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Psychotherapy and Medicine

 

How come psychotherapy can sometimes succeed with clients when conventional medicine fails?

 

Asaf Rolef Ben-Shahar LicMT LHS LNCP LCPS

 

A common analogy between man and computer, although somewhat lacking in depth (and disrespectful of the holistic approach that consider mind and body to be one), might help to understand the relationship between our mind and our body and through this understanding to clarify why psychotherapy can sometimes help when conventional medicine fails. Imagine a super-computer with many components. A computer consists of Hardware – the concrete components and Software – the programs that communicate through the computer. 

 

The Hardware stands for the physical body – our organs and mechanisms, and is treated by Hardware technicians (Medical Doctors), who might switch some buttons on or off, replace parts, or fix it physically in other ways. Hardware technicians rarely deal with causes. The cure they offer is often of an urgent character, and the most important thing they take care of is functioning, making things work, taking care of the symptoms.

 

Medicine practice per-se is much the same and the study of reasons is reserved for lab workers and researchers. The practitioner, usually a very busy professional person, deals with ‘fixing’ people by removing their painful or harmful symptoms.

 

The other part of the system is the Software. There are many programs on the Human hard-drive (whether you choose to call it brain, mind or whatever is merely a vocabular decision), many ‘memories’, ‘learned tasks’ and other things not completely understood such as feelings and emotions (or, for god's sake, spirituality). The Software technician has no concrete working substance. One can not point at a program, several people don’t even believe it exists! (for another paradigm of thinking, refer to 'Holistic approach to Psychotherapy''

 

However, the Software’s (or mind’s) existence is irrelevant to the technician’s work. Occasionally some things go wrong, and a Hardware technician can’t do a thing about it, because basically there is nothing wrong with the hardware system, or so he or she thinks.

There is a vital connection between the Hardware realm and the Software one. They influence each other in many ways: when the memory chips are defected, the software could be damaged too (hyperactivity of the thyroid gland, for example, has severe affects on feelings). An overload of programs on the hard disk can fault the hard-drive itself (studies have shown a high correlation between depression and diseases). The connection between these realms does not mean that the complexity of a computer (or a human being) can be reduced into one system of understanding.

 

A Software technician’s (Psychotherapist) work is much subtler and less recipe-like than that of Hardware technician. If she is to succeed in fixing the software (the mind) – she must understand it as a whole. She must, of course, eliminate the possibilities of a mechanical problem and differentiate Hardware consequences from Software causes.

After this elimination, the most amazing thing about computer Software (or human mind) appears: it communicates in our own language. The Software technician can ask questions, in a direct or indirect fashion, and get answers from the problematic conscious or unconscious process (or software) itself. Can you imagine a G.P communicating with an infected organ in its language? Through this communication there is a chance of understanding the basic processes that make the machine work. By applying methods of talking and interpreting, a psychotherapist can create a coherent image of the patient’s personality – and help him or her - mainly by providing that person with self-help tools and through the very process of understanding (as computing an assisting program to fix the broken one).

 

A psychotherapist has some advantages over the physician: she can, for example, devote much more time to - and develop an understanding of - the patient, and thus can treat the source of the problem, not only it’s symptoms. Software’s diseases are varied and the cure is many times found at the software level, while fixing a tangible part will only dissociate the problem without solving it.

 

It is hard to comprehend the mind; it seems that there will never be a perfect tool that will fully understand it (and aren't we just lucky?). In therapy, the therapist can use her most powerful tool, one which no computer will ever achieve – her own mind, her own complicated software. A Doctor of Medicine is an educated technician applying his knowledge to another, somewhat dissociated field (biology, chemistry), while a psychotherapist (like a Software technician)- is like two computer programs interacting – talking in their own similar language, transferring data through an understandable channel of 

communication.

 

 

Asaf Rolef Ben-Shahar
Integrative Massage therapy
Hypnotherapy & Psychotherapy
Potters Bar
http://www.IMT.co.il

 

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