What was the single most important lesson you learned in graduate school related to human thought and behavior?
What was the single most important lesson you learned in graduate school related to human thought and behavior?
Regardless of what I project to others or what the professor, students or early clients think of this I construct, I will still have to face me. I had better be comfortable with relating with the issues, shortcomings, foolishness, and brilliance of me, so I can deal with these in others.
What I got out of that is work with clients can bring up our own issues: these are what I call "matching pictures." When clients have similar personality traits, or have experienced similar events that we have, it can really bring out our insecurities, weaknesses, etc. This is one of the reasons I think therapy is important for therapists. Understanding out own personality is critical because there are clients that will test us, anger us, and really push those buttons that we thought were well hidden. I think therapy can definitely help with this so we are less vulnerable and capable to remaining objective in session.
I will start:
For me, the single most important piece of knowledge, regarding behavior, is that no one theory can really explain the totality of human existence. While there are theories that may seem to make more sense than others, in the end, I don't think we have figured much out. It reminds me of the story about the elephant and the blind people each describing what they felt. While each person was accurate in their descriptions, none of them could see the elephant in its entirety thus they couldn't really understand what it was. I think this is similar to human behavior; while we get bits and pieces correct, we generally miss the bigger picture.
I realize now we only know what we know and "think" we know much more than we actually do. I guess that is exciting as there is a lot of work to be done.
What was the single most important lesson you learned in graduate school related to human thought and behavior?
There isn't always an explanation for every action/reaction/behavior.
You mean one that you can discern, suggesting at complexity of life? Or are you talking about seeming randomness in life?
I learned that determining the source of the problem is not always productive or possible.
Sometimes the client knows better than we do what will help them get better.
edit: actually the client OFTEN knows better...