The Creative Use of Self as a Psychotherapist
What seems taboo can actually be healing
I always grappled with the classic portrayal of the clinician as a wall of neutrality. This was especially true when I began interning at mental health faculties as an undergrad in psychology. My boundaries were not appropriately stringent and to top it off, even now (as my clients have informed me) I am still not proficient at shielding my visceral reactions behind a poker face.
Perhaps it was my identification as a victim of complex trauma, along with my mother's plight with schizophrenia that hindered my ability to effectively drop into my role and authority as a therapist-in-training. In hindsight, it’s obvious that I divulged too much about myself, albeit looking back I also see the nascent qualities of creative self-expression that were emerging in my work as a therapist.
To paraphrase the founder of depth psychoanalysis Dr. Carl Jung, to be an effective therapist one also has to be comfortable as a patient. Striking that balance would be the key to my effectively facilitating treatment that embodied my creativity and dispositions while honoring ethical and clinical guidelines.
By the time I made it to graduate school in the 1980s my professional identity was slowly taking form. During my internship, I was…
