysis could not be effective. Although the transference of psychoanalysis is not a pure sexual transference, but a transfer of repressed emotions in a broad sense.In many cases, sex is also the subject of the most conflict and entanglement.For the psychologist who has not fully solved the sexual problem, the patient's sexual transference is like a fire thrown into a pile of dry wood, and it is not easy to prevent it from burning.However, please note that this burning should not be simply misunderstood as throbbing of lust, burning is harmful and frightening in many states.

Towards the end of my internship at one of my placements in Chicago, I routinely had to do one last concluding session with my patient and make arrangements for his next therapist.Leon is one of my patients. After half a year of my psychotherapy, he thanked me for guiding him out of a closed psychic hut, but he still hopes to have a psychiatrist to guide him in the future.After saying a lot of flattering words to me, he added that he hoped that his next psychiatrist would also be a man, and that he hoped that his next psychiatrist would be as empathetic and intelligent as I am. In the impression of ordinary people, male patients should prefer female psychiatrists, but Leon specifically pointed out the need for male psychiatrists.I asked why, and he said that female therapists could not handle what he was expressing in psychotherapy.But in fact, a competent psychiatrist must be able to bear any morbid content expressed by the patient.If a therapist can't handle it, then he or she is not a fully competent therapist.

So I asked Leon what it was that made him think female therapists couldn't handle it, and he told me it wasn't his guess, but his actual experience.