The Myth of the Objective Therapist

Clients often tell me they started therapy because they want an "objective" perspective on a conflict they're facing, as if there is one absolute truth and the therapist simply knows what it is.  They may be looking for the thing that will make them less depressed, whether they should leave their marriage, what career path they should take, how they should handle a conflict with a friend, etc.  Understandably, this concept is widely portrayed to the public through books and televisions, and heck – even other therapists.  Here’s the problem with that.  First, being objective is impossible.  Second, a therapist’s subjectivity can be a useful tool in treatment if one knows how to use it. 

The idea that therapists can check their mental baggage, personal values, opinions, and biases at the door is a fallacy.  We cannot de-humanize ourselves.  That’s also not to say we should freely impose our ideas onto clients either, however.  But we are always playing a part in the therapeutic process. 

Our subjectivity shows up in what we choose to focus on, where we direct our empathy, what we overlook, and what we consider important in the therapy session.  These choices, deliberate or not, are influenced by our own background, experiences, beliefs, and values. 

More dangerous than a therapist who can acknowledge and allow room for their own subjectivity is the therapist who denies it’s presence altogether. At least the therapist who accepts they cannot be objective is aware and on the lookout for the ways that their subjectivities enter the therapeutic relationship, so it can be brought to their attention and modified if need be.  As David Wallin (2015) writes, “The patient’s autonomy may be more successfully safeguarded when we are willing to acknowledge and study our own subjective responses, as well as investigating their impact upon the patient” (p. 180).

If we deny our subjectivity as therapists, we are missing out an important source of information and a useful tool for change.  Oftentimes, parts of the client’s experience that are too difficult for them to acknowledge may be unconsciously projected onto the therapist. Imagine a therapist repeatedly notices feeling dismissed in sessions with a client who insists everyone else is "too sensitive." Rather than assuming the feeling belongs solely to the therapist or that they necessarily reflect something about the client, the therapist becomes curious whether the client’s emotional experience includes aspects that have been pushed outside of their awareness, or whether the therapist’s reaction offers a glimpse at how other people experience the client in relationships.

Without the therapist’s acknowledgement of their subjective experience, those aspects of the client’s emotional life will remain outside of their awareness, causing internal turmoil from afar.  The therapist’s ability to put their subjective experience into words can be a catalyst for change.  The therapist might share what they are feeling with the client, curious whether the client has experienced something similar.  As the therapist helps to contain and make sense of what was previously difficult to acknowledge the client begins to discover these feelings are bearable.

In addition, self-disclosure of one’s subjectivity allows for a reparative experience, like when the therapist can state they’ve made a mistake, or take accountability for something from their own “inner world” that may be influencing how they’re showing up in the therapy space.  These may be very new, and perhaps refreshing, experiences for the client.  Often, therapists and clients get into enactments, in which the same dynamics that occur in the client’s other relationships begin occurring in the context of the therapeutic relationship.  This can serve as information for how the client relates to other people, and again, can serve as a reparative experience. If the therapist can become aware of the enactment, they can bring it to awareness and work their way out of it to give the client a different experience and give the client the opportunity to play a different role.

Reference:

Wallin, D. J. (2015). Attachment in Psychotherapy. The Guilford Press.