Interview with Jeff Hudson, LPC, CGP, FAGPA modern analytic group therapist, by Laura Kasper, PhD, fellow group therapist, about the NCGPS Fall Event in October, 2018
Thomas Ogden, M.D. : ”I view psychoanalysis as most fundamentally an effort by patient and analyst to put into words what is true to the patient’s emotional experience. This articulation holds such great importance because the very act of thinking and giving “shape” to what is true to the patient’s emotional experience alters that truth. This perspective underlies my conception of the therapeutic action of interpretation: In interpreting, the analyst verbally symbolizes what he intuits to be true to the patient’s unconscious experience and, in so doing, alters what is true and contributes to the creation of a potentially new experience with which the analytic pair may do psychological work. Patient and analyst are not in search of truth for its own sake; they are principally interested in what is true to what is happening in the transference-countertransference. The analytic pair is doing so for the purpose of creating a containing human context in which the patient may be able to live with his past and present emotional experience (as opposed to evacuating it or deadening himself to it). In helping the patient to face the truth of his emotional experience, the analyst is respectful of the ways the patient (beginning in his infancy) has found to protect his sanity. The rhythm and pace of the patient’s efforts to face the truth of his emotional experience is set by the patient. A large part of the analyst’s role involves holding the tension between the patient’s need for safety and his need for truth.” Ogden, T.H. (2005). What I Would Not Part With. Fort Da, 11:8-17.
Books I recommend:
For Clients About Therapy:
Gary Trosclair: I am Working on it in Therapy
Novels About Group Therapy:
Irvin Yalom: The Schopenhauer Cure
Paul Solotaroff: Group: Six People in Search of a Life
For New Therapists:
Michael Kahn: Between Therapist and Client
About Mindfulness:
Daniel Siegel: Mindsight -The New Science of Personal Transformation
Couples, Marriage, Intimate relationships:
Sue Johnson: Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations For a Lifetime of Love
For women:
Marion Woodman: Leaving My Father’s House: A Journey to Conscious Femininity