Since a therapist is incapable of coercing you into conformity, like in disciplinary contexts, they must first get to know your subjectivity and warp it so that it leads to the desired behaviors and/or thoughts.
In order to facilitate this, the therapist is almost totally silent at the beginning of the "therapeutic relationship," as they encourage you to talk about yourself and what you find important for the entire session. Besides providing them fodder for manipulation, this has the added benefit of hooking you in and making you look forward to future sessions, under the illusion that the therapist finds you interesting or cares about your passions.
But it quickly becomes apparent they have a highly specific program to enact (especially in CBT), and that everything you've told them has become ammunition in their arsenal. Their primary objective is to promote cognitive dissonance in you so as to deconstruct your identity/values and make you ripe for conditioning. But in those areas where your identity/values can be used against you for the purposes of conditioning, they will readily do this too.
I came across an excellent example of this today:
beckinstitute.org
The author of this article considers anti-racism to be a "social healing" imperative for therapists. In other words, anti-racism is so important that any disagreement from the patient/client can be completely disregarded, because it transcends their own individual values; it is a matter of the social good.
But for an enterprise as individualistic as psychotherapy, and lacking in social context, this is quite an awkward priority to enforce. So the article recommends that therapists first endeavor to reconcile antiracism with their patient's own value system:
This informs much of what therapy is about in general. The therapist all but remains totally silent throughout the entire "relationship," revealing virtually nothing about themselves, while you are laid bare for them to manipulate and pick through.
Case in point: if you use the nuclear card and criticize their methods for being contradictory or hypocritical, they will say nothing. Because in the intake form, you have already agreed to consent, and they no longer have to justify their "treatment" to you. Imagine if sex in marriage still worked this way
What happens if the patient has no values that can be exploited for the desired ends?
They will consider it an "ethical responsibility" to gaslight you, under the notion that your suffering (e.g. losing a job due to affirmative action) is not legitimate or real, unlike their presuppositions and arbitrary "insights," of course.
In order to facilitate this, the therapist is almost totally silent at the beginning of the "therapeutic relationship," as they encourage you to talk about yourself and what you find important for the entire session. Besides providing them fodder for manipulation, this has the added benefit of hooking you in and making you look forward to future sessions, under the illusion that the therapist finds you interesting or cares about your passions.
But it quickly becomes apparent they have a highly specific program to enact (especially in CBT), and that everything you've told them has become ammunition in their arsenal. Their primary objective is to promote cognitive dissonance in you so as to deconstruct your identity/values and make you ripe for conditioning. But in those areas where your identity/values can be used against you for the purposes of conditioning, they will readily do this too.
I came across an excellent example of this today:
CBT and Anti-Racism: Healing Racism through CBT | Beck Institute for Cognitive Behavior Therapy
In recent months, many of us have committed/recommitted to our anti-racism work. 'How to Be an Antiracist' and 'Dying of Whiteness' may form a part of this.
beckinstitute.org
The author of this article considers anti-racism to be a "social healing" imperative for therapists. In other words, anti-racism is so important that any disagreement from the patient/client can be completely disregarded, because it transcends their own individual values; it is a matter of the social good.
But for an enterprise as individualistic as psychotherapy, and lacking in social context, this is quite an awkward priority to enforce. So the article recommends that therapists first endeavor to reconcile antiracism with their patient's own value system:
Note that fairness is described here not as an objective good, that can be debated with respect to affirmative action (e.g., is it really "fair" that a lesser qualified applicant gets a job over a better qualified one just because the former's low IQ is considered a racial handicap?). It is described as a subjective value that the therapist can instrumentally use against the client in order to manipulate them into compliance.
This informs much of what therapy is about in general. The therapist all but remains totally silent throughout the entire "relationship," revealing virtually nothing about themselves, while you are laid bare for them to manipulate and pick through.
Case in point: if you use the nuclear card and criticize their methods for being contradictory or hypocritical, they will say nothing. Because in the intake form, you have already agreed to consent, and they no longer have to justify their "treatment" to you. Imagine if sex in marriage still worked this way
What happens if the patient has no values that can be exploited for the desired ends?
They will consider it an "ethical responsibility" to gaslight you, under the notion that your suffering (e.g. losing a job due to affirmative action) is not legitimate or real, unlike their presuppositions and arbitrary "insights," of course.
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