The Self of The Father

I have been a practicing therapist since 1997 and a professor of marriage and family therapy for nearly as long. There is a core concept that is considered crucial in order for therapist to be effective. It is called Self-of-the-Therapist work. The idea is that therapists must have a consciousness of all the things that influence their thinking and thus what they do or do not do in their role as a therapist.  Author Peggy Tabor Millin captures this idea more poeticly in her book Mary’s Way: ¨ I was on a train on a rainy day. The train was slowing down to pull into a station. For some reason I became intent on watching the raindrops on the window. Two separate drops, pushed by the wind, merged into one for a moment and then divided again-each carrying with it, a part of the other. Simply by that momentary touching, neither was what it had been before. And as each went on to touch other raindrops, it shared not only itself, but what it had gleaned from the other. I saw this metaphor ...