October 15th, 2025

On being seen

Scenario Number One:
       Decades ago I invested thousands of dollars to get my credential as a marriage and family therapist. The process required extensive hours of supervision spent viewing and critiquing my videotaped sessions. The supervisor, with the remote firmly in hand (his hand), would watch my work for a minute or so and then stop the tape to tell me what I should have done at that point in the session. Then he would start the tape to see if I did it (which I hadn’t because the session had been taped a week before). Then those steps would repeat. And repeat again. Over the course of the hundred hours I spent with him he never watched an entire session, and I don’t think he ever saw me for the unique therapist I could be.  
      The supervisor’s particular way of working was a perfect fit for his worldview and personality. Unfortunately, it was a lousy fit for mine.

Scenario Number Two:
A few weeks ago I paid for one of my novels to be reviewed by an editor. This editor teaches creative writing classes and is a published novelist. I’ve worked for three years on this novel and it’s deeply meaningful to me. In keeping with my values, a humanistic theme was the impetus for this novel. As in a classical music composition, the theme was first stated explicitly, embedded in a story told in the second chapter, then it was spun out into a couple of dozen variations through the rest of the novel. A story arc of a deepening relationship between a father and his son linked these variations, also a meaningful issue for me. 
    In her review the editor wondered about what the theme was, completely missing the one that motivated the writing. She also dismissed the progressive deepening of the central relationship that carried the story through. She missed what the novel was (and could be). And, she completely missed me. 


The family therapy supervisor thought what worked for him should work the same for everyone else. The editor had a sense of how a character’s story should be told that works for her and looked for it in the work of another writer. Both pointed in directions they considered necessary for my work to be successful in the ways theirs were. Both ran through the procedure they believed was necessary for the service they provided to me. 
    However, both missed what was unique and potentially valid in someone else’s different approach. They missed the person behind the therapist and the writer, a person who makes his own unique observations and engagement with the complexity of the human condition.
    There have been two outcomes of all this. 
    As a therapist, I occasionally found the theoretical perspective of my supervisor was useful. However, I stayed away from his intervention approach with both clients and those whom I later supervised. And, while I’m still processing the feedback of the editor, I will make some changes to strengthen weak areas of its plot development. It will still be mine, but arising from her guidance I can make it a little bit better.
    That’s the first outcome.
    The second outcome arises from that early supervision experience. As my career unfolded my focus became on truly seeing the person whom I was serving, not just running them through the procedures expected within my professional role. 
    Over the course the several decades of my practice I picked up a great deal of psychological knowledge. My head became well-stocked with theories of human behaviour. I learned many protocols and clinical maneuvers, each of which had promised great success in the therapy room. The professional knowledge and skillful therapeutic maneuvers were predicated on me acting upon the client, analyzing what was wrong and providing treatment. The client was expected to comply because, after all, the professional knows best.
    But for me that was not what it was all about. It became about my ability to truly see the person I was working with. In being so seen, they could then work with me as much as I would work with them. They could bring their own energy, hope and engagement with change, not just their compliance. To get there involved more listening than talking. It involved more questions than just those to identify symptoms and track treatment response. It was about what could emerge within them rather than what I could cause to occur through my treatment. It was about curiosity and celebration.
        
Now I turn to yet another engagement with the human condition, that of writing fiction. My goal is to write what will be both compelling for the reader but also say something significant about what it means to be human. This time I am engaging with characters rather than clients.
    My writing process involves those same elements of curiosity and celebration as I strive to see the story’s characters emerge through what they do and say. I listen to them speak (in my head) and then I keystroke their words into the manuscript. Sometimes those words really surprise me. I never start with a predetermined plot, and typically don’t know how the story will end as it is begun. All this is so much like being present with my clients as they learn to navigate their lives true to themselves and effectively within their circumstances. 
    And perhaps, as no surprise, those unique values I believe in, values about human dignity and hope and the capacity to heal and rise above adversity, the very things about the human condition I cherished as a psychotherapist, emerge in the story line my characters create. 
    Those two scenarios are a cautionary tale about the limitations of being technically correct but not humanly affirming. When we truly see the other person engaged in the endeavour, see them for the unique person they are, we trigger motivation within them to be their best selves. And we become our own better selves as well.