WHAT DOES THERAPY TRY TO DO?
Individual therapy or counseling (therapy for groups and families will be discussed in detail later) is really an attempt to build a bridge between answers to these two now familiar questions: "Where are you now, or what kind of person are you now?" and "Where do you want to go, or what kind of person do you want to become?" Think of therapy as an attempt to build a bridge so that you can pass from a present situation to a desired way of being.
Carl Rogers defines therapy as "a relationship in which at least one of the parties has the intent of promoting the growth, development, maturity, improved functioning, improved coping with life of the other."[[1]]
[[1]] Carl Rogers, On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1961), pp. 39-40.
Psychiatrist Allen Wheelis takes this definition further:
Therapy may offer insights into bewildering experience, help with the making of connections, give comfort and encouragement, assist in the always slippery decision of whether to hang on and try harder or to look for a different way to try....
The place of insight is to illumine: to ascertain where one is, how one got there, how now to proceed, and to what end. It is a blueprint, as in building a house, and may be essential, but no one achieves a house by blueprints alone, no matter how accurate or detailed. A time comes when one must take up hammer and nails....[[2]]
[[2]] Allen Wheelis, How People Change (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), pp. 101, 107.
Therapy involves a three-fold relationship among a helping professional, the approach to therapy used by him or her, and, what is most important, the outlook of the individual client. In this book we will examine each of these three dimensions of therapy in some detail, but here we will concentrate on the one therapists generally agree is the most important: you—the kind of person you are, what your attitudes and outlook are, and, of course, how much you really want to develop or change. Your attitudes will determine, probably more than anything else, what variety of therapy you will most benefit from.
Therapists, like teachers (which they really are), find that their clients or patients can be divided into two groups: active and passive learners. When you go to a doctor with a broken arm, your relationship to your doctor is a passive one: you need only to cooperate as he examines your arm, perhaps administers an anesthetic, and sets the break. You may take medication for pain, and then you simply wait until, thanks to the body's automatic healing processes, the break is fused. The public's conception of medicine is predominately a passive one. To be a "patient" is for the most part to be a passive bystander: the physician is the active agent who brings about healing. There are occasional exceptions—for example, physical therapy and rehabilitation therapy after a serious injury or illness, when the patient must become more active and accept more responsibility.