The Role of “Accomplices” in Preventing and Facilitating Change

Abstract

examines how the external reality which the client has constructed creates obstacles to change in therapyfrom the introduction illustrate . . . [that] we are often unfortunately and unwittingly experts in turning other people into accomplices in our neuroses / consider the individual who is extremely cautious and distant in interpersonal relationships, who is perhaps excessively self-sufficient and self-contained, who (consciously or unconsciously) makes a very high priority of preventing himself from being hurt and as a consequence also prevents himself from being touched or reached / look more closely at the daily experience of an individual of the sort just described / see how the pattern of his life--indeed how his "inner world"--is maintained by the way in which he induces others, even if unwittingly and unwillingly, to become accomplices in his unfortunate life patterns (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2002 APA, all rights reserved)from the chapter