If we view the patient as someone to be “figured out”, she has become an object. We have already distanced ourselves from her and have established a pathological relationship: an object with an epistemological conquistador.

And we wonder why she might resist?

The patient is not someone to be “conquered” or “figured out”. The truth of the patient can never be “found out” or even put into words. As Jeff Foster once said, “Truth can only be lived, never grasped.”

I lost interest in truth long ago.
All dreams of enlightenment
and its absence
Have crumbled into birdsong
Morning walks down untrodden paths
And the poetry of silence.
Truth can only be lived,
Never grasped.
Be miraculous, each day.

Jon Frederickson is the author of Co-Creating Change (May 2013), the first-ever guide to intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy that includes both an integrative theory of conflict and a moment-by-moment method of assessment to guide therapist interventions. Available for ordering now.