IJSP Number 3, 2021

100 school is a psychotherapy training center, a group of graduate students and supervisors will observe the therapy sessions and that the patient has the right to accept or reject having sessions in such a setting. While most of the patients disagree with being observed in the one-way mirror setting, others accept such a set. The consent to have sessions in an unusual setting (one-way mirror) might be a gift from the patient to the therapist. The offer of gifts is common in the course of psychotherapies. Offerings range from unconscious or conscious presentations of materials sought by the therapists to the concrete objects offered to them. The offer of gifts should be analyzed and their meaning and implications should be made clear for the patients. Also, accepting the patients’ gifts is equal to the renunciation of therapy boundaries and offering an instinctual gratification [13, p. 152-157]. Some patients might try to be considered a “good patient” by the therapist and observers, so they immediately accept the one-way mirror setting. Others might be afraid of failing the therapist or making him angry by rejecting the one- way mirror setting and wanting to have private sessions (while there is no obligations for patients and they are free to choose their favorite therapy setting). Unconscious passive homosexuality and submission to the therapist might be another dynamic behind the patients’ accepting the one-way mirror setting. Finally, patients’ saying “yes” to the one-way mirror setting may stem from the inability to say “no”. Further, the one-way mirror therapy setting brings about particular materials, defenses, and dynamics in patients with specific pathologies. The most common dynamic that I noticed based on my personal experience as an observer in the one-way mirror setting, was that some patients introduced the observers as the third party to their dyadic relationship with the therapist. For instance, I remember a narcissistic patient who talked about the glories in his life and enjoyed that the observers are watching him being at the center of attention. The one-way mirror setting certainly fulfilled the patient’s exhibitionistic needs. A histrionic woman patient devaluated her therapist and created a competition between him and the observers, saying: “I wonder if the observers are superior to you and if they help you by offering comments?” Another patient who consented to have sessions in the one-way mirror room developed paranoid ideas and asked the therapist to let him see the observers to ensure that they don’t know him. The selection of the one-way mirror setting might be considered as a counterphobic effort by patients whose core problem is social anxiety or the anxiety of being seen. These patients might choose to be seen by observers behind the mirror in order to face their fear. Also, patients with the same pathology might experience the therapist as a company or an “all-good object” with whom they feel safe and dare to be exposed to the anxiety-provoking situation (here, the situation of being observed). Elsewhere [14], I have explained that the patients’