Understanding how the past influences the present
Some approaches such as reality therapy, behavior therapy, rational emotive behavior therapy, cognitive therapy, and solution-focused brief therapy do not examine the historical determinants of behavior. Their premise is that present conditions, rather than traumas or faulty learning during early childhood years, influence clients’ problems and that cognitive and behavioral techniques can change the relevant current factors that influence clients’ behaviors. However, I believe that the past is critical in understanding and dealing with the clients present cognitive, emotional and behavioral difficulties.
UNDERSTANDING HOW THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE ARE INTERTWINED
Bringing the past into the present. The psychoanalytic model holds that the shadow of the past can haunt the present, and I continue to see the vital connection between the past and the person in the work I do. Typical problems that people ring to counselling include an inability to freely give and accept love; difficulty recognizing and dealing with feelings such as anger, resentment, rage, hatred and aggression; an inability to direct one’s own life, difficulties separating from one’s parents and becoming a unique person; a need for and a fear of intimacy; and a difficulty excepting one’s own sexual identity. From the psychoanalytic perspective, these problems of adult living have their origin in early development. Early learning is not irreversible, but to change his effects, we must become aware of how certain early experiences have contributed to our present personality functioning. I have incorporated these basic psychoanalytic concepts in my personal integrative approach to counselling.
A common misconception about psychoanalytic therapy is that it resembles an archaeologist digging out relics from the past, dwelling on the past to the exclusion of present concerns. Kernberg (1997) indicates that there is an increasing interest by contemporary psychoanalytic therapists in focusing on the unconscious meanings in the here and now before attempting to reconstruct the past. Modern practitioners are still interested in their clients’ past, but more importantly, how to intertwine that understanding with the present (DeAngelis, 1996). Among the contemporary psychoanalytic therapists are those who subscribe to object-relations theory and view the internal and external world of relationships as central to therapy. Therapy is largely based on the early relations of a child and a mother, and how this early relationship shapes the child’s inner world and later adult relationships (St. Clair, 2004). As the therapist moves back and forth in time, the aim is to understand how early patterns are repeated in the present.
Insight can be a vehicle that enables clients to relinquish all behaviors from the past that intrude into the present. It is useful for clients to understand and use historical data in their therapy, but they also need to be aware of the pitfalls of getting lost in their past, recounting endless and irrelevant details of their early experiences. A preoccupation with the past can be time-consuming and can inhibit progress as well as being a form of resistance. Discussion centering on childhood bands is less useful than dealing with the past in relation to here-and-now interactions between client and therapists.
Envisioning the future. Our vision of our future can have an impact on our present functioning, just as our past can. Beitman, Soth, and Good (2006) claim that we are influenced to think, feel, and act through our images of our future. They state: “Psychotherapy integration is achieved when therapists and clients collaborate to reshape problematic expectations of the future images that are based on the debris of the past” (pp. 43-44). A number of therapeutic approaches strivings. Along with valuing the Gestalt and psychodrama approaches for dealing with the future, I find useful a number of concepts from solution-focused therapy, Adlerian Therapy, Reality therapy, and existential therapy–all of which have concepts dealing with future aspirations.
