ABSTRACT
Rene Girard’s insight that desire or intention is ‘triangular’ as we desire according to the desire of the other, has implications for cognitive analytic therapy. This invites therapists to reconsider the importance of rivalry and envy in clinical practice; aspects of human experience largely lost as CAT sought to distance itself from psychoanalysis. Girard’s mimetic theory is thoroughly inter-subjective and the importance of imitation and mirroring in development and social life is increasingly being borne out by research findings in neuroscience and psychology. CAT already implicitly recognises the importance of mimesis and internalisation through reciprocal roles, but the concept of internalisation, on its own, is inadequate, as it does not consider the power and immediacy of mimesis.
Mimetic theory can inform our understanding of CAT at an organisational level in the current climate of austerity and cuts to NHS services; competition for resources can mean that CAT merely imitates the intentions of other brief psychological therapies in struggles for validation and legitimacy. I will argue that this enforced competition for scarce resources has led, paradoxically, to CAT becoming increasingly similar to the very models it critiques. I discuss the relevance to CAT of the ‘scapegoat mechanism’ with examples from clinical practice and also refer to the current discourse about immigration in the UK.
