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Nr 17. 2007 sid. 72–82 "Let's tell stories, so
maybe
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According to narrative psychology
Does this imply that psychotherapy itself can be seen as a story? Is telling stories enough? Can change come about by changing a narrative? And which part does the psychoanalytic child psychotherapist play? To Dina Vallino (1999) therapy is an unknown story, one that can neither be told immediately nor evidently. It takes time to weld emotions and communications into an occasionally surprising combination. Time is not only important at the beginning of a therapy but also during the whole therapeutic process. The therapist must dare ”loosing” time whilst creating a therapeutic space. For therapy to become a story, enough shared time is needed. Antonino Ferro (1999) compares therapy to a play in which the therapist together with his client elaborates the intrigues in a way that is not foreseen and even unthinkable beforehand for both of them. This implies that the therapist does not possess the truth but is a co-narrator. In my opinion both Vallino and Ferro refer to “negative capability” as a basic therapeutic attitude. This is, the capacity to tolerate not-knowing and to let the meaning of an experience emerge from the experience itself whilst letting go what is familiar so far. When I’m too scared, too distracted or too constrained while waiting for the child’s story to unfold, I cannot be touched by the child and I am thus not fully available as a transference object. My presence as a feeling and thinking therapist implies necessarily being more or less overwhelmed by what is happening, which can come as a rather unpleasant surprise. “Nothing is what is seems to be”, became one of my guidelines, as in my therapy with Sophie. Sophie or Pirandello in the playroomIn Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author, the audience is confronted with the unexpected arrival of six characters during the rehearsals for a play, who insist on being given life, on being allowed to tell their story. I quote:
Sophie’s grandmother consulted our service because she could no longer handle the behavourial problems of her three year old granddaughter. Because Sophie’s mother suffers from a chronic mental illness requiring a permanent stay in a psychiatric hospital, Granny became the primary caretaker. Sophie’s parents divorced when she was a baby, her father committed suicide a few years later. Sophie’s cognitive development is delayed. She has severe learning problems for which she was referred to a school for special education. The individual therapy was only part of my long-term work with the grandmother, the mother and all the other pro-fessionals involved. The following happened when Sophie was nine years old. ...
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Copyright: Allt material ©
MELLANRUMMET 2011-10-29 |
Christine Leroy, är
psykolog och barn- och ungdomspsykoterapeut i Antwerpen, Belgien. Hon
arbetar sedan 1981 inom en Public Mental Health Service for Children,
Adolescents and Parents (Andante Jeugdteam Merksem-Antwerpen). Hon är
också en av Belgiens EFPP-delegater. Artikeln bygger på en
paperpresentation i en workshop vid EFPP-konferensen med titeln “Play
and Power” i Köpenhamn i maj 2007. Den utgår från tre kliniska fall och
fokuserar på själva terapin som en berättelse och betydelsen av
berättelser och sagor i psykoanalytiskt baserad barnpsykoterapi.
