I’ve had several instances of wanting something for my clients in the last few weeks. I want them to leave a partner, to listen to the words they repeat, to lean on our relationship. But do therapists have any business wanting for clients? Is this not simply counter-transference? What are we supposed to do with these wants?

Wanting is not having. If I want, I don’t have (whatever it is I am wanting). So what do I not have when I want my client to stop using drugs? My first answer is that I don’t have access to the potential version of my client that I can sense, sometimes communicate with, and yet rarely see active in everyday life. If I had access to that version of the client, I believe the client could experience more fulfillment. If I want this, why don’t I simply say it. “Yo. Stop doing drugs. You are fucking everything up.” I don’t say that because I feel that it would impinge upon the process of the client coming to that realization on their own. So, second answer, I want them to come to their own realization of what to me is the obvious problem, which means I currently don’t know if the client has insight into the situation. I thus lack access and knowledge. What does this say about me?


Where in life do I myself lack access and knowledge? The loudest answer in my mind is “institutions.” I have no access to the wider institution of psychotherapy or education. If I did, then I would be able—so I imagine—to instigate structural changes that could help the multitude. I also lack the knowledge required to break into these institutions. I don’t seem to understand how to be heard. Given this, is my wanting for the client a confrontation with the feelings that arise in me when I feel barred from acting in accordance with my beliefs? Possibly. But if that’s the case, then why do I hesitate to take a more direct approach with the client? Am I simply so disciplined that I acknowledge my wants in the session and then choose to act against my wants? Yes, but that can’t be the whole shebang.


Let’s probe in a different direction: what’s so bad about wanting? Maybe this wanting is a sign of my compassion for the client. I want on the client’s behalf. This is a different form of advocacy. In a sense, I want to advocate to the client from the position of the client’s best interest, which is something to which I believe I have access, having worked with the person for quite a long time. Wanting, in this light, equals advocacy…so then what stops me from advocating?


The ideological part of me is speaking, and it reminds me that, despite advocacy and the promotion of insight, there is nothing about the therapeutic process that guarantees “positive” outcomes. There is no foregone conclusion that the client and I are working toward a better life for the client. We, therapists, may like to think this is the case, but in fact we are simply working with the client to navigate whatever is happening in the present, which, in this case, is profound ambivalence about fighting their addiction. By not advocating for my want, I am acknowledging that this client may just suffer.


What could change this? To answer this question, I call upon the story of the mushroom in the terrarium. There was a man who built his own terraria—self-feeding ecosystems hermetically sealed within glass enclosures. This ecosystem thrived for decades, and the man looked at it when he left the house and when he returned each day. One day, some thirty years after having crafted the terrarium, he did a double-take as he made a pass. There was, despite his disbelief, a mushroom growing in there. Where did it come from? Two possibilities popped into his head. One, a spore had managed to slip through a microscopic crack in the cork and glue system that enclosed the large jar. But if this had happened, then surely other things would have gotten into the jar and destabilized the ecosystem at some point. So this led to option 2: the spore had been in there all along and was simply waiting for the optimal conditions to produce the fruiting body. What’s the moral of the story: despite what things look like, there may be a spore in there, waiting for the optimal conditions, conditions that fit a set of parameters unknown to the people who tend to the ecosystem. This may be the case with my client. 


Therapists anticipate the blooming of the mushroom. At times, the anticipation leads to a feeling of impatience, which I experience as “wanting.” I want, meaning I don’t have, patience. Funnily enough, this marks the reversal and moment of counter-tranference. I strive to become the patient (one). Mindfulness enters the picture at this point to help with the impulsiveness. I can want, but I can also be. I can be patient by describing the ecosystem, pointing out that what seems like a hermetically sealed environment is entangled in the wider socio-cultural landscape. Unlike the sealed-up bottle, a drug addict has no ability to fully isolate. At best, isolation is an illusion, perhaps even an illusion that the addict carries into therapy where, despite being in the present of another, the narrative falls back on the self and feelings of ambivalence and/or impotence. I feel alone at times while participating in this mock loneliness of the client, and so I look forward to the day the mushroom blooms. Again, however, that’s an aspiration more than it is a fact. The mushroom may never bloom. The ecosystem may not sustain itself.


Cover Photo by Phạm Mạnh on Unsplash