What Is the Purpose of Psychotherapy?
Image via Mitch Hodge
To tolerate life remains, after all, the first duty of all living beings. Illusion becomes valueless if it makes this harder for us.
— Sigmund Freud
Because I am a psychotherapist I am always listening. I listen to the stories people tell me; stories that double as half-truths they simultaneously tell themselves. Stories that I tell myself just as often. Admittedly, I am not very good at not listening. It comes with the territory, and at least one part of what makes someone a good therapist is this ability. To an outside observer it might not look like much is going on between a client and a therapist. Just two people having a conversation, but beyond initial appearances, a complicated exchange is playing out between the client and the therapist. In a therapeutic dialogue both client and therapist are constantly testing one another, and constantly testing themselves. The client wants to know if this professional helper is really up to the task. A fair question because as therapists we don’t always know, and we’re not always sure of the client’s commitment to the engaging in sincere self-reflection. Beyond that, one might ask what is the end goal of all this psychological probing?
We test one another, in therapy and in life, to find out whether it is safe for us, physically and psychologically, and do so in every unfamiliar environment. Few situations are as unfamiliar as the first time you sit on the therapist’s couch with the expectation that you simply start to share your thoughts and feelings with someone you just met. In order to do so the therapist has to quickly convince the client of their skill and capability. Without this, there is no reason for the client to be there, and their presence will certainly be short-lived, but if this confidence is quickly instilled the work can begin because the client feels the safe with the therapist, as they are meant to be.
The client has a place to retreat from life when they need to. A place where they can get enough distance from the world to start to learn about it because it is difficult to be curious when you are being assailed from all fronts. Surviving life’s harsh realities becomes the main goal at that point; the lens through which all other choices are filtered. The psychotherapist is there, usually for an hour at a time, to pull the client out of their world, but also to pull out the parts of the client’s world that they struggle with the most. They push the client to confront the parts of life they are most confounded by.
It is only through facing the things in life that are most difficult and confusing for us that we make sense of them. A process we must repeat numerous times throughout our lives because each new challenge we face requires an answer from us regarding how we will choose to meet it. There simply is no cure for life.
For a length of time, the psychotherapist acts as a secular guide on the client’s journey, helping them learn how to confront their deepest anxieties and overcome their most stressful life events. Helping clients to become more skilled in the art of living is our purpose for being there with them. Along the way clients themselves begin to develop their true purpose, one that is not based on unearned confidence, but is carefully arrived at, with the proper motivation to pursue it.