Falling in love with one's therapist... the crash report.
With trepidation...
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Not sure where I'm going with this, so I will just write and see..
Someone pointed me in the direction of Kendra, a woman who posted a succession of films about falling in love with her psychiatrist.
I've only watched two YouTubes about her story so far - one from an expert in AI who was commenting mostly on how the 'magic mirror' quality of LLMs can reinforce error, as Kendra took to talking to two AIs about what happened. And the other YouTube is from a Dr in Seattle.
Briefly, this is the complaint Kendra makes against her psychiatrist is that because he had feelings for her, he 'bread crumbed' her into staying in therapy with him for four years.
This would be incredibly difficult to determine!
But I think that question about intention is missing out something vital. What if all the usual questions about boundaries and ethical conduct fail to address the real issue that underlies the problem?
What If the psychiatrist acted in the best and most ethical way and despite all good intentions the outcome was more hurt and harm to Kendra?
What if everything was right?
So, what went wrong?
Harm occured so logically we must ask what is the problem within the interpretation of ethical behaviour in therapy.
The assessments made by the people in the videos, focused on only two questions:
Was Kendra deluded or not - Blame the client.
Was the psychiatrist's behaviour ethical or not - Blame the therapist.
They are reasonable questions and yet, as I try to understand this story I keep hearing this phrase in my mind, the operation was a success but the patient died.
The only things I am sure of is that:
Kendra states that she experienced "weaponized neutrality"..
The Dr in Seattle didn't accept Kendra's term: weaponized neutrality. Because neutrality is seen as neither good nor bad - fair enough - and harmless. Well nitrogen is relatively neutral. We breathe it in all the time, we live within it every day. But neutrality isn't a good way to determine the potential for harm.
Deep sea divers will suffer lethal agony from the very same nitrogen unless they abide by decomposition protocols.
The only thing the Dr was concerned about was physical contact. Physical reactivity or physical neutrality. My argument is that neutrality makes itself felt, like nitrogen bubbles in the blood as a diver suffers from the bends! Neutrality is a cultural artefact especially favoured by those of a psychodynamic modality in particular.
Neutrality is an important part of therapy, it comes under the domain of boundaries. But I don't think that we, I mean us therapists, are being neutral when we maintain boundaries. We weigh up multiple possibilities, and settle on a use of words and body language in reply to a perception that a client is asking us to go into 'danger' that we trust is going to be the smoothest, safest for all.
But...
Epistemic injustice: neutrality can be a withholding of information purposefully and intentionally, to maintain an unequal power dynamic.
Epistemic injustice destroys informed consent. Hence Kendra's view that her psychiatrist was withholding information to keep her hooked and paying him.
If Kendra's psychiatrist was fearful of his feelings and chose to avoid the truth, then he was enacting his preferred version of reality and denying hers. A consequence of this is, she kept paying him.
People associate the term catfishing with complex narratives designed to create an alternative reality. Withholding critical information keeps the client swimming, trying, trying harder to get to the truth, trying, trying harder in this case, to prove what a good match they are, trying, trying so hard to make something meaningful out of some gesture or word that could be interpreted as significant if the ambiguous hoped for context is true.
Then when it is all over, having been so powerless it feels safer to tell ourselves that all the uncomfortable details don't matter.
Self blaming, self attack often follow.
In my case, Kit's refusal to talk about his feelings, and indeed blushing when I asked him directly to be more open with me, certainly didn't do me any good! As much as I understand the constraints of the profession, at some point there needs to be more openness about the fact that therapy techniques such as neutrality, act at times in the same way as a prejudicial denying of information.
It is February - and I always get the urge to do something about what happened in February. But doing something is dangerous. The intuition that I was 'standing on thin ice ' when I sent him my victim statement proved true. My vow to make the narrative and information freeware, wrong term - but it fits - continues. It is doing something - my writing here, but I want to do more. Next step is to get the story published. Why? Because whistle blowers get a very raw deal - surely a reason not to!!! Whistle blowers are treated very badly, even if we've never seen the aftermath I think we all know this. Hollywood creates stories to rebalance the truth. But Hollywood isn't about the truth. And so people prefer not to complain; much safer to try and remain stoic, plus a just get on with it mentality is seen as noble. Primarily because conflict creates damage. Don't cause trouble is sensible, rational, could be that you simply didn't understand the situation and you woul...
I began this blog with the intention of making sense of what had happened to me during therapy. I listened to all my sessions - which I'd recorded - and I set about publishing the transcripts here, because the therapist - Kit - refused to acknowledge that what had happened during therapy, though no rules were broken, though he had done nothing wrong, therapy had nevertheless left me feeling suicidal. Underlying this is my question; what is it about the rules for protecting the client, that makes them potentially so damaging? In October 2023 I decided to take this a whole step further - I set out my intention to explore the role of Eros in therapy, and more importantly how therapists can navigate their own fears and sense of vulnerability when Eros becomes the third party in the therapy session. The question now turns towards power dynamics, how can a client - who already feels vulnerable, recovering from horrible life events, unsure of themselves, identity already damaged - raise t...
1. Find out which ethical body oversees their work, and go to their website. Examples: UKCP BACP 2. Fill in the complaint form . 3. Attach evidence to that form... So basically, as soon as I walked out of therapy, my next stop after asking myself why I wont be dead as a result of what has happened - should have been initiating a complaint. The reasons why it didn't happen rest within the complaint process itself. And in how I personally think of complaints. Add the way the therapist had handled minor 'ruptures' - with defence; telling me that I'd misunderstood him - and then going on to repeat what he'd meant me to understand. The problem is: I am not the only person who has been accidentally silenced by the complaint procedure. Nor am I the only complainant who has been reported to the police. No surprise then when I tell you that I believe that the complaint procedure itself needs to be resolved. I'm not alone in discovering that if you complain to your thera...
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