by Stan Tatkin, PsyD, MFT,
stantatkin.com
Inspiration should be the guiding incentive for doing interventions, not pressure. Many therapists, including experienced ones, act on pressure rather than from a creative place. Pressure can come in various forms: pressure from the patient, pressure from time, pressure from one’s own need to perform, pressure from a supervisor, etc. Pressure to act may lead the therapist to make mistakes: ill-timed or ill-placed interventions, incorrect assumptions, misattuned moments, or countertransference acting-out.
In contrast, inspiration comes as an “aha’ moment when the therapist has waited a sufficient amount of time to allow for percolation of his or her ideas, impulses, fantasies, etc. Inspiration comes as a result of a convergence of implicit and explicit experience, of both fast and slow thinking (Daniel Kahneman), and of a relaxed body.
Unfortunately for new therapists inspiration usually must take a backseat to pressure as...
