As I sat in group supervision another counsellor knocks at the door. A colleague within the group immediately looks at our supervisor. She pulls a face but says nothing. The door opens and another colleague enters the door. Without apology she announced "Someone parked their car in the drive way and I cant get out, does it belong to any of you?" After she was told that the car didn't belong to us, she shut the door.
Two group members seemed to bristle with anger
informing the rest of the group that this "had never happened before in all our time we have been in supervision!" Intense indignation filled the room within seconds of the door shutting when suddenly another door in the hallway was opened. Faint voices and the door was shut again.
The colleague had entered another room, asking the counsellor, who saw a client at the time, if it was her car and if she could move it.
How was it possible that my colleagues expressed no compassion for the counsellor who had entered our supervision group but felt so slighted by her action? It seemed as if they took the disturbance very personal, unable to put themselves into the other's situation. Yet when they sat with clients they reported feeling very empathic and concerned.
The "intruder" too seemed to have difficulty putting herself into the client's (and counsellor's) shoes when she disturbed their session demanding the counsellor move her car. Yet these are the people who see clients...
The Withholding Counsellor
What happens when such narcissistically wounded practitioners work with clients?
They become sadistic and unconsciously desire to hurt, torture and annihilate the client. A bit extreme? Not at all.
Anyone who has ever been on the receiving end of narcissistic rage or anyone emotionally intelligent enough to recognise their own narcissistic wounding and need to hurt the other, will know that the rage of the hurt baby/child, re-experienced within the adult, can be boundless, ruthless and annihilating.
A therapist who has not worked through such early emotional childhood trauma (and who did not get his needs met by his own therapist), who is unaware of the unconscious urge to re-create traumatic past situations within relationships, will use the client to re-play past experiences. But this time, the then helpless child is in control. No longer does it have to be the victim. Now, it is powerful, now it can hit back.
Psychodynamic/psychoanalytic counselling is used by many narcissistic practitioners to do just that - hit back. The client, seen through the counsellor's lens, is either experienced as a victim or a persecutor and (mis) treated accordingly.
This is not to say that "caring" counsellor cannot be extremely narcissistic and dangerous, but that is food for another post.
The Angry Client
After working with a client for some months the client became attached to the counsellor and despaired whenever she felt separated from him (counsellor). Vulnerable and exposed (as is a child) she asked if he could get her a glass of water (she couldn't stop coughing - asthma). The counsellor said "No". The client explodes with anger, acts out, hurts herself and withdraws. Left to deal with the sudden tidal wave of rage she leaves therapy never to return again.
In supervision this counsellor reports that he withheld the water on purpose.
When asked why, he replied "She is a very angry person but was unable to feel or express it. Me not giving her what she wanted got her in touch with her rage."
This is absolute non-sense yet there are many psychoanalytic schools who integrate such abusive behaviour into their training. Supported by "theories" those narcissistic practitioners, unable to get in touch with their own self (as there is a lack of Self/Narcissism) mostly depend on a fanatic obsession with Freud/tutor/supervisor/personal therapist and what s/he did and didn't do or say, rather than to feel their way into the clients' world, meeting their needs (vs wants). Sadistic urges stemming from childhood are openly played out withholding words and actions in order to evoke/provoke suppressed anger. Whose anger? Perhaps the counsellor's own suppressed rage against those who humiliated him as a baby/child.
I believe anger will come naturally, over time, when trust is established and especially when the counsellor is genuinely accepting and containing (see Melanie Klein and Primitive Envy).
It is the narcissistic counsellor who forces the client to become angry because the narcissistic counsellor does not see the client or hear the client instead is caught up in the past when s/he herself was a victim of terrible emotional abuse at the hands of superior adults who should have treated her/him with respect and dignity not humiliation and ridicule.
Going back to my colleagues, it is my guess that all three felt personally attacked by the "intruder". Re-experiencing painful feelings from the past when their own meeting of needs was denied, they were left starved and therefore incapable to empathise with and give to the other; quickly enraged the counsellor mask flew off and a raging, venom spewing harpy showed her pain distorted face.
Psychodynamic counselling can be very helpful but also extremely dangerous if the therapist is unaware of her narcissistic wounds. If you are unsure whether you are in an abusive "therapeutic" relationship please reach out to others. Not everything is transference and every transference needs a hook - more on this in a later post.