The young therapist - Part 2

Life experience is an interesting thing which older therapists have more of than younger therapists. Most view it as a positive but it can also be a negative especially if one is a psychotherapist. Without a doubt life experience can be a positive thing for a therapist to have. A person who is 45 will obviously have more life experience than a person who is 25 years old. If they are a practicing therapist this can influence how they work. The older person has extra knowledge about life that the younger person does not have.

If one has been married and divorced they have first hand knowledge of that. Some one who has never been married and divorced can not know about it in the same way which is more likely for the younger therapist. If a client presents who is currently going through a divorce then the therapist who has been divorced knows more about the process and more importantly more about the psychological process one goes through when getting divorced.

If the therapist tells the client they have been divorced then the client can have a feeling of more confidence in the therapist and can have a sense of increased connection with the therapist. The client feels that he and the therapist have a commonality in that way, which they do. In this way the life experience of the therapist can assist the therapeutic process.

However it is not always so sunny. If a couple come to counselling because of marital disharmony and learn the therapist has been divorced this may result in a lack of confidence in the therapist. They have the view that if the therapist cannot sort out his own marital problems how can he ever help others to do so. The young therapist who has never been married or divorced can not have this problem.

Similar to this is the client who seeks counselling for parenting difficulties. They are having difficulty managing their own children or adolescents. I have heard people say they would never seek assistance for their parenting with a therapist who is not a parent them self. However what if the therapist’s children are not all that well adjusted and may be causing all sorts of difficulties for the therapist. Will that be a positive or a negative for the therapist in the eyes of the client. All parents stuff up some where along the line and all children have emotional difficulties to some degree. The young therapist who has no children does not have this on their resume.

In my new book to come out next month - Working with drug and alcohol users - I discuss this very topic. If a drug counsellor has had a history of drug issues is that a positive or a negative. If a client asks a drug counselor directly if they have ever used drugs, does the therapist answer the question, and if so how. How it is dealt with by the therapist can result in the personal life experience of the therapist (whether they have used drugs or not) being a positive or a negative for the therapy.

However there are more things to consider in the life experience conundrum. When one has a major life experience like a divorce that will psychologically impact on them. Their own Child ego state will be effected by the experience and that may be a negative psychological experience. The Child ego state of the young never divorced psychotherapist has never been negatively effected in that way.

Some come out of a divorce feeling bitter and pessimistic about the opposite gender. If the therapist has been impacted like this, is their extra life experience going to be a positive in the therapeutic process especially if the client is of the opposite gender? The young therapist is never going to have this dilemma. 

Is the ex smoker (or smoker) going to be better at helping people give up?

Life experience does afford the therapist an extra knowledge or deeper level of understanding of the client who is going through the same experience. This can then allow more of a connection between the client and therapist. However the therapist’s Child ego state may be negatively effected by that experience which may negatively impact on how effectively they work as a therapist on this issue.

Related to this is the idea of the hot potatoe. It is observed sometimes in the field of psychology that some therapists gravitate to counselling in those areas that have been part of their own life experience. The woman who suffer PND herself ends up counselling other women suffering PND. The person who was sexually abused as child ends up counseling others who have been through the same. The man who had a significant drug problem ends up counseling in a drug rehab centre.

In all these areas the therapist’s personal life experience can be a good help in the ways I have described above. However the question needs to be asked - what’s in it for the therapist to work with clients who have similar issues? What is their own Child ego state getting out of it? For most there is no problem, however the phenomena of the hot potatoe is real and does exist for some.

In this instance the therapist is in some way living through the client because they have not dealt with their own difficulties about their similar life experiences. The therapist can pass their own issue (the hot potatoe) onto the client. If this happens all sorts of counter transference problems can develop. The young therapist who has never had children can never have suffered PND and thus can never have these sorts of difficulties like the hot potatoe.

Life experience it seems, is a double edged sword. As with so many things in human psychology its not a matter of having a particular trait or feature (in this case life experience) its what you do with it when you have it. The older person who has more life experience can use those experiences to impede their work as a therapist or to improve their work as a therapist. The younger person has less life experience and therefore in their work as a therapist they do not have this same dilemma.

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The young therapist - Part 1

Jay Haley

“When a therapist is young, he should not try to appear wiser than he is. The beginning therapist is often young and even unmarried. Faced with a couple married for 25 years, the beginner may be tempted to act as if he understands that stage of marriage as well as they do. It is not so. Instead, the therapist should find a stance to work from that is acceptable to the older couple. For example, the beginner can say, “Obviously you know more about marriage than I do since you’ve been married for a long time, and certainly you know more about your marriage than I do. But as an outsider, I can offer you an objective view of some of your problems.””

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This has some personal significance for me because I began as a very young therapist. I began running my first therapy groups with a cotherapist when I was 22 years old. Probably about a year later I started seeing clients individually and has done so ever since. My circumstances were unusual in that both my parents were psychologists and they ran one of the first ever private therapy training institutes in the city where I lived.

I started my original psychology degree when I was 20 years old and began in my parents training institute when I was 21. In those days in a university psychology degree you would study psychology for three or four years before you actually got to work directly with any clients. In the private training institute it was very hands on. Starting with being a therapist with another student as a client in the training group with the supervisor there. Then as a cotherapist with ‘real’ clients and then finally in individual therapy, all under supervision of course until one passed the exam and was qualified.

When I began in the private training institute I was the youngest by far and remained the youngest student in it for a number of years. I experienced the situation of an early to mid 20 year old therapist working with adult clients who were at time many years older than me.

My mother with Bob Goulding on workshop - holiday. The person sitting with the long hair in front is myself (early 20s year old at the time)

Obviously I was aware of this and at times I did think of it but not really all that often. I can only recall one situation where a client stated it to me that I was young. It is highly likely that some talked about my age to others in their life when they talked about the therapy they were doing with me. 

However in the early years I always worked in private practice which meant the clients who came to see me, they selected me and paid me money to counsel them. They were not assigned to me which can happen in a counselling agency where the client does not get to choose which therapist they see. This I imagine allowed for some self selection by clients. If they felt my age was a problem they would have never selected me in the first place and this may account for the fact that only one client ever said anything to me.

I can recall talking about it with other trainee therapists and thinking about it my self. This is why I have quoted Haley above. What view can one take of this, as young therapists are not all that uncommon. Haley’s point seems to be quite a good one and what I used to say was a bit similar. My view was:

“I have learnt the basic theory and the basic techniques so I just do what I do. If people get something out of it they will come to see me and if they don’t then they wont.” 

I think this is similar to what Haley says. There is no attempt to justify or explain away the age issue. No attempt to say that age does not matter or some similar kind of thing. It is a statement of I am who I am and the input I can provide. This is available if you want it and if you do not, that is OK.

Young adults.

What is the problem?

Obviously the problem for the young therapist is a lack of life experience. But does this mean anything. As a young therapist I lacked more (at times much more) life experience that almost all of my clients. However people still voluntarily came to see me and obviously got something out of being my client. 

At that age I did not understand what effect lesser life experience would have on me as a therapist. Now as an older person I do understand. This lack of understanding actually helped I think because at that age I had belief in myself. It was not until later that I realized maybe my belief in self was a bit unrealistic. However I had a confidence in what I was doing and most people respond favorably to a person who has confidence and particularly a person who just is who they are which my statement above tends to say. I never tried to show my self as being more experienced than I was and never felt the need to justify myself. I accepted myself as a 22 year old therapist doing what he had been trained to do with the personal and professional resources he had at that time.

Clearly young therapists can and do work effectively, so life experience is by no means a necessity for an effective therapist. Having said that life experience can help. Having been a very young therapist and now an older therapist I am of the view that it can help in the practice of therapy.

All new therapists are technicians, no matter how old they are. They have been taught the basic theory and practical techniques of the therapy they are trained in. When they meet their first clients they apply those techniques were it is appropriate. The practice of therapy can have a mechanical feel in this way. After time as they get life experience as a therapist they can stop being a person who just applies the technique and they can relate more to the client as a person who also does therapy with them. You can’t make that shift without the life experience as a therapist no matter how much other life experience one may have. Thus it is my view that life experience as a therapist is more important than life experience in general.

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