• Home
  • Individual Counseling
    • Anxiety Therapy NYC
    • Depression Treatment NYC
    • Job and Career Support in NYC
    • Substance Use Disorder Counseling NYC
  • Couples & Parents
    • Marriage Counseling and Couples Counseling NYC
    • Parenting Counseling NYC
  • Blog
  • TESTIMONIALS
  • FAQs
  • About
    • Meet Diane Spear
    • Manhattan, NYC Office Location
  • Contact

Diane Spear

licensed clinical social worker. Union Square & Greenwich Village, NYC therapist. 212.353.0296

What “Size” for Therapy: Long or Short?

 

therapist-and-patient

The buzz in therapy circles in April 2012 concerned a New York Times article written by a NYC psychotherapist, Jonathan Alpert, who inflates his credentials and bashes long-term treatment and the therapists who provide it. He implies that long-term therapy is only for severe psychological disorders—and he doesn’t consider depression and anxiety to be severe issues.

Tell that to anyone who’s suffered from major depression or disabling panic attacks!

Alpert claims to be able to get to the bottom of problems such as being stuck in unfulfilling jobs or relationships, unable to reach life goals, being fearful of change, and therefore depressed (this is how he grouped these problems) quickly, sometimes in less than one session.

Is therapy a series of commands or a process?

Alpert tells people what to do, rather than helping them with their thought processes, so they can make their own decisions.

Many people begin treatment wanting the therapist to tell them what to do, but if a therapist does that, patients will never learn to think through things and take responsibility for their own decisions.

I often make a feeble joke, saying that I forgot to buy batteries for my magic wand, before explaining that I wouldn’t dream of telling someone what to do.

My job is to help them explore the things that get in the way of satisfaction in their daily lives, so they can decide what they want to do, based on rational thought, instead of impulse, emotion, or an unconscious motivation that drives their decision-making process.

The treatment approach Alpert embraces fosters childish dependency, with patients waiting for the therapist to “feed” them, rather than the therapist helping them look at the dependency and blame that often motivate this insistence on being told what to do.

Remember: Dependency is the idea that I need you to do something so I can feel okay, and I get to blame you when you don’t do it right.

Alpert’s approach is the “give a man a fish and he eats for a day” method, instead of teaching him to fish, so he can eat for a lifetime.

Short-term therapy has its place…

Short-term, goal-focused counseling has its place in dealing with situational problems that are right on the surface:

  • How can I set limits with my clients or boss?
  • How can I help my teenager learn to accept more responsibility?
  • I just moved here and need support to adjust and integrate myself into a new community.

…as does long-term therapy

But

  • major depressive disorder
  • bipolar disorder, alcoholism
  • drug addiction
  • narcissistic personality disorder
  • borderline personality disorder
  • anxiety disorder
  • long-term dissatisfaction in a relationship
  • a pattern of unsatisfactory personal or professional relationships?

Even the example he uses of a woman who’s been unhappy with her boyfriend for the past year is fatally flawed in his formulation of the case. He says that he would ask what could be missing from her relationship and how she could take care of the missing elements or end it.

He leaves out a few basic important points:

  1. Was she happy before she was in the relationship, i.e., is this a woman who knows how to be happy?
  2. Is she looking for her boyfriend to make her happy and give her happily-ever-after in life, i.e., are her dependency issues getting in the way?
  3. What are her contributions to the lack of satisfaction in the relationship? No one person holds all the good or all the bad in the relationship. It’s a dynamic
  4. Did she grow up with a model of parents who enjoyed each other and were satisfied in their relationship, or did she grow up with a parent who was disappointed in his or her partner, who subtly or obviously passed along the idea that men are disappointing?

Those questions are just a first pass look at what Alpert has left out in his simplistic, I’ll-just-tell-her-what-to-do approach.

What “size” for therapy: long or short? Wrong question! Good therapy.

There is effective and ineffective short-term therapy and effective and ineffective long-term therapy.

As a therapist in private practice since 1995, I’ve done lots of short-term and long-term treatment of patients. New patients frequently want me to tell them how long treatment lasts.

I make a treatment recommendation about session frequency, based on clinical assessment, but the duration of the treatment is something that evolves, as I learn more about them and their issues, and as they learn more about themselves and their issues. It’s not a one-size-fits-all process, despite what Jonathan Alpert says.

Bob Newhart’s character in the following sketch beat Alpert’s quick-fix record by a mile. He could do it in just two words. Watch it, have a laugh, and feel free to leave a comment below.

If you want change that takes more than two words, read up on the differences between short-term counseling and therapy.  If you’d like to learn more, contact me here. I look forward to speaking with you.

 

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)

Related

April 25, 2012 Leave a Comment

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Blog Posts

  • Risk and resilience

  • What’s the Role of Worry and Anxiety in Your Life?

  • How Much Is Enough?

  • Winning Is Everything! Or Is it?

  • HBO’s ”Succession”: What Can We Learn from These Flawed Characters?

  • Abracadabra: Poof! It’s Magical Thinking!

  • The Value of Friendship

  • The Importance of Therapy for Therapists

  • Are You a Good Listener? 5 Ways to Make Sure

  • Competition? Or Ambition!

  • Dealing with the death of a pet

  • Sexual Assault Survivors, Christine Blasey Ford, and Brett Kavanaugh

  • Logic: Joy Subtraction or Joy Addition?

  • Warming Up! A Psychotherapist Reviews “Lady Bird”

  • In the News: Quoted in November 13, 2017 Huffington Post article

  • “It’s Never Too Late to Reclaim Your Life!”

  • Is Life a Pie or an Ocean? An Abundance Mentality.

  • Suffering from Post-Election Blues? 10 Tips to Overcome It!

  • Treatment Improves Self-Esteem

  • A Sense of Fun Can Be Learned in Treatment!

  • Stop Trying!

  • Love and Connection: Oliver Sacks and Living Fully

  • True Joy: Alice Herz-Sommer

  • “Enlightened” Narcissists Return!

  • Hurricane Sandy and Coping Style

  • Caring What Others Think: Dependency and “The Newsroom”

  • Pay Attention vs. Seek Attention

  • The Geographical Fix vs. Therapy

  • What “Size” for Therapy: Long or Short?

  • HBO and Narcissism

  • “Enlightened” Superiority

  • Satisfaction or “I Could’ve Had a V-8!”

  • Finding the Humor in Everyday Life

  • Learning Impulse Control from David Mamet

  • Learning Disappointment from “American Idol”

  • Finding a Therapist Online

  • Are You Doing All You Can?

  • Comfort Zone

  • Are You Checking the Boxes

Blog Categories

  • Marriage & Couples Counseling
  • Parenting
  • Anxiety & Trauma
  • Depression
  • Job & Career Support
  • Substance Use Disorder
  • General

Appointment Request Form

*Not for emergencies

    Location

    Located at the intersection of the Union Square, East Village, West Village, and Greenwich Village neighborhoods in Manhattan. Serving residents of all five boroughs of NYC and the tri-state area, and offering phone and online therapy nationally and internationally.

    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms of Service
    • Good Faith Estimate

    Contact

    Diane Spear, LCSW-R
    26 W. 9th Street, Suite 9E
    New York, NY 10011
    Phone: 212.353.0296

    Copyright © 2023 · Jane Theme By, Pretty Darn Cute Design

     

    Loading Comments...