Interview with Charles Vanriper

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Re: Van Riper therapy

From: Anders Lundberg
Date: 10/13/03
Time: 4:04:46 AM
Remote Name: 217.209.22.186

Comments

Dear Brynn Rhodes, Thank you for your long letter. You point to many a tricky problems in our job, all covered by the great umbrella of questioning myself and my clinical sufficiency. Just the fact that you lay them on the table is a good and fine start. I have learned since long that formulating questions is the basic trick, answering them often is a cop out triggerered by the attempt to raise the weak sufficiency. And to no avail, of course. Insufficiency is what you have to live with, just like I do, and I know Dr. Van also did. We learn, and most of the time pretty slowly. Wisdom takes a long time to grow. How very unamerican! So, congratulations to the courage of yours. Then, I think I can be personally frank in my reply as well.

Surgeons have to know more than holding the knife. We, the actual and former patients, are very glad their knowledge is beyond the technical, manual stage. No surgeon can say, "sorry, but I didn't read all the texts for cutting anybody's Appendix. But I'll try anyway. Think it might damage?"

You know the answer to that question, I am sure. Every surgeon, then, has to have her first patient to cut open, treated and closed. Every SLP and student has to have his or her first client. No student can, however, read that is written (nor can surgeons) about a certain subject. That is why we have, or MUST have, counselors very close to us, close in space and close in time for a time in training. I cannot be that for you, I am afraid, provided the university of yours doesn't hire me, of course!

See, the question is not if you could apply this or that within or outside any approach. Just the mere fact that you are set to work with anybody creates the risk that your actions will hurt or cause damage to the client. Therapy, just like scalpels or some medication can be "very strong medicine". I, from the distance of half a continent and one ocean apart from you, cannot decide whether your client is more fragile than other clients or not or if you are pushing a teen too hard from the teen's standpoint. But your earlier experience from suicidal teens are, or could be, of great aid to you. I guess you had to learn how to listen for certain signs in their language, body language, behaviors... Good! Get back to that before you do anything "cafeteria style". What are their needs? How do they express those and themselves? What do you suspect they hide of importance here (now, they do have to have secrets from you!!! With importance I refer to the relations to why they are at your office)? That knowledge is vital for your actions and that is what you should talk to your counselor abóut, extensively.

Dear Brynn! You don't have to be a psychologist for this, but you do have to be prepared for normal reactions of grief, anger, unfairness, hopes, unreality, daydreaming, and self-doubts (to be dontinued!!!) that do exist in any teen-ager and here with special focus to then communicative problems of theirs.

I wonder if your questions also reflect what my students often suffer from, namely a certain feeling of stress coming from a combination of high hopes, extreme lack of time and complexity of the client, often with high degree of avoidance and/or severe external symtoms. If so, the combination of complicating factors of time and the like is nothing you can affect by trying harder. An old Chinese saying is that flowers don't grow because they are pulled. But you can be there, listening, showing, learning (presumably more learning than teaching!) and be the catalyst for their knowing and experiencing. You cannot solve their problems, yes you can actually harm them, but you can add your piece to someone later on, giving them the significant push. You will be able to give significant pushes later after the clients have been carefully prepared by YOUR students!

And finally. We never know where we land in an other human. What we think might be slow, meaningless and hopeless might just as well be what is needed for that client to give nourishment enough to get on. And that is true for the opposites as well. Timing is very crucial! And difficult!!

More finally! I sat with a 12 year old many years ago. He had been abandoned by SIX(!) SLPs in his days, all giving up because he stuttered so hard and complex. He came to my office once a week for over a year, saying almost nothing, and the family lived far away from here. I got myself a counselor, just to stand the situation, just for the fact that his father, also a stuttering man, firmy had declared that seeing me was precisely what the kid wanted to do. He liked to be in my office. After a year, and I had to fight for a renewed referral from his hospital (see, quite different economy here in therapy!) after when he had seen that he understood that I was not giving up like the ones before. You know, he had thought "Why should I speak? He's leaving me anyway, others did". Then he began speaking, and I could start to learn about him, his stuttering, about being abandoned by experts and others and then working on speech too. Regardless his stuttering I had decided that I was not the one to give in and quit him. He had to quit me. And of course he did, most people are pretty healthy. At the age of 16 he said that being in school all week was more important to him than coming to me (two hours of driving each way!), so he was leaving. Yes of course, in far better shape than he was when coming to me the first time. And after that, I had him in my home every summer for just a short visit on half an hour, a cup of coffee and a short "hello", and for quite some years. He calls from time to time, but now at least three years ago. Stutters a little, but a strong and wonderful young man, in charge of his communication. Whoops, a long "finally" that one! But my fingers just ran off... Ah, what the h--k! Good luck!

Anders Lundberg


Last changed: September 12, 2005