Abstract
I have argued that blame does not take a central place in the therapeutic practice, including Freud’s and Rogers’s approaches. That said, I do not want to say that the theme of blame is misplaced at all for psychotherapy. We will consider the distinction between different types of blame—in particular, between detached blame and affective blame—that can be brought up during therapy. Then we will examine the so-called rescue-blame trap and the ways to escape it. The trap refers to the situation when counselors fail to separate responsibility and blame. One consequence of this is that while believing in responsibility, counselors often become judgmental with their clients, which can undermine the therapeutic process.
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Notes
- 1.
Apart from psychotherapy, this line of the argument figures heavily in the legal practice, when attorneys appeal to the insanity defense, arguing that the defendant is not responsible and guilty by reason of mental illness (Asokan 2016).
- 2.
For the argument that agents with personality disorders are morally responsible and can be the targets of blame and praise, see Bjorklund (2004). For an example of a moderate approach, see King and May (2018). The authors defend the nuanced view, which holds that there are circumstances when psychopathology compromises moral responsibility and when not.
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Beliavsky, V. (2020). Blame in Therapy. In: Freedom, Responsibility, and Therapy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41571-6_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41571-6_11
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