Читать книгу Introducing Cognitive Analytic Therapy - Anthony Ryle - Страница 19

The practice of CAT reflects these theoretical developments. It has been suggested that, in contrast to the traditional polarization of health care professionals between those who are good at “doing to” their patients (e.g., surgeons and perhaps some behavior therapists) and those who are good at “being with” their patients (e.g., many dynamic psychotherapists or nurses involved in long‐term care), the CAT therapist aims to be good at doing with their patients (Kerr, 1998a). This highlights the fact that CAT involves hard work and commitment for both patients and therapists, and also the fact that much of this work is done together and that the therapy relationship itself plays a major role in assisting change.

The ways therapists interact with and describe their patients is important for the quality of the therapeutic relationship and transcends the “application” of any particular technique. Any techniques used, and how they are employed, must convey human compassion, acknowledgment, and value. CAT therapists therefore encourage patients to participate, possibly in ways that are challenging, to the greatest possible extent in their therapies. For many patients this may in itself represent a quite new, or previously “forbidden,” experience. Such a therapeutic approach may also feel unfamiliar and uncomfortable for many health care professionals. Therapists have usually learned helpful ways of thinking and being and are, in some sense, experts in activities that parallel parenting or teaching. But our patients are not pupils or children and their capacities need to be respected, empowered, and enlarged through the joint creation of new understandings, challenges to longstanding assumptions, acquisition of new “coping patterns,” and through a new relational experience.