Victor Yalom, PhD, is the Founder, Director of Content and Resident Cartoonist of Psychotherapy.net. He maintained a full-time practice psychology practice in San Francisco for over 25 years, and currently continues to see a small handful of clients, as well as leading psychotherapy and consultation groups. He has conducted workshops in existential-humanistic and group therapy in the US, Mexico, and China. He has produced over 100 training videos in the field of psychotherapy and continues to be inspired the many master therapists he has been privileged to work with, including existential-humanistic psychologist James Bugental, and his father Irvin Yalom. In his spare time he paints, creates metal sculptures, and tries to improve his table tennis game. More information on Victor and his artwork is at sfpsychologist.com.
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Rather than having a set agenda for the podcast, Victor offered to have an open ended conversation with me and to explore and learn together, which was very exciting for me. Since the podcast is about connection it was fitting for us to explore topics related to psychotherapy as the content that served as the context for learning about and with each other.
I experienced Victor as very generous , earnest and supportive conversational partner. There were some touching moments particularly when he reflected on the gifts he received from his mentor, James Bugental. Upon hearing the podcast during editing, I found myself appreciating the mutual energy of gratitude we both had for our respective mentors. Victor helped model some of the concepts we discussed by going into his experience and sharing vulnerably about himself.
We start the discussion with me sharing my here and now experience of feeling nervous to speak with him, which is very unusual. I decide to share this straight away and Victor compassionately invites me to explore my experience together.
2:00 Victor shares the common expectation that a therapist will take away or reduce the experience they are having. Instead he points out that we can be with our experience and learn from it.
3:00 Tim express gratitude for Victor’s work in making Virginia Satir’s work available on video and subsequent work with other master therapists.
8:10 Victor reflects that he notices so much in what he’s hearing and noticing with what Tim’s shared that in therapeutic context would be available. He feels that psychotherapy can be a creative artful process.
10:30 Tim poses the question of what aspects of therapeutic skills are relevant for day to day intimate and connective conversations to Victor.
12:27 Victor reflects that he often asks clients to reflect on what’s happening for them at the head level and heart level. He suggests slowing down and tuning into ourselves and the other person. Attending to the words , and facial expressions of the other person as well as one’s own body and feelings.
18:40 We talk about what ‘here and now’ means in context of group and individual therapy. Victor shares that he is feeling engaged, and in flow and aware of some vulnerability and a desire to share something of use to the audience.
21:45 Tim asks about Victor’s connection to James Bugental who was a Humanistic existential psychologist. Victor shares about his meeting and experiences of training with James.
. 27:30 Victor reflects on his learnings with James Bugental. He demonstrates and differentiates some of the ideas and techniques from James Bugental’s work such as searching that make it different from normal day to day conversations.
32:20 One of the most powerful words he would say was , “And...” rather than letting the conversation be a ping pong match. It reinforces and introduces the idea that there’s always more. This is one of things James used to say, “There’s always more.” Each person is an arena of endless exploration.
34:00 Victor experiential explores his emotions that come up upon his reflects on his relationships with James Bugental.
37:50 Tim shares a quote from James Bugental
“ But early on l wanted to change her implicit sense of her task from telling me about herself to expressing herself. That's such an important difference. Then she makes herself an object of description. We're not dealing with a living person. lnformation about her. l don't like to get a lot of information about a client in advance. l want to know are they're reasonably able to maintain, and reality testing is all right, that sort of thing. But too much information will just cloud the screen for me.
l need to be as innocent, in a certain way, as l can be for each person. l need to be as innocent, in a certain way, as l can be for each person. To discover this unique person. And that sounds very nice and humanistic, and it is. But the real value is, that way l get to know the living
person, not about a person who has that name.”
39:00 Victor reflects on the therapist role in helping the client to not objectify themselves but to enter more deeply in their experience and to be present (“search process”)
42:00 James Bugental also talked about ‘resistance’ which is resistance to life. These are coping patterns created for survival, defense mechanisms. They work for us but also limit us.
Examples, intellectualizing, or mocking oneself, or hiding emotions.
Helping clients become more flexible with their coping patterns.
47:00 “inclusion not amputation” another James Bugental quote . He also talked about the co-occuring counter balancing energies of support and encouragement or the ‘backstop’ that urges them forward.
50: 30 Tim reads a quote by Rollo May and asks for Victors reflections.
“....and the problem is that psychotherapy becomes more and more a system of gimmicks. People have special ways of doing their own therapy. They learn which particular buttons to push. They're taught various techniques by which they can, so that they can at least cure this isolated symptom or that. And that wasn't the purpose at all, of Freud and Jung and the rest of the really great men who began our field. Their purpose was to make the unconscious conscious. And that's a great--there's a great deal of difference between them.
This was what Freud was setting out to do. It's what Jung is trying to do. It's what Adler and Rank did. These people never talked about these gimmicks. It just didn't interest them. What did interest them was making a new person. You see, the new possibilities come up. Then you have--then you change the person. Otherwise, you change only the way he behaves, only the way he approaches this or that incidental problem. The problem's going to change in six months when he'll be back again for some more so-called therapy.” -Rollo May
52:00 Victor reflects on some of the context surrounding more technique based therapies and the importance of therapist reflecting on their use of self, to sit with difficult emotions, not necessarily always needing to ‘do’ something to the client. The ability to sit with clients and to be with their emotions.
58:32 Victor shares about his orientation and perspective towards psychotherapy.
1:03:30 We explore the words. “Self-Connection”