Therapy as Discovering Your Evolving Personhood

Sue Johnson, the founder of Emotionally Focused Therapy, offers a helpful framing of what therapy is all about in her book Attachment Theory in Practice:

Therapy is about discovery by client and therapist, rather than coaching by the therapist to reach already decided on, narrow criteria of improvement…

The primary focus in therapy is not then on assigning labels for dysfunction, or even on the tasks of change, but on the always evolving personhood of the client. The therapist's central task is connecting with the client in a way that honors and expands this personhood ...

The therapist is not then a composer rewriting a musical score for the client to lessen symptoms of discordance, but rather a conductor who knows that a full, vibrant song is already waiting to emerge.

I love multiple things about what Johnson says here. First and foremost, she pushes back on the all-too-common practice of building therapy around a pre-determined set of goals. In contrast, she paints a beautiful picture of therapy as exploration, a journey the therapist and client go on together to explore his/her “evolving personhood”. Adding to this, she rejects the idea of the therapist being a composer (authority) molding the client into whatever he/she desires. The therapist is instead portrayed as a conductor, helping the client play the right notes to bring out the beautiful music that is already there.