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From: Howard S. Baker, M.D.
Date: 25 May 1997
Time: 06:48:48
It seems to me that decentering refers to an experience that we have all have had when we find the interaction of our patient's transference and our countertransference (their subjectivity and our subjectivity) has resulted in what appears to be an enactment of old, difficult life problems. The past is being quite effectively (or ineffectively) recreated in the present. Sometimes we catch ourselves, have a sort of "a-ha" experience--there is another way to understand what is happening. We shift our perspective (our epistemological stance) and the "reality" of the events changes, allowing the patient an opportunity to observe something that is genuinely different than what they had previously known (their ontology shifts). Usually, it is that therapist who gets the first shift in their ontology, because it is the therapist who should and usually does keep in mind that his/her epistemology (organizing principles, countertransferences) should be lightly held. "Maybe there is another way to understand what is happening," leads to a new reality (ontology). If that can be communicated to the patient, then insight that is useful can occur and new intrapsychic strurctures (organizing principles, self-sustaining capabilities) can be developed. Of course, one of the best rewards of being in our business is that sometimes it is our patients who decenter first, and we are also offered a new opportunity to grow and appreciate when we are being rigid or short-sighted in the way that we construct the meanings of our lives.
Maybe decentering is a bad term, but I think that it means what I suggested and that it points to very vital points in the therapeutic process, whatever term one wishes to use.
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