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Don’t Call Me a Shrink
Don’t Call Me a Shrink
When people ask me what I do for a living, I typically tell them that I practice psychotherapy. At times they may respond, “Oh, so you’re a shrink.” Notwithstanding that I’m a psychotherapist and not in fact a psychiatrist (the profession more often associated with the moniker “shrink”), being called a shrink causes me to pull back and feel some discomfort. I’d rather expand than shrink. Although this statement might appear somewhat glib, it really speaks to my commitment to the emergeing participatory worldview and my intention to practice a psychology that is in coherence with flow and participation as opposed to objective analysis.
Mainstream Western psychotherapy—notwithstanding notable exceptions—remains largely rooted in the old paradigm of reality, which not surprisingly values objective analysis. Newton’s world of separation, steeped in the belief that one can stand apart and assess, informs the goal of objectivity. Yet we've discovered that separation is untenable in the quantum world, and apparently this rule has application in our everyday reality as well. This of course challenges the very notion and validity of objectivity since being separate is requisite to claiming objectivity.
Furthermore, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, which holds that the very act of observation affects the object being observed, also has significant consideration beyond the quantum reality. These paradigm-altering discoveries suggest that we need to reconsider not only whether the goal of objectivity is attainable but also, as I will argue, whether it’s even desirable. I propose that the myth of objectivity not only incapacitates the field of psychotherapy but also more importantly underwrites the pathologizing of people throughout much of modern society.
From the classical perspective—seeking causality and determinism—classically trained therapists believe that with sufficient information, they can drill down to the proper diagnosis and perhaps to the root causes of an individual’s afflictions. As a result, the therapeutic gaze is often on focused on the cause; hence, reductive thinking and the term shrink. Yet from this methodology, we sadly neglect how to move our clients forward, how to get from here to there, or even what there might look like.
People often seem to have a reasonable ability to understand how they’ve become who they are and appreciate the nature of their struggles. A continued replay of these life events, without sufficient focus on relief if not transformation, leaves many individuals dissatisfied with their therapeutic experience. Frequently, people who come to work with me who have previously been in therapy share their hope that they won’t have to once again recount their life experience, ad nauseam. What they need is to see their lives through a new filter, one brimming with the hope of new potential. This requires a therapeutic framework no longer mired in reducing the individual to the wounds of his past. To engage the client in a participatory and forward-moving direction necessitates letting go of the futile, objective analyzing of his condition.
Classically minded therapists tend to become steeped in the diagnostic penchant, which limits their capacity as healers and has them seek to treat the diagnosis rather than co-creating new realities with their clients—realities grounded in a humanistic venture of actualizing new possibilities and new wave collapses. The classical approach limits the healing potential of the therapeutic engagement and, worse, contributes to the normalizing of pathology.
Traditional psychology is still, for the most part, informed by the biomedical approach, resting its foundation on diagnosis. In fact, health insurance coverage requires a diagnosis for coverage. The basic tenet of diagnosis is that objectivity, in fact, exists. In order to diagnose, we may assume that our subjective interpretations aren’t getting in the way and that objectivity actually prevails. The operating assumption is that the clinician can indeed inform the insurance company what is wrong with the individual. From this perspective, we should assume that a dozen clinicians working with the same individual would all render the same diagnosis. I can assure you that no such result would occur.
Each of us sees through the subjective filter of our own life experience, colored by our beliefs, thoughts, personal history, prejudices, biases, and of course our unconscious stirrings. This is as true for therapists as it is for their clients. Therapists are not calculating and detached automatons (thankfully) but simply educated professionals assumedly doing our best, yet constrained by an outmoded model of thinking. To that end, the field of psychology has not kept pace with the remarkable advances in the emerging sciences in that it clings to the principles of the classical paradigm.
The new sciences have indicated that objectivity is unattainable and given that, it's essential that therapists come out from hiding behind the "professionalism" of diagnosis and certainty and assume our proper place in asssiting our clients and patients.
This article is excerpted from Mel's forthcoming book, A Shift of Mind.
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