ABSTRACT
The therapist’s task is to distinguish her affect from her patient’s, and so to find her own reality as distinct from her patient’s –and to distinguish her feelings towards her patient from her feelings towards other people. Only then can she help her patient disentangle his projections and own his own feelings. Therapists need to be aware not only of personal but also of collective denial: groups or whole societies can project unwanted aspects of their unconscious psyches on to other groups. The therapist is operating within society and often needs to be aware of those delicate ethical moments when social responsibility seems to transcend the claims of intrapsychic development. Some non-psychodynamic therapists think it is their job to decide for the patient what the patient wants, or should want. Some Christian counsellors assume, for instance, that homosexuality is a spiritual and moral wrong, and that it is their task to try to change a patient’s sexual orientation to heterosexual.
