One of the illusions frequently encountered in therapy is the expectation that the process will touch the person’s life like a magic wand and bring them inner peace. Popular culture and social media often present therapy as a relaxing, calming process. However, reality is much more complex than that. Therapy often requires confronting inner conflicts, resolving unconscious defenses, and touching one’s own fragility.
During this process, the person may struggle, resist, and feel that they are not making progress. However, these experiences are natural and even necessary parts of therapy. At this point, the individual must show one more courage so that they can overcome that small but difficult hill and create space for inner transformation.
In this article, the extent to which the expectation of peace in therapy is an illusion will be examined from a psychoanalytic perspective; and it will be discussed why this journey does not always involve peace, but sometimes deep discomfort and confrontation.
One of the common expectations regarding the therapy process is that the client will find peace in a short time, that their problems will be solved quickly, and that the process will provide a kind of “emotional purification.”
This expectation stems not only from the individual’s tendency to escape pain, but also from the reduction of social representations, the media, and the culture of self-care to the equation “therapy = recovery = relief.”
However, psychotherapy, especially when based on psychoanalytic and existential approaches, offers the individual a space to confront disturbing realities. In therapy, questioning, anxiety, resistance, and emotional dissolution are more likely than relaxation.
In this sense, psychoanalysis aims not at the surface desire for peace, but at the individual’s contact with the materials he/she has repressed into his/her unconscious. Jacques Lacan’s concept of “Real” (le Réel) points to exactly this contact: that which cannot be represented, cannot be named, but interrupts the individual’s existence (Lacan, 1977).
When this reality emerges in therapy, the individual is forced to question all the defense mechanisms he/she has developed to suppress it. At this point, Irvin D. Yalom’s warning to therapists becomes meaningful: “Avoid stripping naked a patient who cannot stand the cold of the real” (Yalom, 1989).
Because facing certain truths can be devastating for the individual when it comes too soon.
Therefore, therapy is not only a process of awareness; it is also a delicate balance regarding timing, endurance, and boundaries. The pauses that occur from time to time in therapy, feeling like you are not making progress or developing reluctance towards sessions, are often not a step back; they indicate that the individual’s internal defense mechanisms are activated.
Freud saw the emergence of resistance as an inevitable situation in the therapeutic process. The person wages war against revealing the material that they have repressed into their unconscious in order to protect themselves (Freud, 1917/1957).
At this point, Freud’s text Mourning and Melancholia (1917) provides an important theoretical basis for the therapeutic process. According to Freud, melancholia occurs when the person identifies with the lost object and internalizes it in their own self.
Although this internalization may seem destructive, it can become a form of the subject reestablishing contact with themselves (Freud, 1917/1957). In other words, the depression experienced during the therapy process can actually be the first sign of confrontation and the door to transformation.
From the therapist’s perspective, understanding the depth of this process is only possible if the therapist has gone through their own internal process. If the therapist has not gone through their own internal process, it becomes difficult to effectively analyze and manage transference and countertransference in their communication with the client.
Since Freud, the necessity of the therapist’s own analysis has been emphasized in the psychoanalytic literature. The therapist’s failure to confront their own shadows can lead to the client confusing their experience, and sometimes even exploiting it.
In this context, the “peace of the therapist” is also an illusion; because in order to be an effective therapist, the person must have honestly confronted their own chaos.
Rather than promising peace to the person, the therapy process allows them to confront their repressed experiences, their losses, and their developed defenses. The discomfort that emerges during this process is the price of development. The truth is not always comforting; however, being able to touch it is only possible by being prepared to pay this price.
The identification of therapy with “peace” reflects a romanticized illusion about the nature of personal development. True transformation usually occurs after a person leaves their comfort zone and experiences a challenging but necessary reckoning.
While psychoanalytic and existential approaches draw attention to the difficulties of this process, they remind the individual that therapy is an effort to recognize the parts of oneself, to confront loss and pain, and ultimately to integrate.
Therefore, therapy is not a search for peace, but rather a process of looking at reality with courage. Although peace sometimes emerges during this process, the real gain is the construction of inner resilience and emotional maturity.
As a therapist candidate who has entered her own psychoanalytic process, I have experienced that the therapy process is not as smooth as it seems from the outside; however, these ruptures also serve a kind of rebirth.
Questioning the illusion of peace in therapy is a way for both clients and therapists to respect the ethical and true nature of the process. True transformation is only possible through authentic confrontations. And this path, although not always easy, is the only truly healing path.
References
Freud, S. (1957). Mourning and melancholia (J. Strachey, Trans.). In J. Strachey (Ed. & Trans.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 14, pp. 243–258). Hogarth Press. (Original work publication year 1917)
Lacan, J. (1977). Écrits: A selection (A. Sheridan, Trans.). W.W. Norton & Company.
Yalom, I. D. (1989). Love’s executioner and other tales of psychotherapy. Basic Books.