Antonio Pascual-Leone

It helps with clarity.

So you clarify what you're feeling.

You can say the things that you would never be able to say in real life.

So sometimes there's a vulnerability or what, or a conversation.

You can have conversations with people who are no longer available, who are passed away.

But then you can also, taking it a step further, you could actually change chairs.

It's that come over here and be the other person.

What happens?

You know, what would they say if they could hear you?

And this is an entirely fabricated part of reality.

It's definitely not a rehearsal.

But there's an unpacking, a meaning.

There's always expectations and things that one has of other people.

I could give examples of where people in therapy sort of reveal an understanding of the other person, or rather they create an understanding of the other person that they didn't have by enacting them.

So yeah, that's the sort of changing that I'm talking about.

This was a client who had suffered a lot of trauma.

But what was salient to this person was the constant criticism.

The teaching of a lesson with a very hard hand.

And at some point in working through, he was saying...

you know, what my father doesn't understand is, and I had him speak to, speak him, tell him what he doesn't understand.