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This week inspired some thoughts about the relationship between personality and therapy.  Pharmacotherapy and talk therapy provide us with a tools that may be more useful for some individuals than others.  For example, individuals with clearly defined problems that they wish to address can appreciate the brief, cheaper, and more targeted approach of CBT.  However, others are incapable of articulating a specific problem.  That doesn’t mean that they don’t deserve help, need help, or are ready for help.  It is possible that they are seeking professional help because of an inability to resolve dissatisfaction with their mental states through informal routes.  Their lack of communication can be considered a symptom of their mental illness.

Returning to considerations about who makes a good therapist.  For psychoanalytic psychotherapist a lot of patience is necessary to be able to appreciate the therapeutic process.  In her book, “The Drama of the Gifted Child,” Alice Miller theorizes that only people who have suffered are interested in being psychoanalysts.  She also states that a “therapist’s sensibility, empathy, responsiveness, and powerful “antennae” indicate that as a child he probably used to fulfill other people’s needs and repress his own.”