A Day In The Life of A Therapist

About the Book

This book represents selected therapy session dialogues from over two-hundred sessions. These sessions were derived from two treatment facilities where I was engaged as a private practice therapist. The many human behaviors that were diagnosed and treated were diverse in nature.

The aggregate of the clinical diagnoses involved many disorders: post-traumatic, depression, disruptive behavior, eating disorder, bipolar, schizophrenia, intermittent explosive, borderline personality, dysthymic, attention deficit hyperactive, and substance abuse.

From the each patient’s perspective, they either developed trust in our clinical interview session or, as their therapist, I always worked towards achieving this goal. After each diagnosis was made, the outcome of the treatment plan we jointly developed required the patient’s trust. Without trust, further session therapies would be for naught with these patients. In each case dialogue, my focus was to identify and portray the nature of each patient’s presenting problem, their mood, and how my intervention was made to treat the patient. Many times the patient’s denial and defense mechanisms surfaced. In other cases, we encountered transference and counter transference issues.

The role of the therapist is to assume a neutral position with the patient so that the patient will develop a transference relationship. Thus, patients hopefully would project onto the analyst their feelings they have encountered from significant others in their lives. With transference comes counter transference.

Turning to countertransference, you may think of it as an arcane topic; it is certainly an unwieldy word, one which conjures up the most abstract of latter-day metapsychological conceptualizations. In fact, it arose very early and was very immediate: it is why Freud's first collaborator, Joseph Breuer, gave up. He ran away from Anna O because she aroused him. If transference is projection, countertransference is projective identification — something elicited by the patient onto the therapist: evocative knowledge. Anna O elicited in Breuer a sexual excitement which he found unacceptable and was unbearable to himself and his wife, so he abandoned the work.

About the Author

Dr. Norm Cohen the principal research investigator is a Licensed Clinical Counselor, and Assistant Professor of Counseling at the Bowie State University. Dr. Cubie Bragg his co-author also is an assistant professor at the same university. Both researchers are Clinical Directors in private practices who confront self esteem and depression on a daily basis.