Identify Two Specific Key Discussion Post

Hi, I need help with discussion board-Initial Post-10 meaningful sentences-

Identify two specific key concepts of psychoanalytic therapy that you think could apply in your counseling practice. Explain your choices. Be sure to connect your response to something you learned in Chapter 4. To clearly illustrate that connection, your response must contain the page number from the textbook in order to earn full credit. (I understand you can’t know page number from the book but if you can just tell me page number from word document that is attached)

Attached is chapter 4.

I also need reply (5 meaningful sentences) to the following post: This does not need to be connected to content in the textbook.

POST for reply: One key concept I think I can apply in my counseling practice from psychoanalytic therapy is transference. I think it will be helpful to attempt to analyze when early patterns of relating to significant others, on the part of the client, come into the therapy session with the therapist serving as that significant other. This is important because it can provide an opening for clients to relive and reexperience these early feelings which can be inaccessible by other routes (p. 75). The significance of pointing out the commonalities between their early methods of interacting and behaving and the way they do so now is that it builds an awareness and understanding in them of such patterns, allowing them to change some deep-seated patterns and alter their personality when other methods are less helpful (p.76).

I think without the ability to utilize transference as a concept, therapists may be confused and feel wrongly targeted when it occurs. Rather than seeing the transference process as a useful time for interpretation to bring about change and understanding, the therapist might just get defensive or silent. It is important to take these opportunities to help our clients in the present alter their patterns that they have established over the course of their lives. As mentioned in the text, the concept of transference can also be very helpful in working with groups. The members of the group therapy can reenact early patterns of relating to significant others, finding symbolic parental figures or siblings, showing how their interpersonal relations have repeated over time (p. 76). This can provide an opportunity to work through these patterns in the group setting and generalize newer, more adaptive, patterns to their life outside of therapy.

Another psychoanalytic concept which I think will be useful to apply in my counseling practice is resistance. This can be helpful in understanding when and why clients feel anxiety in bringing out material and opening up. The resistance can serve as an obstacle to the change which is most useful to therapy, and it is important to understand when it occurs. The client may feel hesitant to bring out ideas, perspectives, or memories which they have kept hidden from themselves and others (p. 75). By keeping the material hidden, they have prevented themselves from an awareness of the underlying influences or conflicts driving certain thoughts and behaviors in their life. To change these thoughts and behaviors, it is essential to bring them out to the surface to bring an awareness of what it is they would like to change.

The resistance experienced illustrates the two directions the client is pulled in: they want to change but are afraid of threatening material required to bring out for this change, and they want to maintain their current patterns because these are comfortable and non-threatening (p. 75). Because it can be a difficult process for a client to go through, I think it is important to avoid blaming or accusing them of resisting. I think a more useful method would be maintaining a strong therapeutic connection where the resistance is interpreted, analyzed, and discussed. This can give the client a sense of safety and confidence to move toward change rather than the inertia and comfort of the previous methods of thinking, acting, and relating to others.