As a licenced clinical psychologist, working with customers for over 19 years, I have worn jeans lots of times. Perhaps I've lost a few customers from it, maybe kept some because of it. However, hopefully ultimately, other factors are a lot more important to the victory or scarcity of victory in treatment.
I hear my professors discuss much on the importance of going into sessions naked. As I have a highly visual imagination, I am always greatly surprised by that metaphor. It has the same influence on me as the so-called treatment for stage scare. Picturing either of these, I go wordless and feel the necessity to hand out robes to those whose nudity I created. But I get the point. In our work as therapists, we have to be truthful, real and not hiding ourselves in breastplate; that said, it is possible to be emotionally truthful and still be dressed in a nice pair of trousers or dress.
Protect them from what, exactly? My imagination went into overdrive as I read about these psychoanalysts who used white coats as a protective coating. Did this sartorial signifier say, “You are infected and I am pure. I am an authority and you are not.” Or that they might get some sticky projective identification on their shirt and the white coat kept them clean, safe and warm? It is also a clear identification with the medical model. Is there any image of psychology more prevalent and lacking in warmth than the archetypal men in white coats?
I told my analyst about these analysts in white coats. He affirmed that he had seen pictures of early analysts in white coats. He went on to tell me how Kleinian analysts tend to dress like business-men: suits, dress shirts and ties. The unconscious aspect of this sartorial signifier suggests they are switching out of the medical model but still are working towards differentiating themselves from their patients, and want to make it clear that they are the ones in power.
As therapists, our wardrobes may be imparting more information about us than our interpretations. What is it we communicate to our clients by the way we dress? How does our unconscious enter the analytic suite in terms of our sartorial self-expression? Do our clothing choices help or hurt our ability to come into the work “naked”? I know that I remember the wardrobe of each therapist I have ever seen and my fantasies about what their wardrobe revealed about who they really are.
Therapist, who I saw when I was ten, wore a stuffy mix of tweeds, Pendleton knits, bland plaids and orthopedic shoes. I have long wondered if under all that comfort and conformity was some sizzling hot lingerie. Her therapy involved many superego-like suggestions; she was forever teaching me about etiquette and rules and order. She was forever asking me about fantasies and/or masturbation (which seemed very strange and inappropriate to my ten-year-old self). I do, in retrospect, wonder what was under her superego suits.
I saw Therapist when I was in my early 20’s. She was an intern fresh out of grad school. Her hippy-dippy ways found their way into our therapy. She was constantly suggesting we do guided meditations and relaxation exercises. I should have known by her hemp handbag that we weren’t going to be a good fit.
I feel sure that if Hippy-Dippy therapist continues to practice today, her style might have morphed into the very popular style of therapist as the archetype of healer or shaman, this is a very popular style of dress for therapists that you would undoubtedly find at many a therapy conference. These therapists often wear flowing tunics, dresses and Eileen Fisher type separates, and a big, old honking archetypal accessory that implies ancient knowledge and access to the spiritual secrets of the psyche.
Therapist dressed in a wardrobe of 1940’s vintage wear, formal suits in obscure colors and shoes that could not be found in any store. Her hair was up in rolls and twists that made her seem otherworldly, not of this time and place, which added to her mystery and allure; this appearance of “otherness” only amplified my transference. It was as if she was a Jungian time-traveler and, I can tell you, that we did a whole lot of time traveling through my past.
Therapist, a Jungian analyst that I saw for over 11 years, dressed in a uniform of conservative plaids and checkered dress shirts, warm sweaters, dependable trousers and brogues. Everything about his appearance read as academic, and truth be told, this analyst was made for a classroom. I always felt that he was lecturing me, and that he was better suited for a lecture hall than an analytic suite. This preppy professor aesthetic is related to another kind of therapist who dresses in a collegiate, grad school, haphazard manner that also sends the message that only the mind matters.
In my own practice as a therapist, I can see how my wardrobe has changed as I have changed as a therapist. When I worked with children, I didn’t want to appear too formal, and chose colors and prints that might appeal to children. I also chose fabrics that allowed me freedom of movement for play therapy. When I began to see adults or do intakes, I dressed more professionally. And I know that when I was a pre-licensed intern, I dressed even more professionally as an attempt to compensate for my pre-licensed status, authority and structure through attire (maybe my version of a white coat). Now I dress as I always do, a lot like my own therapist: in classic, timeless, and enduring styles. I add a charm bracelet or, as I mentioned in “Nina Garcia Goes to Therapy,” a leopard pump. It is a way, I think, to say that I am serious and yet have a sense of humor and fun.
At the end of my last semester, my analyst asked me what I would make of a therapist who desired to wear jeans and t-shirts to work in. I told him I could be horrified. He admitted that he did hope he could be dressed in more comfortable clothes to work in. I told him to stop telling me on this. The fact is that I need him to be someone who doesn’t even own jeans and one t-shirt.
I consider that clothes are a really unconscious aspect for therapists and my hunch on why that is comes from Myers-Briggs typology. It is my educated visitor that most therapists are intuitive and not sensate. Intuitive are not usually conscious of the sensate world. I can't imagine of the fact that "one size fits all" method would ever really work. We are people who work with people, not machinery.
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