You wonder how a Jungian analyst is able to achieve so much with healing patients of chronic medical conditions where other therapies fail. Well, the key behind the success story of the Jungian therapy is in its therapeutic approach. Under this therapy, the Jungian analyst seeks to work with patients and foray into their world together with them with an objective of examining their health conditions together and both coming up with useful insights that births a solution which usually turns out to be the panacea to the problem.
Client’s discomfort with one-sided self-exposure
What many advocates of other therapeutic processes for healing ailment that are psychiatric in nature are yet to realize is that gaining access to the soul of the client is so vital to the success of the therapeutic process. Many of the root cause of psychiatric ailment are so deep seated that only in the process of engaging therapist in conversations where there is an exchange of personal intimate details can they be figured out. In other therapeutic procedures, the therapist feels like the ‘saint and savior’ while the client is made to open up and look-up to the therapist. This in itself creates an atmosphere of distrust as the client feels the exposure is one-sided. Furthermore, this stems up to an unconscious inhibition that does not allow the client open up beyond certain extent. The Jungian approach may seem to be breaking the bounds of client- therapist relationship but as long as the intentions are right the mutual trust so created by intimate compassionate conversations sure breaks every barrier to the soul of the client.
The rules of intimate conversation
If you would carefully look at it, you will find out that the Jungian therapeutic approach gives room for both parties to feel really relaxed while sharing experiences just like you would do when having an intimate chat with a dear friend. Usually both parties do the following
- Freely exchange and share views, past experiences and knowledge of the problem.
- Bring expert opinions and insights to bear on the subject under discussion.
- Receptive to each other’s opinion
- Open to learning
- Confide in each other without inhibitions.
This to a large extent means that parties replicate the mutual trust and cordial relationship they have in other close relationships in the Jungian therapeutic approach. The only difference is that the discussions are usually centred on the life experience of the client. So naturally the client leads in the discussion and the therapist joins in by bringing past experiences, insights and practical solutions to bear on the problem.
As they attempt to solve the problem together, the perspectives are usually two sided.
- On the side of the client, the perspective seems to be from the background of past experiences and circumstances that led to the psychiatric predicament. With this hind sight clients are able to identify areas they need support and persons that can help them recover.
- The therapist on the other hand sees with insight gained from academic and theoretical knowledge gained from the study of human behavior; as such he can predict human behavioral responses in diverse conditions and on this basis proffer probable solutions to the problem.
