In this blog, I shall be tackling our relationship to psychotherapy theory and I shall argue the attitude we take, can enable us to form a model that feels congruent with who we are. I believe there are internal and often unconscious process happening within us in how we approach theory. In order to explore this further, I shall utilize the traditional fairy story of the Red Shoes adapted by Clarissia Pinkola-Estes (2009).
The story of the Red Shoes
Once upon a time, there was a poor little orphan girl, who couldn’t afford a pair of shoes.
Over long months, she painstakingly stitched herself a pair of red shoes out of scraps of cloth. They were crude, but she loved them and they made her feel rich. One day a gilded carriage pulled up beside her. Inside was an old woman who told her she was going to take her home and treat her as her own little daughter. So they travelled home together, and the child was cleaned and combed, but all her clothes were thrown away, including the red shoes.
The child was very sad, for even with all the riches surrounding her, the simple pair of shoes made with her own hands had given her the greatest happiness of all. She was now made to sit still all the time, to walk without skipping, and not to speak unless spoken to. As soon as she was old enough, the old woman took her to a shoemaker to choose a new pair of shoes. Much to the old woman’s disapproval, the girl picked a pair of red shoes made of the finest leather.
One day, she was walking into her local church when an old soldier tapped the soles of her shoes, singing a little ditty as he did so. She felt the soles of her feet begin to twitch in time to the song. “Remember to stay for the dance,” he winked at her. Once her feet had begun to move they wouldn’t stop – she danced and danced, completely losing control of herself and her feet. What started pleasurably soon become intolerable, as she was exhausted from the constant movement. Eventually, in desperation, the girl begged for mercy from the town’s executioner. She asked him to cut off her feet to free her from the shoes’ malign power – which he did. Without feet, the girl now had to find her own way in the world as a beggar, and she never, ever again wished for red shoes.
I am indebted to Clarissa Pinkola Estes interpretation of this story as she draws attention to what she calls the handcrafted shoes the girl originally has made herself. Pinkola-Estes states that the girl makes her own handcrafted shoes from various pieces of material she has found and that these shoes can be seen as a symbol of the girl’s unique and meaningful handcrafted life. These shoes are loved by the girl as they have been carefully sewn together by her own hand. We can think about sewing together our own integrative model rather like the girl handcrafting her shoes. How can we approach theory so that we can find what feels most significant to us as it gives meaning to our work, helps us to understand our clients and helps find a way to them that feels congruent with who we are? So often we can find ourselves approaching theory and theoreticians with strong unconscious transferences, which may mean we forgo relating to theory like we are sewing our own precious handcrafted shoes. Donald Winnicott is one such theoretician who is oftencollectively deeply revered and it is a piece of his theory which I find helpful here. His theory on Use of an Object (1969) states that before we can really begin to use an object and it have real meaning for us we need to move from a position of object relating where we relate to objects through our unconscious transferences and subjectivity. Winnicott (1969) argues the aim is to move beyond these transferences to see the object more as it is from an objective perspective, warts and all. So in terms of theory, we may initially relate to it unconsciously and this may be from an idealizing or negative transference, but we are not necessarily really able to use the theory at this stage as we are still subjectively relating to it. Our task is to move towards seeing theory as it really is, to critique it, see its strengths and its weaknesses- ‘to destroy it in unconscious fantasy’-, so that when it survives our scrutiny/ or ‘attacks’ then it really has value for us, we can really use that theory, really make it part of our handcrafted integrative model. One way of moving from object relating (seeing it through our own subjectivity/ transferences) to object usage is to remember as Jung called us to do, to see all theory as the ‘personal confessions’ of their creator. We must see the theory in terms of the individual psychology of the person writing it and the context in which they were writing it. We must take a ‘relational’ approach to the theory, where the relational stance states that context is crucial. We may question the so-called universality of some of the theories we encounter when we consider issues of gender, race, class and other domains of power and privilege. This does not mean we have to denigrate theory due to discovering the fallibilities of the theoretician who created it, or as purely a product of the historical or social-economic-political times in which it was devised. Nor does it mean that we have to take a reified approach, which swallows theory whole without questioning and probing how it may serve us. Becoming aware of our emotional and embodied responses to theory may help us to understand what is influencing our response? Why are we initially attracted to some theories and not others? What are our transference relationships towards the theories we encounter and what might these be influenced by?
In the next blog I outline an experiential way of approaching theory, so that we may discover our own integrative model of child psychotherapy.
References
Pinkola-Estes, C (2009) The Red Shoes. Audiobook. SoundsTrue
Watchel, P (2010) Relational Theory and the Practice of Psychotherapy. Guildford Press
Winnicott, D. W. (1969). The use of an object. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 50(4), 711-716.
The Child Psychotherapist 