Why it is beautiful when someone calls you by your name

I recently read an article about the elephant in the room, that followed another article about the dangers of psychopharmacology being used as a plaster for underlying affect ¹ , and then another article in quantum physics that builds on Eugene Wigner’s theory that there is no objective reality ² .

Psychologists who work psychoanalytically are not afraid to work with the elephant in the room, because they are not afraid to work long-term. And I believe this is what sets it apart from other frameworks in working with the mind.

It starts with the way we are trained. I think that there is an abyss in the way University departments train psychologists, in that psychodynamic theory is where the discipline of psychology started and in that the mind was never seen as separate to the body which I believe is the ultimate object, yet minimal reference is made to the field of psychoanalytic work and it is moreover downplayed or mythologised into elite groups that function as a type of academic superego or know-all.

There is real danger in the in-fighting between sub-disciplines that are prescribed by the scope of practice upheld by our board of health professions.

I made the decision to study educational psychology because I wanted to work with children. In my training and especially after I completed my degree, the focus of furthering my knowledge became clinical or on therapy. I think it is important to also acknowledge that academic training leaves you in a sea of uncertainty even after a period of eight years give or take.

What continues to annoy my work, is the constant wall of unrecognition in the work that an educational psychologist can do. I use the word annoy with meaning, because it interferes with healing. When children are annoyed or irritable or frustrated it is often the most significant sign of despair.

There is also a public understanding that educational psychologists are glorified remedial teachers, who always have to actively work with the entire system that surrounds the child, i.e. guidance and practical rules of how to modify behaviour in steps 1, 2, 3...

A supervisor who I greatly admire told me once that we either write reports like we are selling Coca-Cola, or we always feel that we need to do something in therapy . So you can imagine the broadening in my understanding of the mind when she suddenly started talking about dreams. Because it directs your work on the subconscious and that is specific to the person in front of you.

Recently, I was seeing a client (or patient) for the duration of a school term. First, the medical aid did not commit to settling the account after it was concluded that I was an educational psychologist. Following the summer break, the client did not return for therapy and in passing, I had to learn that his parents took him to a well-known psychologist in town who adamantly persisted that his problems were clinical and that he, therefore, had to (continue) seeing a clinical psychologist.

It is not necessary to fear the mind and it is important to link both the light and the dark in our psyches. This is what keeps us from splitting, that can become pathological. Scope of practice cannot define what it is to work mentally; it instills anxiety that is a symptom of fear because it becomes a cognition, which is exactly what screens growth.

Much is written about the negative impact of the internet and as solidified in smartphone use in children. But with the internet turning 30, it’s developer, Tim Berners-Lee was quoted as saying it is also a mirror of both good and bad in humanity ³ . So the question becomes what do you see when you look into the mirror?

I used the previous example not to voice my frustration, but to emphasise the elephant in the room. By adhering to bureaucratic scopes of practice, we already assign someone to a diagnosis that often denies the most important factor in therapy that is the relationship.

I continue to sign reports using only 'psychologist' because that is what I am and what I was trained to do. I do not wish to be anything else than an educational psychologist.

Furthermore, I think it is problematic that psychologists do not contact one another when they take over a client. I believe this is another part of psychodynamic work that appeals to me, because you cannot move forward if you are not willing to look backwards. This is also the symbolic function of stories which is the carrier of our collective unconscious and makes us human.

I often use the analogy of the series Life that was aired by the BBC and narrated by Sir David Attenborough. At the end of the last episode, he contemplates that maybe the remarkable survival and thus evolution of the mammalian species, is due to the concept of family. This can be transcribed as shared knowledge, the generational passing over of stories, or good mothering which is just another word for nurturing.

Every relationship will impact you in some way. I am always baffled and humbled by how easily children can let you into their worlds. I uphold that this is therefore sacred and something not to be messed around with. This includes parents jumping from one psychologist to the next, and ultimately ending up with a medical professional that miraculously prescribes a pill that solves all problems and silences all teachers. We do not look at the placebo effect that a pill has. To me, it is almost hypnotic in the sense that it creates the age-old premise that there is a problem that can be named (the diagnosis) and there is a remedy (medication) which automatically leads to a clear solution, where the inference is that it thus must be real.

Of course not all medicine prescribing professionals think the same, and often a drug can have a helpful bridging effect when used in combination of therapy (when you stay on a bridge, you aren’t going anywhere, spatially or temporally).

It was a psychiatrist who once told me that the two most important words in medicine are, it depends.

I am also not against a diagnosis. I believe one of the greatest achievements in therapy is when there is recognition that we have a problem. Naming it gives it substance and that is something we can work with. It is no longer a ‘but why?’ feeling.

To paraphrase: when we do not recognise the elephant in the room, it is like hearing a baby crying and not going over to check and soothe and regulate. Or talking about emotions without emptying the trash. I’ve always liked the simile of therapy healing a wound. A physical wound does not disappear. There will always be a scar that you can see and feel. But with time, it does not hurt anymore. And whereas when you started there was a plaster, what remains is a processed memory.

References
1. Hammersley, D. (2019). Blind Spots, Elephants and Fairies: How Psychopharmacology Impacts on Psychotherapy. 6 February 2019, https://www.therapyroute.com/article/blind-spots-elephants-and-fairies-by-d-hammersley
2. Proietti, M., Pickston, A., Graffitti, F., Barrow, P., Kundys, D., Branciard, C., Ringbauer, M. & Fedrizzi, A. (2019). Experimental rejection of observer-independence in the quantum world. 13 February 2019, arxiv.org/abs/1902.05080
3. Keaton, J. (2019). The Man Who Invented the World Wide Web Has Mixed Feelings About What the Internet Has Become. Time Magazine Web, 12 March 2019 http://time.com/5549551/tim-berners-lee-inventor-internet/