Episode 3: Fostering Dependence And Nurturing Independence

In this episode, Rachael struggles with her own feelings about her therapy being cut across by a psychiatrist who seems to be opposed to long term therapy. 

She feels activated especially as the patient has asked her to intervene and contact the psychiatrist. 

In supervision, she engages with her frustration at the interference in her treatment and her therapeutic relationship and also her anger in relation to the zeitgeist that opposes in-depth therapy. 

Rachael⁠ recognises that in her activation she gets pulled into focusing more on the zeitgeist and less on the patient and is hooked by the emergence of her own sibling rivalry . 

These are not enacted with the patient but they interfere with Rachael⁠’s ability to think about the analytic meaning of the patient’s request. Through supervision, she is able to see that she is inadvertently being invited into a split and while activated is loosing the opportunity to explore the psychodynamic meaning of the patient’s request. Through this understanding she returns to her analytic position.