While there are numerous complaints clients can present with and probably an even greater abundance of ways to treat these ailments, the majority of practitioners would most likely agree that the majority of them stem from the relationships that people find themselves in. Or perhaps, these present relationships are reflections of the more formative earlier ones. In either case, there is no shortage of methods to help people better understand themselves and their relationships.

One of these methods of fostering self-awareness is equine therapy. And like many other forms of treatment, working with horses has taken many forms. While some organizations focus solely on creating and implementing exercises for clients to perform with horses, others attempt to generalize the client’s behavior with the horse to other, more fractured areas of their life. The thought in both cases in that if the client can learn how to alter his/her behavior across a multitude of situations, the outcomes will be different, and hopefully, more satisfying.

The benefits of these methods of equine therapy are not to be missed; however, what is often overlooked is the relationship with the horse that is transpiring in the present moment. Within this relationship, the client with his complexity of both conscious feelings and the more misunderstood, unconscious ones is available to the horse. This is an important point because in human relationships, unconscious feelings, drives and motives greatly affect the outcome, albeit under the conscious awareness of the people who are affected. Horses, on the other hand, cannot avoid being aware of unconscious feelings, as they have physiological ramifications within the person, and horses communicate almost exclusively through physiological cues and signals. So while people respond to the conscious presentation of a person, a horse responds to the unconscious presentation.

What of course this means to the practitioner is that the horse, through his response to the client, provides a window into the unconscious. Armed with this information, the therapist can then have much greater efficacy in helping the client understand himself and his relationships. And this, after all, is the purpose of psychotherapy.

Best,
Claire Dorotik LMFT