Hearing Voices and Psychotherapeutic Position (or How Socrates Was Right)

Not long ago I participated in a seminar about hearing voices and other unusual human experiences. In an atmosphere of openness and acceptance we together -relatives, supporters, volunteers and professionals –were listening to different stories by voice hearers, who painted a completely different landscape from the one we are used to in our lives. With mouth and eyes wide open, I tried to understand their narratives of voices they hear every day, of telepathic thoughts, extra-physical experiences, of the world filled with Jungian archetypes and higher planes of existence…and each moment I was closer to my inglorious conclusion: if the width and variety of my experiences were weighed up against theirs, mine wouldn’t be “worth a hill of beans” as my friend Mina would call this particular feeling.
For quite some time psychotherapists have been trying to push our way into health-care system to work side by side next to clinical psychologists. That would make psychotherapy free of charge for our clients, plus there would be, at last, some prospect of continuous employment for psychotherapists. However, working outside the system has also advantages, since we do not have to accept concepts and standpoints (which are sometimes “a bit non-sense” standpoints) of the system. One of their “a bit-non-sense” standpoints is this: A professional, a psychiatrist or psychologist is “The One who Knows”, the one who is in position of knowledge against his patient or client respectively. Undoubtedly, a psychiatrist has a vast knowledge of mental disorders, diagnosis and medicaments; a psychologist and psychotherapist, on the other hand, know a lot about emotional, behavioural and mental patterns, traumas, non-functional beliefs and different styles of attachment.
However, in spite of all the knowledge, we have no right to think that we know more than a client himself. For example, if someone is diagnosed for personality disorder, and if we know that he has ambivalent attachment style, we are quite ignorant against the client. It is the client himself, who has a true knowledge of himself, of the phenomenology of his own experience. Only he himself knows and feels how it is to dwell inside himself. All experts, however wise and experienced, can just watch from outside and try to feel and understand.
Lacan, a French psychoanalyst, has already talked about this topic: “It is absolutely clear we are lost, if we start with an idea, that a psychoanalyst is the one who knows more than any other.” (Seminar XV). If we want to help somebody when we are in a position of power, which is also a position of superiority (predominance) we will stay on THE OHER SIDE forever.
The psychotherapist’s task is neither to give labels, nor to make a diagnosis, nor to treat with medicaments, nor to analyse, but to create a space where client will feel safe and accepted enough to tell his own story. Therefore, we must not allow ourselves to be trapped by a belief that we truly understand a person if we get to know his psychiatric diagnosis.
Each individual is different, everyone has his own unique experience of himself and the world, therefore each psychotherapy should be a new creation, built together by the client and the therapist. Therapist contributes his knowledge and experience, which represents a tool needed in their mutual exploration; he deepens the relationship with his presence and empathy; and makes a promise that he will ALWAYS be the client’s ALLY. At his work he must again and anew take a radical and humble Socratic stand: I KNOW THAT I KNOW NOTHING, although the “throne of superior knowledge” is sometimes so comfortable.