This is an example of symptom deprivation, one of several basic techniques often useful for the discovery work. If a client’s symptom occurs in a particular situation because it is actually necessary in some unrecognized way, then having the client imagine being in that situation without the symptom is likely to give rise to some specific dilemma or distress, which the client normally avoids, unconsciously, by producing the symptom. The specific dilemma that arises when deprived of the symptom begins to reveal the client’s unconscious knowledge of how, why, and when to produce the symptom in
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