[DLMURL]http://www.alisonball.com.au/i_want_my_mumy.php[/DLMURL]
'A way of working or thinking about what is needed for some of these clients
In recent years I have had much interest in the theoretical discussion in psychoanalysisand psychotherapy regarding the continuum that is therapy and this links with my old interest I mentioned. When I first became a social worker in the ‘70’s I often had not a clue how I could work with some of the clients I was seeing.
Then I came across a book called “All My Children” by Jacqui Schiff. In case you do not know this book, it is the story of two psychiatric nurses who worked in mental hospitals in the days before medication was available to treat schizophrenics. These two nurses were totally frustrated by the lack of any hope for the most chronic and seriously ill patients some of whom were relatively young but had been given up on by the doctors.
The two nurses resigned and began taking some of these patients into their own home and quite literally re-parented them including bottle feeding, cots, nappies and leading them through crawling stages as necessary. Numbers of these patients were able to regain a functioning life. A more recent account of re-parenting is given in The Flock written by Joan Frances Casey with Lynn Wilson.
Given that I myself was in great need of re-parenting at the time, it is not surprising that this book made sense to me and gave me a helpful framework for thinking about what was needed for some clients even if they did not require such an extreme form of re-parenting. Even after all I have learned since then this notion of re-parenting still frequently seems relevant to me.
I also realise now that this notion can be included in a whole discourse in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis about the goals and aims of the work and the methods to be used. I do not intend going into that discourse any further here today because I want to concentrate on using this notion of re-parenting as a useful framework for thinking about what may be going on for us and some of our clients who lack this internalized mothering function.
I should say that I understand that this notion of re-parenting is not very fashionable these days and sometimes it is regarded as demeaning, patronising and infantalizing. However, I want you to consider it because I think it fits almost exactly with what some people need from us as therapists and is particularly relevant for these groups of clients of whom I am speaking. I do not want to be patronising because this was also me when I came into therapy and it is true that nowadays I can look back on that infantile half grown up me and feel a bit sheepish or even a bit ashamed about how needy I was.
On the other hand I still, to this day stand in awe and wonder at the depth of the process, the courage it took and the gratefulness I feel that I found a therapist who could see me through the process. Then I have that same sense of awe and wonder when a client wants me to be involved with them in a similar process.
Clients Needing Re-parenting
The first group are those people who come closest to my idea of re-parenting when they are driven to regress immediately they attach themselves without question to a therapist who they sense as able to take on their neediness. It is like they are saying, “You are IT for me”.
That is, this person has been searching for someone who will allow them to deal with their deepest, most regressed dependency and attachment needs. Some may have first done the rounds of many therapists who have shied away from their neediness. These people can sometimes do significant work in the surface layers with some therapists but the dependency layers which sometimes verge on the psychotic will only be touched when they have found the therapist who fits the bill for them and can offer long term, very intensive and patient psychotherapy. Mostly they are people who have been deeply traumatised, neglected or suffered great deprivation in their childhood.
These clients are often highly emotional, often very regressed and sometimes quite uncontained. They frequently only learn through action and the concrete and especially by us being very concrete in our care and concern for them. They idealize us at first. They demand or wish that we love them as much or more than anyone else in our world. Many profit by being held and nurtured in a very baby like way. But, can they then get up at the end of a session and go out into the world? Are they safe? Will they have a car crash on the way home? We worry about them. They occupy our minds constantly rather like the mother keeping the baby in mind.
As far as they are concerned it is not transference where they experience us as if we are their mother. In their mind we ARE their mother; a mother that they never experienced before. Therapy with this group can be very torrid at times and even gruelling as the idealization turns on its head when we somehow and inevitably betray them and we become hated and denigrated. During this time we can only hope that in the good times we have built up enough of a good enough presence in their minds and heart. If we have, then they may be able to stay with us, refrain from suicide or otherwise harming themselves and hopefully find new strength and a different sort of relationship from the stance of an adult.'
One example of a therapist who doesn't pass the buck. I love her!
