ABSTRACT

It really is a strange business that leads a person to sit in a room with complete strangers and listen to their intimate problems and worries in what is an essentially one-way flow of personal information. There was a time when I embarked on this job for what seemed purely my altruistic desire ‘to help people’. I had no understanding of how I had come to place myself in this position. As some form of awareness grew and was developed, I have seriously questioned whether I have the right to offer myself as a therapist to others and often I have wondered whether I wish to continue. At other times it has been important in some undefined way to keep working at the job as if to answer some internal questioning that cannot and never will be put into any verbal form. Often I feel that if it were possible for me to have complete awareness and insight into why I became a psychotherapist then I may no longer have the desire or interest to continue. If only for that reason I have to ask myself the question ‘why’ repeatedly, because each client who comes along demands and has the right to ask of me ‘why you?’.