ABSTRACT
This chapter contains two Clinical Pearls (CP), aphorisms that the author has used during his career as a psychotherapist and a supervisor to advance the therapeutic process. The Existential School of Psychiatry offers concepts and methods that are useful in working with patients who are difficult to be with. “Staying and being with” the suffering of the other is thought be therapeutic. The CP “What do you want me to be sure to hear when you tell me that a comment of mine makes you uncomfortable?” conveys the helping person’s interest in “staying and being with” the feelings of the other.
The second CP—“What is it like coming every week to a therapist who doesn’t answer your questions, repeatedly misses the mark with her comments, and isn’t helping you?” seeks to deepen the patient’s feelings rather than minimizing them. The therapist proceeds on the assumption that if negative feelings were all that the patient felt, he/she would have already left the therapy. A hypothetical scenario describes how the therapist tries to help the patient access the positive side of his/her ambivalence, again using the methods of the Existential School of Psychiatry.
