Freud in the Writing Center: The Psychodynamics of Tutoring Well

Freud in the Writing Center: The Psychodynamics of Tutoring Well

Christiana Murphy, Marshall University Christiana Murphy explores the quality and importance of the interpersonal relationships that tutors build with students by comparing such relationships to those psychoanalysts develop with their clients. "a good psychoanalyst and a good tutor both function to awaken individuals to their potentials and to channel their creative energies toward self-enhancing ends." -abstract, 95 Truax and Carkhuff, in Toward Effective Counseling and Psychotherapy, would contend, however, that fundamental and profound similarities exist amongst all interventive processes, from therapy, to education, to the managerial interactions of employer and employee. They state "the person (whether a counselor, therapist, or teacher) who is better able to communicate warmth, genuineness, and accurate empathy is more effective in interpersonal relationships no matter what the goal of the interaction" (116-117). -97 For psychotherapy to be successful, (1) two persons are in contact; (2) one person, the client, generally is in a state of incongruence, being vulnerable or anxious; (3) the other person, the therapis, is congruent in the relationship; (4) the therapist experiences unconditional positive regard toward the client; (5) the therapist experiences an empathetic understanding of the client's internal frame of reference. -98 As a result of the process of psychotherapy, (1) the client is more congruent, more open to his or her experiences, less defenseive; (2) as a result, the client is more realistic, objective, extensional in his or her perceptions; (3) the client is consequently more effective in problem-solving; (4) as a result of the increased congruence of self and experience, his or her vulnerability to threat is reduced; (5) as a result of the lowering of his or her vulnerability to threat or defeat, the client has an increased degree of self-regard; and (6) as a result of all of the above factors, the client's behavior is more creative, more uniquely adaptive, and more fully expressive of his or her own values (Patterson 486-87). If we substitute tutor and student here for therapist and client, the model holds true for the learning strategies and experiential awarenesses that ho on in a writing center environment. -98