PSYKOTERAPEUTENS AUTENTICITET - TERAPIENS AFGØRENDE LED

Om at tage 'at tage klienten alvorligt' alvorligt nok

Abstract

The article argues the point that the primary professional skill in psychotherapy is a personal one. The practical therapeutic value of the therapist's theoretical and technical competence is dependent on the therapist having sufficient ability to be present in the contact with the client in the therapeutically relevant way. That it is considered personal, does not mean that this ability is a more or less undefinable trait that cannot be leamed, but that it is learned through a process of personal development, where the primary teaching method is the therapist's own therapeutic process.
Therapeutically relevant presence is seen as an absolute orientation towards the client's true interests, with two critical dimensions - one, awareness-related, and the other, ethical - in the service of this orientation. The awareness-related dimension deals with total personal presence; the ethical dimension with human authenticity. It is argued that authenticity is of critical therapeutic significance because the core problem behind the issues that psychotherapy can deal with, is negative identity development during childhood socialisation, caused by inauthentic identity-mirroring by
the child's key adults. The lack of authenticity in the adults' mirroring undermines the child's confidence in his or her ability to differentiale between false and genuine human contact. The reintegration of the client's confidence in this ability, which is seen as the central objective of therapy, can only occur within a relationship based on authentic mirroring.