Trying to imagine a dimension of meaning relative to the therapist's emotions, we gathered two opposite positions within a constructivist debate: - the therapist is not allowed to feel emotions, - the therapist's emotions are useful for therapy.
Both the positions emphasise, provocatively, a particular point of view,
opening the way to some interesting questions:
- can a psychotherapist never experience emotions?
- are all emotions allowable?
- what is their usefulness?
- what ethical constraints do emotions imply?
- is it possible to discriminate "the therapist's" from ,"the person's"
emotions?
By adopting the former or the latter position one can give different, plausible answers to these questions, but none of them is completely convincing.
We looked for an alternative way, and the hypothetical solution that we regarded as more viable consists in the shifting to a superordinate level. In this new position, the distinction between per-sonal and professional construct systems appears essential. It is from this distinction that we started to open the way to new interesting questions and, why not?, to new solutions.
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