So you know how I often write detailed accounts of what I told Igor and what he told me in my sessions with him? Well, there is a school of thought that would say that by my doing that I am damaging the work and even impinging my growth. I have kept this idea in the back of my mind as long as I have been writing about my own personal therapy here on the blog and chose to keep it there, that is until now. Cheryl Fuller, on her brilliant blog Jung at Heart, wrote a post about the importance of container for transformation to occur in psychotherapy and it got me thinking and I felt like I needed to think about/write about this issue as a means of coming to understand exactly how I feel about this and to see if perhaps my writing about my own therapy is helping or hurting my work with Igor.
In case you don’t know about the idea of the “the container in therapy” here’s the theory: In Depth psychotherapy the relationship and the room that the work is done is understood as an alchemical vessel, a sealed vessel and as a container. According to this theory the change occurs because, in part, due to the container remaining sealed. The heat, tension and energy that happens within the therapy needs to remain in the container for change to occur. There are many ways that the therapist works to keep the container sealed: a safe room that has a sealed door and doesn’t allow for others to hear what’s going on. The therapist doesn’t take calls during session. And the therapist’s use of confidentiality is another way the container is kept sealed and safe and a place where change can occur.
Continue reading ‘The Container’
