From Jon Frederickson: "Where are we going in Therapy?"

From Jon Frederickson, ISTDP Practitioner and Trainer

Where are we going in therapy?

Therapists and patients both ask, “Where are we going?” In one sense, we could answer that with one word: nowhere. Why? Because defenses are always designed to take us away from reality and our feelings about it. But no matter where we go, reality shows up. Thus, defenses help us take imaginary “journeys” away from what is, this moment. But we really can’t go anywhere, since we are always here, now.

And yet, as we let go of defenses, there is a sense of movement. Even the word emotion comes from the Latin e-movere, to convey the sense of something inside moving outward. We often think of therapy as moving toward an agreed upon conscious goal. And that is true on the conscious level. But a therapy that touches our depths does more. It reaches toward something unknown and unlocatable in space, the inner you. Where are we going? Toward the unknown of the patient and the unknown of the therapist. And because we do not know the unknown, we can’t know in advance where we are going. And even when we touch on the unknown in ourselves or the patient, it remains unnamable, unsayable, never to be captured by a concept or sentence. Just as music cannot be reduced to words, neither can the inner life of you and your patients.

​(https://istdpinstitute.com/)