Shepherd, Gary ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8178-1141 (2019) Do therapists ever get lonely? In: Alone Together Symposium, 10th-12th April 2019, York St John University.

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Abstract

When working with clients for some time, I often feel a sense of relatedness and a fleeting wish for a friendship outside of the therapeutic space. The feelings I am left with are a sense of loneliness, regret and thoughts of ‘what might have been’ in our friendship. Am I alone with these feelings? Have I not done enough work on myself!?
Do therapists ever get lonely?

I have started to wonder if the therapeutic process itself is one which stirs-up early feelings of loneliness in the therapist. Is loneliness a natural by-product of working with clients. Is being a therapist in some way an unconscious attempt to heal our own existential loneliness, which is an impossible task in itself. I explore these ideas through an object relations lens and the work of Melanie Klein's 'On a sense of loneliness' (1962)

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Lecture)
Status:	Published
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology > BF637 Counselling
School/Department:	School of Education, Language and Psychology
URI:	https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/3902

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