 We demystify what goes on behind the therapy room door. Join us on this voyage of discovery and co-creative conversations. This is The Therapy Show, behind closed doors podcast, with Bob Cook and Jackie Jones. Welcome back to The Therapy Show, behind closed doors, with the wonderful Mr Bob Cook and myself, Jackie Jones. And what we're going to be, it's a really interesting topic this one, Bob. I love it. And you can tell it's one of your titles. Is therapy like chess? Absolutely. But they're nearly, they're all my titles, Jackie. They are. But this one in particular, because I know how much you love chess. Well, welcome, welcome. I've just come back from a sort of personal professional growth week in Spain, where it was 25 degrees, so or 24 degrees. So it's good to be back. Good to have you back. I like this podcast. Yes, you're quite right. I do play chess, so it appeals to me. And when I, when I think of psychotherapy, I always remember a crime to mine. Some years ago now, it was a professional chess player. And he said, Oh, psychotherapy is just like chess, Bob. I was never saying that. We talked a lot about it. So I thought about it really, I thought we make a good title for a podcast. What do you think about it? Most therapists who are trained in the arts, psychotherapy, I'll probably train what is called different treatment plans. Yes. Yeah. In other words, you would have been the same, wouldn't you? Yeah. You would have learned about contracts, and you would have learned about working with clients, and you also learned about different treatment plans. In other words, maps for different types of clients. Yeah. So one of the books, which we haven't talked about, I realise, and one of the podcasts is called Personality Adaptations by Ian Stewart and Van Doolings, which talks about six different... Oh, you've got it, Jackie, have you? Oh, I can see you can swing your back. There we are. Very big book. It's great for Ty to see you're putting your head on and to rest. Anyway, it's a very thick textbook, but it talks about six different adaptations or personalities and different ways of reaching people, and it falls to not go down for each different adaptation or character profile. So a lot of psychotherapists in their training will have learned treatment plans, or maps, like to follow, or at least sequences of a psychotherapy process. So for example, one of the classic ones would be, for a lot of, a lot of therapists, I think, first step would be called creating a working alliance. And then from that, in TA, it would be things like looking at the personality model framework, parent-adult-child, and which energy people play in different parts of themselves and the problems that causes, especially if they're not in their adult eager state. And then from that, perhaps looking at developmental deficits in the child eager state and helping them heal those and develop different coping strategies or decisions to integrate in the here and now. And that's the sort of treatment plan, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. I think we all need a plan going forward, otherwise we're just meandering around. Yeah, so and then of course, different books talk about different treatment plans for different adaptations or different personalities, such as that book we've just talked about, adaptations, buying student van joins. And I think for the beginning therapy, particularly, treatment plans often are a structure to hold on to. Yes, they definitely were for me. I still quite like this book. So am I safe to say probably that you would think of the first phase of psychotherapy, maybe including creating a working alliance where there's trust, safety, security, and in that perhaps contract making? Absolutely, that needs to be the first stage, yeah. Which is why I suppose in my contract that I said that I asked them to come for a minimum of four weeks to kind of agree to come for four weeks, because I think it takes at least that amount of time to just get to know each other a bit. Yeah, and in that contracting stage or getting to know each other stage, I suspect, given you trained as a TA therapist, you might be looking at things like script analysis or looking at such things as different ways to contact a person. Yeah, that's correct. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So in your head, Jackie, you probably have, and I may be incorrect completely in this, a sort of vague, if not specific way of thinking of phases of a psychotherapy treatment? Yeah, it's always open to adapting for me. But yes, yeah. I think most psychotherapists would. Yeah. I don't think this is sort of like new information. No. And in TA, there's many different types of treatment plan, but they all start with building a working alliance which has got an element of trust, safety and security in it. Yes, yes. And in that time, you'd also build up a sort of whole wealth of whole wealth of what is called script analysis, looking at the life plan, which has been adapted often in the client's unconscious processes. Yes, yeah, yeah. And I suspect that everybody listening to this would probably have a starting point on how they contact the clients in front of them and where that may or may not go. Yeah. So linking this into chess, are you thinking that that's kind of like the opening moves on the chess? Oh, Jack, this is why I love doing podcasts with you. You're reading my mind. Yeah, if you go and play chess, chess is like three games, three games in one. So the first stage of, you know, a chess game is done very quickly, by the way. And there are a whole number of what we call opening moves, which you might play and then the other person responds to those opening moves with well rehearsed other moves to that particular move. So usually when people play their opening games or opening moves, sorry, sorry, not games, opening moves, they might move in the first seven or eight moves. And then the person responds back very, very, very quickly, because each person knows the predictable sequence of that particular opening move. So for example, there's a particular move called the Sicilian defense, the Sicilian defense in chess. And so you will make the first six, seven moves as quick as a flash. And the other person who knows the Sicilian defense, because I've read up on it, will reply. So those opening moves take place pretty quickly. And the people responding, not on they predictably responding in a certain way, but they may have a variation of that defense, which in a way is helping the person understand a bit about the variations that a person might move in the opening sessions. So that's what I'm saying. I'm linking it a little bit to chess, the therapy sequences right at the beginning. Yeah, like you say, you know, once you've got through that, the way that we interact with each other and that, you know, alliance going then for me, it is personality types and driver behaviors and things like that that I fall back on all the time in my opening moves, just to give me an insight and some confidence on where we're going to go with it and how potentially that they're going to respond to it. Yeah, the defenses that they might have around therapy. Yeah. I think a bit of difference is that people playing chess will rapidly move their opening moves because they've crammed up on it or they know different variations. So they move pretty quickly, where in psychotherapy, it's more slower. It's much less predictable in a way. There's a lot more going on perhaps in those opening sessions than there is in chess because everybody knows the different openings and the different responses to the openings. Yeah. But in chess, they then lead to what is called the middle game, where much more creativity will happen. So you have your opening moves, that leads to the middle game. And in the middle game of chess, there's a lot of creativity. And according to the unique style of the person in front of you, then the person on the other side will respond in a certain way. Now, if we think of psychotherapy, once we've built up a working alliance and all the trust and safety and security has been put in, and we've just started learning about person's coping mechanisms or their developmental deficits, we will probably head a certain way. Now, what makes therapy, I think, particularly different from chess, but of course, the unpredictability of chess in the middle game is pretty similar. But is the unpredictability of the client in front of you? So in other words, as you get to know the person, the uniqueness of the person in front of you, the client I'm talking about here, history and how they become the way they are, the unique person that tells their story to you, maybe different themes or different decisions from many of the clients who perhaps have developed a similar story, but of course, has a completely unique process to it. Yes. So as you get to know the person, even though you've done the script analysis, you'll be attuned and going with helping or be a witness to the client's story. So a lot happens then. So we're talking about phases and sequences of a psychotherapy treatment plan. The first phase is always going to be working alliance, getting to know the actual client, the second stage, which is really much more about helping the person not only deferred their early story, but learning the coping mechanisms that help the person survive, but also doesn't help them today. Yeah. Like you said, the themes might be the same with lots of different people, but the way that they got to it and the content of those themes is unique to all of us. So you will tailor the psychotherapy process to that particular unique story, that they are telling you, is how I see that second or third stage, if you like. And then you will go towards helping the person heal their developmental deficits and help them look at how the past may play out in the present unless they start making new degree decisions. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Because it is quite a complex. It is very complex. That middle game, if you want to call it that, if we're relating it to chess. What happens? Absolutely. And even though the person's background and their upbringing and everything is constant and it stays the same, I would say to mine changes from moment to moment. So every time the client comes in, we're seeing a different side of them a lot of the time. Well, that's what I find. Sometimes they come in and they're in a good state of mind and the world is not that bad. And then the next time they come, something's happened or the state of mind is shifted and they're really negative and everything's really bad. So we're constantly adapting to what's in front of us, although we've got this undercurrent of a plan. That's why I find it. Yeah. And I think people have been TA trained according to, you know, which I think school you come from in TA. Eric Byrne, who was the originator of TA in the late 1950s, early 1960s, he had this is a major thrust, if you like, of Cure, developing, helping the client develop a resilient, robust adult eager state. Yeah. So when the client is coming from an adult eager state in TA language, they're acting appropriately to the age they are. So I'm 73. So acting, thinking, feeling and behaving according to my own age, not for some of regressed younger self or from some sort of, you know, moral duty or shoulds and aughts of a mother and father or significant other. So Byrne was very much a person who used transaction analysis or developed transaction analysis with the idea primarily of helping the person strengthen their adult eager state, which is very CBT-ish actually. Yes. Yeah. It does make sense. So I recently had somebody contact me and ask if I would see a member of their family, a young member of their family that was severely autistic, which one I didn't feel qualified enough to do, but also I felt like potentially they wouldn't have enough adult capacity to undergo psychotherapy. So what was the criteria behind that decision? I understand what you've just said, but I mean, what brought you to that conclusion? Because I think with autism, one of the major things is, you know, transactions between people and communication and that sort of stuff. And I, I know that I would find that difficult in a therapy session to get their understanding across without the communication, the skills that you need to in order to do that body language and all that sort of stuff for me personally. Yeah. So you're making decisions all the way along who's suitable for psychotherapy, who might not be, for example, somebody who's got active psychosis and doesn't have much access to their here and now adult. Yeah. You could argue, may not be suitable for modern day psychotherapy, where or the sort of psychotherapy we practice, which is helping the person deal with their own developmental deficits, which would mean the person accessing their younger self or unconscious process. Yeah. And for somebody who's sort of coming from a psychotic place, that's pretty unprotective. Yeah. Not actually. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, with people that are autistic, you know, being able to communicate that with somebody else, I would imagine is quite difficult. And I just don't feel, you know, competent in that area in order to do it. So decline. I think that's professional because it means that you are being very transparent and saying, well, perhaps I haven't got the professional expertise or whatever, why you look at it. Yeah. Do the work that you want to do. Yeah. Absolutely. But that middle game, I think, is when we do start to do, you know, the most beneficial work. Oh, once they've started to trust you, which is the first phase. Yeah. Started to develop their own story and feel trustful with you to tell them that story, which is why they're there in the first place. Yeah. And it is the foundations of any psychotherapy treatment plan or any psychotherapy process. Because without those foundations, psychotherapy isn't likely to happen. Yeah. So that first stage of psychotherapy is very, very important. And then it leads on to that process in the middle, which is more, especially if you're in TA, there might not be other disciplines listening. And of course, Eric Burns, the originator of TA who's listening, would disagree with me, because his type of TA was different from the way I think. I mean, it's not that I don't think about the adult state of resilience. But I'm much more interested in looking at the developmental deficits of the past. Yeah. And the past affects the present. And what the client or myself and the client needs to do, which is usually the second stage, as far as I'm concerned, which is heal the developmental deficits so they can develop different coping strategies so they can have a different and hardest way of life. And that would lead on to the third stage, of course, which is helping the client integrate those new coping mechanisms and helping them transition into a more healthy script, if you like. Yes. Yeah. And then after that comes endings. Yeah. Because the integration part is, obviously it's really important, but that's kind of like a relearning of things and trying new ways of being. It's like experimental. It's experimental to a stage. You're correct. No, you're correct, Jackie. It's new ways of being for the client. So it is by definition experiential. I was thinking though, if you've done a lot of the healing and developmental work with their relational needs or a child ego state, and they've decided and putting new ways of being on the road, then as much as they can, they will have developed new or newish coping mechanisms, which are experiential. So I agree with you, Jackie. However, I'm just thinking I had a client earlier on today and we were talking about boundaries. They found it really difficult to put boundaries in place or to uphold any boundaries that they did have. So if I use that as an example, when I'm saying experiential, it's about them, you know, putting boundaries in place and then potentially coming back and talking about how it was to put the boundary in place, whether it worked, whether they upheld it and how it felt. So that's what I mean by experiential is practicing and integrating what they're learning in the therapy room out in the big wide world. Oh, yes. I mean, 100% agree with you. I was going to say that the prerequisite, which is really important, is that the client has you on their side. Yeah. Yeah. Which is very different usually from their toxic history, where they were alone or neglected or felt depressed, stressed or whatever you want to look at it. Usually they don't have someone to help them do what you've just talked about. Yeah. So that's by definition is new and experiential. Yeah. Because I think we can all put things in place, you know, on paper and think, yeah, that works really. I can understand that. But then putting it in practice and maintaining it is the difficult part. That's right. And one of the real important things for the client to undertake, which you are talking about here to lead to the part we're talking about is that they defeat or desensitize the toxic other, which has been part of their very challenging history. Yeah. And through what we're called transplants, if you like, or osmosis if you want to use another word, take you on as the protector and new champion. Same in chess. Yeah. The end game is when you defeat and you encircle and trap the significant other or the king, if you like, leads to a checkmate. What a wonderful way of looking at it. It's interesting, though, isn't it? Absolutely. What we're doing in therapy, we're helping the person defeat, desensitize, make the other powerless. So the client, in this sense, can become bigger and take ownership of their own space so they don't feel so vulnerable anymore. Yeah. Yeah. And all this is internal, obviously. It's not like, you know, maybe he's confronting somebody in the life, but not necessarily internally, but I know you don't use this technique, but I like these techniques. It's internal. Yes. But I think to get to the internal world, I like the technique of two chair techniques. Yeah. Three chair techniques to enable the person to actually in fantasy stand up to the very people they weren't able to stand up to. Yeah. And then the feeling of, you know, a sense of empowerment and powerfulness, which then enables them to make new decisions. Yeah. And that is a safe space to do it with you championing them. And you, you know, when I've seen it witnessed in my training, I think the trainer actually had their hand on the back of the, you know, the person that was the client as if to say, I'm here, I'm behind you and I've got your back kind of thing. It was a real a real metaphor. And, you know, there's many comparisons to the sequences of psychotherapy and sequences of chess, but one of them I think is why I'm just talking about it, which is so important, which is the defeat of the toxic significant other, which has been so challenging. Yeah. The client's developmental in a healthy way. Yeah. And it's nice to look at therapy as having a beginning, a middle and an end to it as well. Absolutely. And I like what you talked about in terms of boundaries. So they start to see where they begin and where they ended. Yeah. And where they can begin again and how they can take ownership of themselves in a healthy way. Yeah. I think there are phases of psychotherapy, just like there are phases of chess. Now, what's really important though in psychotherapy, which is very different from chess, is our empathy and attunement as the sort of methods to get to a developmental perspective, which you wouldn't have in chess. I'm sure there are some metaphors and parallels and different things like that, if I wanted to enough. But I think the methods of an in-depth relational psychotherapy, achievement, involvement, inquiry are very important tools that are different from chess. We might be psyching out the other person or attempting to get thinking about what the other person's thinking and all those sorts of things. But I don't think true attunement happens. No. In chess, I mean. No, no. Therapy, I think it's really important to use the tools of attunement and empathy to enable the person to or enable the therapist and the client to develop the journey that they're actually involved in. Yeah. I like the way you said then about inquiry as well. I think that's a massive part of checking in with them to make sure that I've got the right end of the stick. And calling a client out as well. I seem to be doing that a lot lately. What do you mean by that? So I understand. I sometimes think that a client is doing or saying what they think I want them to. They're adapting to you. Yes. Yeah. So I see what you make of the book then, post the adaptations. Yes. Yeah. So I will call them out on that in an inquiring way. Is that really what you think? So what you mean is the psychoanalytical term of confrontation when you talk about calling out. Yes. Confrontation from a positive. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So psychoanalytical. So when you say calling out, you mean confrontation in a positive frame. Yeah. Okay. And you said you're doing more of that recently. Yes. I think so. With one particular client who I've kind of got the makings of him now, if that makes sense. And when I say again. Do you mean you understand him more? Yes. And by understanding him more, you know, able to, you're more able to perhaps think about confrontation in terms of helping him understand as well. Yes. I think that on the times when I have confronted him in a very, you know, kind way, he's had a real breakthrough and actually realized that what he was saying wasn't actually what he was doing or what he was feeling. It was a protective mechanism. Well, I think that's what psychotherapy is all about. I don't think it's all about empathy and nurture. No. I think some people want that, but, you know, for this particular one. But I think that's only because I have got so attuned to this client. Yes. And he must obviously, or both of you, must have a template of trust for that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a really interesting topic. I love the kind of the idea of the opening game, the middle game and the end game. I do like that. Yeah. Good. Great. I enjoyed talking about two of my favourite passions. Chess and psychotherapy. But of course, psychotherapy is my major passion, but I do enjoy talking about the two passions of mine. I enjoyed it, Bob. Thank you. And what we're going to be talking about next time is when intimacy and closeness can be unsafe in the therapy room. Yeah. And that's a big subject. Yes. Until next time, Bob. Thank you. Goodbye. Bye.