Some Psychodynamic Aspects of Helping: A Critical Overview

Abstract

In this paper I will be considering some of the strengths and weaknesses of the psychodynamic perspective on the helping role. Over the past five or six years I have developed an interest in this issue arising from two sources. My own struggles in creatively using the client role in my personal therapy led me to question some of the motives for being a helper which lie outside of the need to earn a living on the one hand, and fulfil a relatively altruistic niche in society on the other. The second source of my interest came from experiences with Bill Barnes in running T-groups for clinical psychology students (Barnes and Pilgrim, 1983). At the outset, it might be useful to consider statements made during correspondence between Freud and Foulkes, the founder of group analysis. Foulkes had a prolonged personal concern about the issue of helping being a defence for the therapist against suffering. This prompted him to ask Freud’s opinion on the matter and Freud indicated that:

“It looks as if a number of analysts learn to make use of defensive mechanisms which enable them to evade the conclusion and requirements of analysis themselves, probably by applying them to others. They themselves remain as they are and escape the critical and corrective influence of analysis.”