Neuroscience
We often dream about what we've been doing and who we've been with, so it should come as little surprise to discover many psychotherapists dream about their clients. In fact a new study reports that nearly 70 per cent of thirteen participating therapists said that they'd had such dreams.
Psychologist Clara Hill and her colleagues asked the 13 student psychotherapists to keep dream journals for the duration of the time they worked at a community clinic - either one or two years. The number of dreams recorded in the journals ranged from 6 to 150 per year, and the proportion that were about clients ranged from 0 to 0.19 (average 0.06). Also, at the end of a period of therapy with a client they'd dreamed about, the therapists took part in an interview with the researchers about their dream experiences and what they'd gained from them.
The student therapists described their dreams about clients as disturbing and directly related to the therapy, often depicting the struggles involved. "Dreams appeared to function as a means for therapists to process difficulties they were experiencing in the therapy with these clients," the researchers said.
Although unpleasant, the dreams about clients appeared to be beneficial. Therapists described how the dreams of clients led to useful insights. To paraphrase one example, a female therapist dreamt of being in a circus and her client appearing on the back of an elephant, and remaining in the middle of the ring even as the other riders and their elephants left. The therapist said her client looked liked a mannequin and just sat their not interacting with the audience. The dream led the therapist to think about her client's depression and the possibility she might have been forcing happiness and optimism on her. It also made the therapist realise that she cared for her client, that her client was willing to try new things, but that she (the therapist) needed to adjust her pacing and tone.
"In this rich qualitative examination of these therapists' dreams, then, we learn that such dreams, though clearly distressing … nevertheless yielded helpful lessons that therapists then effectively applied to their continued clinical work," said Hill and her colleagues.
There was little evidence that therapists discussed their dreams of clients with their supervisors. Given the apparent insights derived from client dreams, the researchers suggested that therapy training programmes incorporate more focus on working with dreams in supervision. They also suggested expanding this line of research to see whether therapists using other approaches (e.g. CBT, psychoanalysis) also dream of their clients, and whether they too find it beneficial.
The researchers acknowledged some limitations of their study including the small sample size and the fact that keeping dream journals may have encouraged a greater than usual focus on dreams among the participating therapists. However, the researchers didn't show any scepticism towards the therapists' claims that their dreams had been beneficial for therapy. Readers of a more scientific persuasion will no doubt demand more rigorous evidence before believing this is really true.
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Hill CE, Knox S, Crook-Lyon RE, Hess SA, Miles J, Spangler PT, and Pudasaini S (2014). Dreaming of you: Client and therapist dreams about each other during psychodynamic psychotherapy. Psychotherapy research : journal of the Society for Psychotherapy Research PMID: 24387006
--further reading--
When therapists have the hots for their clients
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
- It Can Be A Good Thing For A Therapist And Client To Disagree About The Client's Problems
Rapport between a client and therapist is important for therapy to be successful, and part of that is agreeing about the aims of the exercise. You’d think this would include the therapist and client agreeing about the specific nature of the client’s...
- Can Therapists Tell When Their Clients Have Deteriorated?
About five to ten per cent of the time, people in therapy get worse instead of better. What should psychotherapists do in such cases? Hang on a minute. There's no point answering that question unless therapists can recognise that a client has deteriorated...
- Introducing The Super Shrink
From 'the archives', first published in the Digest 19/1/2004 When it comes to client recovery, it's not the type of therapy that matters so much as the individual therapist who's giving it - that's the message from a study by researchers...
- Successful Therapists Focus On Their Clients' Strengths
Research is increasingly showing that the success of therapy depends not on the theoretical orientation of the therapist, but on key therapeutic processes that cross theoretical boundaries. Two such processes are ‘problem activation’ – helping...
- Cognitive Therapy On The Couch
Cognitive therapy for depression could be improved by the therapist focusing more on the therapeutic process itself. That’s according to Jonathan Kanter (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) and colleagues who compared the effectiveness of therapy given...
Neuroscience
What happens when therapists dream about their clients?
Psychologist Clara Hill and her colleagues asked the 13 student psychotherapists to keep dream journals for the duration of the time they worked at a community clinic - either one or two years. The number of dreams recorded in the journals ranged from 6 to 150 per year, and the proportion that were about clients ranged from 0 to 0.19 (average 0.06). Also, at the end of a period of therapy with a client they'd dreamed about, the therapists took part in an interview with the researchers about their dream experiences and what they'd gained from them.
The student therapists described their dreams about clients as disturbing and directly related to the therapy, often depicting the struggles involved. "Dreams appeared to function as a means for therapists to process difficulties they were experiencing in the therapy with these clients," the researchers said.
Although unpleasant, the dreams about clients appeared to be beneficial. Therapists described how the dreams of clients led to useful insights. To paraphrase one example, a female therapist dreamt of being in a circus and her client appearing on the back of an elephant, and remaining in the middle of the ring even as the other riders and their elephants left. The therapist said her client looked liked a mannequin and just sat their not interacting with the audience. The dream led the therapist to think about her client's depression and the possibility she might have been forcing happiness and optimism on her. It also made the therapist realise that she cared for her client, that her client was willing to try new things, but that she (the therapist) needed to adjust her pacing and tone.
"In this rich qualitative examination of these therapists' dreams, then, we learn that such dreams, though clearly distressing … nevertheless yielded helpful lessons that therapists then effectively applied to their continued clinical work," said Hill and her colleagues.
There was little evidence that therapists discussed their dreams of clients with their supervisors. Given the apparent insights derived from client dreams, the researchers suggested that therapy training programmes incorporate more focus on working with dreams in supervision. They also suggested expanding this line of research to see whether therapists using other approaches (e.g. CBT, psychoanalysis) also dream of their clients, and whether they too find it beneficial.
The researchers acknowledged some limitations of their study including the small sample size and the fact that keeping dream journals may have encouraged a greater than usual focus on dreams among the participating therapists. However, the researchers didn't show any scepticism towards the therapists' claims that their dreams had been beneficial for therapy. Readers of a more scientific persuasion will no doubt demand more rigorous evidence before believing this is really true.
_________________________________
Hill CE, Knox S, Crook-Lyon RE, Hess SA, Miles J, Spangler PT, and Pudasaini S (2014). Dreaming of you: Client and therapist dreams about each other during psychodynamic psychotherapy. Psychotherapy research : journal of the Society for Psychotherapy Research PMID: 24387006
--further reading--
When therapists have the hots for their clients
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
- It Can Be A Good Thing For A Therapist And Client To Disagree About The Client's Problems
Rapport between a client and therapist is important for therapy to be successful, and part of that is agreeing about the aims of the exercise. You’d think this would include the therapist and client agreeing about the specific nature of the client’s...
- Can Therapists Tell When Their Clients Have Deteriorated?
About five to ten per cent of the time, people in therapy get worse instead of better. What should psychotherapists do in such cases? Hang on a minute. There's no point answering that question unless therapists can recognise that a client has deteriorated...
- Introducing The Super Shrink
From 'the archives', first published in the Digest 19/1/2004 When it comes to client recovery, it's not the type of therapy that matters so much as the individual therapist who's giving it - that's the message from a study by researchers...
- Successful Therapists Focus On Their Clients' Strengths
Research is increasingly showing that the success of therapy depends not on the theoretical orientation of the therapist, but on key therapeutic processes that cross theoretical boundaries. Two such processes are ‘problem activation’ – helping...
- Cognitive Therapy On The Couch
Cognitive therapy for depression could be improved by the therapist focusing more on the therapeutic process itself. That’s according to Jonathan Kanter (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) and colleagues who compared the effectiveness of therapy given...