He Was Warned About Certain Types Of Therapists.

Question: I've been reading the forum for several weeks but this is the first time I've asked a question. I was especially interested in the answer given to Abe because I myself am trying to decide on a therapist to go to. He was warned about certain types of therapists, called fuzzy seducers and emotional rescuers. I imagine some therapists may take offense (knowing full well what is meant by these terms) but to be honest, I don't have a clue what either of them means. Please say more, remembering that people like myself have no personal experience of therapists whatsoever. Lisa

Answer (1) Lisa, I had no intention of offending anyone but I must underline here that therapists are really just human beings too, with all the proclivities for emotional strengths and weaknesses, inherent in our species. To pretend otherwise is patent nonsense. Our training, our own treatment and supervision, vary as much in quantity and quality as anyone else's. However, these can go a long way in removing, or at least reducing, our own blind spots, neuroses and unhelpful counter-transferences. Regardless, disturbed therapists and counsellors do occasionally sneak through the safe guards. It is rare that they are inappropriate enough to cause actual harm but their own limitations, usually limit what can be achieved.

My non-technical, descriptive term of "fuzzy seducer" describes a person in this case, who induces someone to engage in treatment by purposely convincing them that they can provide exactly what is needed, regardless of the truth of this. It is the therapist's needs that are being served here, not the patient's. The "omniscient narcissist" is someone who sees themselves as a bottomless font of wisdom, understands everything and instantly knows exactly what needs to be done. They are dogmatic, rigid and have a need to be deferred to. These "qualities" can be mistaken by some for strength and decisiveness. They have very little empathy for others or tolerance for an alternative point of view. "Emotional rescuers" are those who due to unresolved and unrecognised needs within themselves, become easily overwhelmed by the suffering of others and seek to deflect and lessen their own feelings by rescuing others from their pain. Again, this is largely self serving, rather than essentially helpful to the other.

Answer provided by David White, Psychotherapist

Answer (2) Thank you for initiating this lively discussion. There is a related one where a client was repeatedly called very seductive by a psychologist. Insurance companies have policies in plain English but the health and self-help industries are yet to meet that standard in everyday use of language, both between therapists and with our patients or clients. I don't think psycho-babble is any more prevalent than legalese, newspeak or political spin in the respective fields. However, the trouble with jargon in this industry is that like all jargon, it divides people into insiders and outsiders, an in group and an out group. This works against our stated intention to do no harm and to rejoin, to heal and to welcome our clients back into life without the lies and injustices of them and us, the sick and the well, the experts and those who just have to take what they get on trust.

Professional jargon can be used to describe observable events (tears are pouring down his cheeks) and damaging prejudices (he's a bloody girl) even within the same group of professionals. Insiders are those in the know, the experts. In the use of jargon you raise, it is therapy insiders who are presumed to know what 'omniscient narcissist' describes in concrete terms. By the use of jargon therapist's themselves are further divided into therapists with 'healthy boundaries' and practices and those with sloppy and unhealthy ones (seductive; fuzzy; omniscient and narcissistic - whatever observable events any of those words can be reliably used to describe). Even healthy, unhealthy and boundaries are jargon terms and depend for their meaning on who you ask. You can always find an expert with a contrarian view of 'unhealthy boundaries'. And then the outsiders. In this case clients, those cruelly kept in the dark like the client in the neighboring forum labeled 'very seductive'. The use of jargon to describe our clients (and ourselves since 25% of therapists are in therapy at any one time) implicitly further divides 'clients' into straightforward, rewarding clients and complicated, difficult one's.

All of these outcomes of jargon are wrong headed, divisive and sometimes injurious. In almost every social context we fall into this shorthand, which does not include all of us, draw us all together as one people, one group of therapists or teachers who care for our own bad eggs rather than abandon 'them' in the too hard basket. Jargon won't include us all in an accessible language that enables us to laugh at ourselves. And yet used in humor and political satire the short hand of jargon works. One reason why 75% of the world's comics have Jewish heritage may be because Yiddish is one of the most inclusive languages in the world. Jargon is particularly toxic where it supplies racism, sexism and homophobia with ready made shorthands like the jewish or arab nose, a gay's limp wrist - none of which distinguish jews, arabs or queers from gentiles, non arabs or heteros.

Well, was I brought down to earth from this lofty rhetoric, with a thud. This morning I received a phone call from hospital about one of my clients, telling me that this wonderful, brilliant singer had hung himself last night in a rehearsal room. He survived but I am yet to find out with what damage to his voice and I am pulled back so suddenly into what unites us all - this precious, fragile life that inhabits us all equally. Some dealt a good hand some a lousy one and all trying to play those cards to the best of our ability. This division of client and therapist means nothing at these times. Our hearts are just pulled out of our chest to join with those who struggle as surely as we have or will do in our own life times.

Answer provided by Peter Fox, Clinical Psychologist