ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the nature of the engagement and disengagement processes in therapy. It reviews methods of learning to respond asocially in therapy and the basic modes of asocial response with case material. Parents are constantly scanned, and the child learns what works with each. This training in styles of social engagement seems to occur without the parents’ or the child’s awareness. When the customary, preferred, or expected response is withheld in the therapy session, the patient experiences a sense of beneficial uncertainty. Many theorists imply that patients’ problems stem from a lack of knowledge or from a lack of social skills, or simply from an inability to cope with stress. Therapeutic communications are messages that are effective because they interrupt the patient’s routine communications. In the therapy setting, when a patient’s communications do not result in the expected or social response from the therapist, a similar shift may occur.
