BETWIXT AND INBETWEEN

Change isn’t what you think it is! Sometimes people have a specific problem they want to work on. Other times there is just some ominous feeling. Perhaps the ominous feeling is the ‘problem’ - we just want it to go away - how do I get rid of this ominous feeling? Or in the first case - how do I solve or fix this problem? - where to ‘solve’ or fix is to cease the problem being a problem. I don’t know if we ever ‘solve’ certain problems - and if we do, we have perhaps only found a more convincing way of avoiding or defending against the reality of the problem. 

So if we can’t solve problems, what can we do with them? And, more importantly, what is the function of psychotherapy? Change isn’t what we think it is. We might think that if my problem was solved I would be all ok. But a good question is, perhaps, what do I get from being in this problem? And what do I give up by ‘fixing’ it? Problems are conflicts that generate tension, and tension is where we know ourselves, where “I” exist. One way of understanding identity is that “I” exist in my relationship to particular essential problems or conflicts. 

Psychotherapy is less about fixing problems and more a process for identifying core problems (Noting that problems can be a defence against realising our core conflicts - a problem can be a kind of solution to a more primary problem.) Knowing our core problems allows us to find new and better ways of being in them (Adam Phillips). What changes is our relationship to the problem and the sense of possibility within it.