I have been in therapy with a good therapist for two years and now think it would be beneficial to audiotape my therapy sessions for review. I am often so deeply into the session that I can't remember exactly what is said. I would never share the tape and in fact would be willing to come into therapist's office to listen to it, to insure that it would be be misused. I would give therapist permission to tape, to use only for private use. Some therapists do this, some therapist don't. My therapist refuses to tape, saying that is is not within his paradigm of therapy and would make him uncomfortable. I think this is ridiculous, since he's here to serve me and he won't be able to tell if it's beneficial without even trying it. I swear, if we tried it and he said it didn't work for him, I could do without it. But I do think it could be exceedingly helpful. What are your experiences with taping? I am particularly interested in experiences of clients who have taped or therapists on the board.
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Answers
tarfonschild, since you acknowledge that your therapist is a good one, and you feel enough trust to tape, why not trust your therapist with his view on not taping?
The reason you aren't remembering might be a therapeutic one. You might not be ready nor able to grasp everything that is covered in session. Try having the T make a few notes regarding what he wants you to try and remember, or work on from the session. If he's reluctant to do even that, they he must feel you are going as fast as is safe for you, through this therapy process.
Good wishes.
drjean
That's a smart answer, drjean, and thanks for taking the time.
You may be right. Maybe I should trust my therapist with his view on taping. But I've always been of the "trust, but verify" school when it comes to life. I think it's a rational approach to a non-black-and-white world, and an approach that also makes emotional sense.
It seems to me that so much of therapy is getting the client to shift the framework of his/her life and maybe try some things that might not be comfortable right out of the chute. It also seems to me that the therapist should be similarly willing to be flexible if it might prove to be to the client's benefit.
There's no real way to try this with something like taping other than to give it a go once or twice and then talk about the results. Maybe the therapist is correct that it would be unhelpful. But maybe the therapist isn't correct. Why not test it out and see which is which, if the client is interested?
I guess what I'm saying is this. Who's in a better position to judge if the therapy is having its maximum effect? The therapist, or the client? Who is in a better position to determine the needs of the client? The therapist, or the client? I guess I'm with Carl Rogers when he says that people tend to move toward growth and healing, and have the means and abilities to find their own answers with therapeutic guidance.
The only way for anyone -- therapist or client -- to tell whether taping would be helpful to this process would be to try it. That's why I wouldn't just trust my therapist with his view on this. I might be wrong. But so might he.
Hi Tarfonschild:
Sometimes therapists may just be reluctant to try something different. He may worry about you not wanting to do so later on, or his own feelings of worry.
It could very well be as Jean says, the reasons you arent remembering may be good things as well.
Best,
Clyde
It could be that both of you are saying, "The other person ought to be more flexible!" It could be that this is raising control issues for you. Why not try for another means of accomplishing the same thing, and take notes yourself during the session? Studies have shown that taking notes in classes reinforces learning more than listening or taping. If you're absolutely set on taping or nothing, you might look again at the control issues here.
I very much appreciate the interest in this subject from drjean, Clyde, and now Mattie58.
There's no doubt there's a bit of a impasse here, and I am more than willing to be flexible, but it doesn't seem to me like the flexibility should all be one sided. It's not like my therapist has offered any alternatives.
Again, I'm not saying, "let's tape all the time." I'm saying, "Let's try it out and see if it works. Or doesn't work." It's hard to believe, but I don't really have a stake in it working. I'd just like to try it.
As for the idea of note taking, ut the notion of that seems even more intrusive and disruptive than taping. I went through eight years of post-high-school education, and am up to speed on the efficacy of the process for commiting material to memory. Note taking works best when you're not being interactive. But in a two way conversation, especially when one is dealing with emotions, it skews things terribly, because it's a rational process. I can't imagine that in the therapeutic context it would do less than rip the client right out of the moment.
However, it isn't taping or nothing. Taking some time at the end of a session to recap makes sense to me. Taking a few moments at the start of the next session to recap the last one also makes sense.
But what makes sense most of all is to try taping as an experiment. Why the therapist rigidity on this?
Again, thanks to all for their considered thinking and contributions on this question.
Therapy is a process. Taping that process isn't part of it. It's what you think about, and work through in session that is key. It's about working on what you do recall from session, that is therapy. If there are some things you feel is very important that are discussed in therapy, and you are afraid you won't remember them afterwards, then ask the Therapist (T) to jot them down for you. If the T says let's not...then it isn't in the T's plan to help you in that way.
Every T has a plan for your therapy process. It isn't that you just show up and they wing it. Maybe part of your therapy is learning how to remember important issues discussed in therapy? IDK.
tc
drjean
With all due respect to the great Drjean, there is a split of opinion out there in psychotherapy-land when it comes to videotaping and audiotaping of sessions. Some practitioners -- the family systems therapy people, for example -- tape routinely, and often operate with one-way mirrors for observation. Certainly, much of the scholarly research done by such people in such arenas as control-mastery of the San Francisco Psychotherapy Research Group here in SF, object relations, and brief psychodynamic therapy depends on taping for evaluation of efficacy and scientific validation. So to say that taping isn't part of the process is a bit of an overstatement, though I suspect for many therapists it's completely out of bounds. Addiction specialists and OCD therapists seem to like taping, since it provides reinforcement for their clients outside the office. A decision by a therapist to prefer, permit, or bar taping seems to be a judgment call, and no judgment in this area is fundamentally more sound than any other.