Appearance is a significant form of self-disclosure. When I first started my practice 16 years ago, I put a lot of thought into how I would dress. Because I was renting an office only one day a week at the time, I had no say in its appearance. I was left with no way to make an impression except by the way I dressed.
Being new to the profession, I thought that looking the most neutral required me to dress in slacks, dress shirt, and tie. This business look was not typical of the way I normally dressed, but because I followed the blank screen approach, I believed this presentation best fit with that theoretical stance.
As I look back on that decision now – I still dress the same as I did then – I realize that while dress always tells a story, I have little control over how people see me, given that their view is likely to be imagined, projected, or assumed. Patients will form an impression independent of how I want them to perceive me.
While I once thought that dressing in business attire would elicit respect and enhance my status as an analyst, I came to realize that no matter how I dress, my appearance is “grist for the mill”. In fact the way this impression colors the treatment helps to shine light on the patient’s psyche and on his/her relationship with me.
A related issue is the affect of my “real life” way of dressing – unintended self-disclosure – would have on patients who encountered me outside the office. I had once feared that this might shake my patients’ view of me, of my neutrality and professionalism. Instead, I found that those few patients I have encountered outside my role of analyst have registered negligible effects. On the contrary, these encounters seem to appeal to their desire to see me as “human” or as “having a life”.
Although I haven’t altered the way I dress in my practice, I imbue it with far less importance than in times past.
Interesting reflections – especially in light of your stand for “neutrality.” You realize, of course, that blogs are public, and I wonder how you came to the decision that self-disclosure in this format was not in violation of your “neutrality” as an analyst. An upcoming blog post, perhaps?
I always have been, personally, more than a little annoyed by what I refer to as the twin stands of therapy: 1-we are in a “relationship” and 2- I don’t show up as a human being (pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!), but you, my client, are expected to be exquisitely vulnerable.
In no other “relationship” would that be considered healthy in the slightest! That is the primary reason why coaching, not therapy, is my chosen field of endeavor – part of the technique is “relating” to and with our clients.
I have gone rounds with therapists past (not analysts, btw), insisting that “relationship” – at least in my world view – requires the participation of all parties; that, in my opinion, no “relating” is going on from their end, ipso facto, no relationSHIP. (I’m sure you can imagine how that played!)
I’ve never been particularly satisfied with an “other as mirror of self” approach to “relating” in any but the most metaphysical of contexts. In fact, from that slant on the term, the more (and more authentically human) you show up, the better the mirror – all grist for the mill of self-awareness that honest conversation might uncover more thoroughly, and certainly more consciously, without the subterfuge of “neutrality.”
My thoughts on it, in any case.
Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, SCAC, MCC – (blogging at ADDandSoMuchMore and ADDerWorld – dot com!)