The vulnerability in the psychotherapy room according to Giampaolo Salvatore
In the silence of the psychotherapy room, there is an emotion that rarely finds voice. It is the shame. Not that of the patient, who often lets himself be understood between the short stories and looks. But that of the therapist. A thinner and more hidden shame. And it is from here that Giampaolo Salvatore decides to start, in his book The shame of the therapistpublished by Raffaello Cortina. And from there, he doesn’t stop anymore.
Salvatore, already known for his contribution in the context of cognitive evolutionist psychotherapy influenced by Giovanni Liotti and for his participation in the construction of the interpersonal metacognitive model (MIT) developed by Antonio Semerari and then by Giancarlo Dimaggio, makes in the book The shame of the therapist A sort of output from the shade. With clinical sensitivity, he questioned the role of the therapist as a regulatory figure, asymmetrically strong, to propose a more emotionally vulnerable vision of psychotherapeutic work and even more relational, if possible, than that of Loseggio.
The shame of the therapist (2023): the legacy of relational cognitivism
Those who followed the path of Italian psychotherapy of the last thirty years from Guidano and Liotti onwards will recognize in these pages a tension that starts from afar. Salvatore formed with the masters of Italian relational cognitivism. From Giovanni Liotti he learned that the trauma is not only an event, but a relational fracture that disintegrates the self; Therapy is a holding place of holding and emotional repair. From Antonio Semerari he inherited attention to the functioning of the mind, to the metacognitive functions, to the balance between awareness and self -regulation. Finally, from Giancarlo Dimaggio, he welcomed the narrative and experiential dimension of the self, embodied and dynamic, where the therapist comes into play as a co-author of the patient’s history.
Still, all this was not enough. Something continued to miss. Salvatore’s proposal is that something was proper The therapist himself. Not as a technical construct, not as a clinical function, but as persona. As a human being who, within the therapeutic relationship, not only guides, supports, reflects, but also feel. And it can fail. And try shame.
The strength of the book The shame of the therapist It is here: in bringing to light what is usually silent. There shame In these pages, of the therapist, not an error, not an obstacle, but a precious key. A signal to listen to, an open window on the authenticity of the clinical relationship. Instead of fighting or hiding it, Salvatore invites us to live it. To ask us what he says about us, what he says of the patient, what he says of that relation, at that moment.
And it is precisely in this move, in this centering on the emotional encounter between two vulnerable subjectivity, that the book The shame of the therapist Di Salvatore proves – for better or for worse – the most coherent and radical outcome of the thought of Giovanni Liotti and, more generally, of the tradition of Italian relational cognitivism. It is the natural fulfillment of a theoretical line that has gradually put the therapeutic relationship in the center as a primary place of transformation, rather than as a technical container or operational frame.
But this consistency also brings an unresolved tension with it. In giving voice to the subjectivity of the therapist, in returning humanity and vulnerability, the book risks – like everyone and rather more than all its predecessors – to devalue the technical aspect of psychotherapy. The method, the structure, the competence, seem to take aside, in favor of an ethics of the encounter, of a therapeuticity that arises from being-with, rather than knowing-like. It is a deliberate choice that wants to oppose the contemporary time in which – according to Salvatore – psychotherapy risks flattening itself on the protocol. But it is also a choice that leaves a question open: is it enough to be authentic – how did Liotti recommend – to cure?
And at this point, a slightly sarcastic notation is a must: if there is an emotion that well represents the post-gain cognitive therapist, that is precisely the shame. But not only the shame Healthy of Salvatore of the conscience of his limits, but also the epistemological one, the one that arises from feeling partially inadequate in a model that from Liotti onwards has gradually stripped the technique of every need, leaving the therapist naked – and, inevitably, a little clumsy – in front of the altar of the relationship. Perhaps it is no coincidence that this emotion deserved the title of the book.
The shame of the therapist (2023): the therapist as an emotional resource in the clinical relationship
Far from being a manual, the book The shame of the therapist It develops as a fluid, intimate, almost confidential reflection that touches the deepest ropes of psychotherapeutic work. The language is precise but never cold, theoretical but always rooted in the living clinic. There shame It is not “conceptualized” in the classic sense, but narrated, told, shared with some powerful and daring self-disclosure by Salvatore who sometimes reaches the top of the car scourge of a character from Dostoevsky. What emerges is a profoundly relational therapy model, in which the subjectivity of the therapist is not a stumbling block, but a resource. In which the change occurs only through cognitive renovation to the beck or the mentalization of the internal processes to the semiorars or the relational and body experience to the weight loss, but in the emotional reciprocity of the sincere encounter between two vulnerabilities. A psychotherapy that is no longer afraid of bankruptcy, because it has learned to recognize the possibility of contact in the fracture.
The shame of the therapist It is a book that moves and makes you think. That one assumes the risk of not trying to teach, but to testify. And who manages to speak to everyone, even to a lover of technique like me: to expert therapists who have felt “unmasked” at least once, to young clinicians who fear not to be “enough”, but also – and perhaps above all – to those who believe that the care, even before the technical, is a relationship. An indispensable reading for those who want to make therapy with the bright heart, the vigilant mind, and the skin discovered. With the belief that Take care is not just to know, but also to hear. And sometimes, even collapse a little.
