Psychotherapist is a single word, although at times one wonders if it shouldn't be two. Practicing psychotherapy means that one meets someone entirely new, gets to know them intimately in a few short hours, learns their life stories, shares their secrets and then sees them walk away--hopefully in a better state of mind--and never hears from them again. That has got to be a crazy profession. I had never seen that scenario spelled out quite so clearly until I read a book by my friend, Dr. Tom Skovholt and his co-author, Dr.Michael Ronnestad, "The Evolving Professional Self: Stages and Themes in Therapist and Counselor Development" (1992, John Wiley & Sons). The book was a nice reminder that becoming a psychotherapist is a developmental process.
I would like to pay homage to all of my teachers and sources of influence in my own development as a psychotherapist, but just don't know how to do that. There are just too many sources to name them all, although I probably should start with my own mother. She was a natural therapist, but I only realized that later in my life while looking back to the times I sat listening her talking with her friends over coffee around our kitchen table. She was a great listener, showed amazing empathy, was always open in a non-judging way to what others were saying , and would offer her ideas and opinions in such a tentative way that they weren't automatically rejected. Within 30 minutes of meeting someone, she would know their life stories. When she was being treated for leukemia, her oncologist talked with her about problems in his family, often asking for her advice. People felt better after talking with her even though she was never trained as a therapist, worked as a cook in a restaurant, and lived in near-poverty. Her great strength was that she was "real."
It took me years of studying in graduate school, years of supervision and years of both teaching and practice to approach the skill my mother had naturally. I have sometimes felt that my education actually got in the way of my discovering my own abilities. There were a few sources of knowledge that I can look to that I did find clearly influential. One was the book: How Psychotherapy Heals by Richard Chessick, M.D. (1969, Science House) where I learned about how transference operates in psychotherapy . Another was Brief Psychotherapy by Bellak and Small. I think I must have loaned that book to someone years ago an not gotten it back because I can't find it in my library to pass on the correct publication information. A very important resource was the work of Dr. Harry Stack Sullivan, which I learned about through the teaching, supervision and mentoring of Dr. Harry A. Grater, Jr. at the University of Florida during my time as an intern and graduate assistant. Much of my therapeutic approach in the early years of my practice was heavily influenced by the work of Carl Rogers and by many, many theorists and practitioners of humanistic psychology, but there have been many other influences over the years. My own description of my style of psychotherapy is that I use psychodynamic theory to conceptualize but use a variety of interventions from many therapeutic styles, including cognitive-behavioral, affect-focused, transactional, object-relations focused, solution-focused, systems theory, Gestalt and many other systems, depending on the needs of the clients. I found that the study of hypnosis and hypnotherapy offered many tools, including insights into the ideas, techniques and interventional style of Milton Erickson, M.D. I also benefited in developing my skills in hypnosis from training, teaching, working with and learning from professionals in the fields of medicine, dentistry and psychology.And, of course, the greatest source of learning has been my own successes and failures while working with the clients I have tried to help. EACH of them has contributed something new and important to my development as a therapist. And occasionally, but only occasionally, a former client has gotten in touch with me after some years to let me know they were still using what we did together in our sessions to get through new difficulties--and to thank me for my help. Those rare occurrences have been extremely gratifying and have reinforced my belief that I was doing something important and useful. You can find some of my experiences with clients expressed in haiku in the "Counselor Cycle" in the section of this web site labelled: Returning: A Short Book. Maybe you will find something there you will recognize.