I was watching a program today and the therapist said to the patient something like, "Go ahead, there is no judgment here."
It got me thinking. I grew up in a subculture of the society and a family where I was often exposed to strong judgments.
Combined with my personality, I became fearful of judgments and in some ways still judge myself when nobody is present. And the majority of the time, those are negative judgments. But I also judge myself positively. I do the same for other people. And I dare project, this is true of other people, that we judge ourselves and others often.
So it must seem to a first time patient, that the idea of there being no judgment, too good to be true. I think such patient is not wrong, that therapy is not free of judgment, both on conscious level and subconscious level. Therapists who say so, are either outright lying, or do not bother saying specifically what kind of judgments they will make and what kind they won't. Or third group of therapists, which I afraid is a large enough number, are simply not aware that they are making judgments (albeit of a different sort).
In fact, it is impossible for there to be any sort of guidance provided to anybody without making a judgment about anything. The most basic judgments are about life and death, sickness, but also what's "functional" or "adaptive" or "healthy", and so on. Calling something a symptom is one way to judge it, and diagnosing someone based on those symptoms is another.
To call someone a prophet, a village idiot, schizophrenic, "person with schizophrenia", crazy, nutjob, ill, possessed, whatever, those are all judgments of different sorts, made by different people and in different times and with different intentions.
And of course judgments can be positive too. Surely it must be better to be healthy than sick, to be alive than dead, to feel better than worse, to have better "quality of life" than not, to have more ground-shattering orgasms, to adapt to workplace and succeed in work, to make more money....Or is it?
I am not claiming that all these judgments are equal or wrong, but I do claim them all these to be judgments of one sort or another.
They don't have to be conscious either. I mean many therapists aim to be nonjudgmental in many areas. But it's quite likely that they make unconscious judgments all the time, enjoying their time more with a beautiful person who pays on time and smells good, versus a person who hasn't taken a shower in a month and rarely pays on time and at every chance tries to damage the furniture in the office.
Consciously the therapist thinks: These two people are suffering, each in their own way, and I am not going to judge them just as I won't judge a person with a puss-filled infected wound as worse than a person with merely a scratch. But who is to say she won't wince or regularly feel disgust when dealing with one versus the other? Which, of course, is the reason therapists must try to work with countertransference. Not to be nonjudgmental, no, but to judge selectively and in the right way, to judge only in way it's clinically beneficial to patient's mental heal...or something like that.
Now I'm not suggesting therapists talk about their subconscious judgments to patients. I only included that for the sake of covering both kinds. But I do think therapists have to be specific about the kinds of conscious judgments they will make. Which probably requires being clear about the values of psychotherapy, the goals, and the various ways that judgments are incorporated into the enterprise. Some people apparently think that just because therapy is "secular", that mainstream therapy has no value system. I still remember a classmate once telling the class that she used to feel ashamed by people judging her (growing up Catholic) but therapy, though nonjudgment, taught her there is nothing to feel ashamed about when it comes to sex, to her body, etc. I almost wanted to tell her that her therapist did use judgement about shame, or else they would not have worked so hard to remove it. Not saying it's good or bad, just that judgments were made. And why not tell the clients that, that this thing called psychotherapy also makes all sorts of judgements.
It got me thinking. I grew up in a subculture of the society and a family where I was often exposed to strong judgments.
Combined with my personality, I became fearful of judgments and in some ways still judge myself when nobody is present. And the majority of the time, those are negative judgments. But I also judge myself positively. I do the same for other people. And I dare project, this is true of other people, that we judge ourselves and others often.
So it must seem to a first time patient, that the idea of there being no judgment, too good to be true. I think such patient is not wrong, that therapy is not free of judgment, both on conscious level and subconscious level. Therapists who say so, are either outright lying, or do not bother saying specifically what kind of judgments they will make and what kind they won't. Or third group of therapists, which I afraid is a large enough number, are simply not aware that they are making judgments (albeit of a different sort).
In fact, it is impossible for there to be any sort of guidance provided to anybody without making a judgment about anything. The most basic judgments are about life and death, sickness, but also what's "functional" or "adaptive" or "healthy", and so on. Calling something a symptom is one way to judge it, and diagnosing someone based on those symptoms is another.
To call someone a prophet, a village idiot, schizophrenic, "person with schizophrenia", crazy, nutjob, ill, possessed, whatever, those are all judgments of different sorts, made by different people and in different times and with different intentions.
And of course judgments can be positive too. Surely it must be better to be healthy than sick, to be alive than dead, to feel better than worse, to have better "quality of life" than not, to have more ground-shattering orgasms, to adapt to workplace and succeed in work, to make more money....Or is it?
I am not claiming that all these judgments are equal or wrong, but I do claim them all these to be judgments of one sort or another.
They don't have to be conscious either. I mean many therapists aim to be nonjudgmental in many areas. But it's quite likely that they make unconscious judgments all the time, enjoying their time more with a beautiful person who pays on time and smells good, versus a person who hasn't taken a shower in a month and rarely pays on time and at every chance tries to damage the furniture in the office.
Consciously the therapist thinks: These two people are suffering, each in their own way, and I am not going to judge them just as I won't judge a person with a puss-filled infected wound as worse than a person with merely a scratch. But who is to say she won't wince or regularly feel disgust when dealing with one versus the other? Which, of course, is the reason therapists must try to work with countertransference. Not to be nonjudgmental, no, but to judge selectively and in the right way, to judge only in way it's clinically beneficial to patient's mental heal...or something like that.
Now I'm not suggesting therapists talk about their subconscious judgments to patients. I only included that for the sake of covering both kinds. But I do think therapists have to be specific about the kinds of conscious judgments they will make. Which probably requires being clear about the values of psychotherapy, the goals, and the various ways that judgments are incorporated into the enterprise. Some people apparently think that just because therapy is "secular", that mainstream therapy has no value system. I still remember a classmate once telling the class that she used to feel ashamed by people judging her (growing up Catholic) but therapy, though nonjudgment, taught her there is nothing to feel ashamed about when it comes to sex, to her body, etc. I almost wanted to tell her that her therapist did use judgement about shame, or else they would not have worked so hard to remove it. Not saying it's good or bad, just that judgments were made. And why not tell the clients that, that this thing called psychotherapy also makes all sorts of judgements.
