|
This is the second post in a two-part series. I suggest you read the first one, here, before proceeding. Across these two posts you will find a reflection that explores the nature of Counselling, and then the nature of Psychotherapy, and then the relationship between philosophical and psychological work. I argued in the previous post that Counselling is the cultivation of practical wisdom. I suggested that it is not a psychological activity, even if it draws on Psychotherapy and on psychological research. That makes Counselling quite different to Psychotherapy. Psychotherapy as a psychological discipline
I define a psychotherapy as a psychological theory about human nature, its well-being, and what goes wrong in that, and what cures it, plus a set of practices for cultivating that cure. Because there are many such theories, there are many psychotherapies. There are also non-psychological forms of Psychotherapy, which blows a hole in my definition, but my definition represents the bulk of Psychotherapy, and it speaks to that which makes Psychotherapy particularly distinct and important. Whereas it is questionable to call Counselling a psychological activity, that is the very power and point of Psychotherapy, at least most of the time. The most common psychotherapies are the Humanistic, the Cognitive-behavioural, and the Psychodynamic schools, and each of these represents a large camp into which many further approaches are collected. For example, the Humanistic school includes the Person-Centred, the Gestalt, the Existential, and many other approaches. Each of those divides into further approaches, for example there are numerous versions of Existential Therapy. My training focused on Humanistic Therapy, and in particular on Person-Centred Therapy, but included the study of Cognitive-Behavioural and Psychodynamic therapies, plus training for integrating them all. Beyond my formal training, I invested many years in my own study of Existential Therapy. To my mind, the archetypical psychological psychotherapy is Psychodynamic Therapy, also known as Psychoanalytic Therapy. In expressing the need for such therapy, Carl Jung wrote that "until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate." Psychodynamic Therapy makes a strong distinction between our unconcious psychology versus our conscious, rational self. Insofar as our psychology is unconscious, it is beyond the easy reach of conscious reflection. So we need a psychological theory and technique to clarify its nature and its form in our life, and to work on changing any negative impacts it has on our life. As we will see in a moment, consciousness is regularly distorted by unconscious psychological pressures. Well beyond Psychodynamic Therapy, this division between consciousness and our psychology has become a structural distinction running through most of Psychotherapy. Of course, it is a distinction that runs through much human thought in general. When one person attacks another, and we perceive that to be a lucid, freely chosen action, we judge it very differently--morally and legally—than when the attack seems to emerge from overwhelming psychological forces in the person. Or when the attack seems to emerge from overwhelming spiritual forces in the person, if that is the operative concept in the culture—whether in Europe, Africa, Asia we find this structural distinction in most societies, regardless of the conceptual differences in each place. This is because it is a structural distinction in reality—there, in the composition of a human being. There, in human nature. Human nature I define a human being as a centre of intelligent consciousness, woven into an animal life of bodily and psychological forces. As conscious beings, we can shape those forces; but they also shape us. They can hinder, blind, or distort our consciousness—our capacity to see what is true and good, and to live according to that vision. We can see the distinction between ourselves as consciousness, and those psychological forces that are a part of our wider material being, by considering how we relate to each. For example, a person whose body is shut down in a vegetable state, but who remains conscious, is "still there." This is what we say, if somehow we know they are conscious. It makes all the difference. However, a person whose body is completely alert but whose conscious self is gone, for example in dementia or a severe brain injury, is "no longer there." At their funeral, years on, their loved ones will often say that they died long ago. Consciousness is what you are. Your psychology is something you have. Consider again the above legal and moral example of the distinction we make between a person's consciously chosen actions, and actions driven by psychological or psychiatric overwhelm. Of course, we also say that our psychology is a part of us, just as we say that of the body. But we also say "I am not my psychology" or "You are not your mental illness," and the meaning of this is often quite profound and important for us. The philosopher Martin Buber spoke of approaching another person as a Thou or as It. True love of another is love of them as Thou, as the mysterious other as a centre of consciousness, and not them as an It: as a brilliant psychology or attractive body, even if these things are important too. Put differently, a person might say to their partner: "I love you! I don't care about the disorder in your psychology, or the ageing of your body!" Even people who deny this definition of human nature at the structural level, for example who insist that consciousness is reducible to psychological forces, and that human beings are merely deterministic mechanisms, contradict themselves the rest of the time. Try insulting this person, or making a cruel statement in front of them, and watch what happens. A moment ago they claimed that everybody was determined and that morality is a fiction, but now they are morally outraged, as if you possess some form of free will, and as if your words and actions matter in some moral sense. I have had many debates with such people, and am always struck by their lack of critical thinking, and can't help but notice the psychological function such beliefs serve for them. I invite such people to reflect on this lived contradiction, and to question whether theory should come before life, especially when the theory is nihilistic, and only a few are willing to reflect seriously on such questions. There is a reason that many professional philosophers, whose job it is to think carefully about such matters, do not ascribe to such reductivism, and that it is more a pop-philosophy, the stuff of celebrity scientists and the like. The distinction between ourselves as conscious beings and those psychological forces in our wider material being, sheds light on the difference between philosophical and psychological work, for example Philosophical Counselling and Psychotherapy. Classical philosophy as I have described it, is the effort you make as a conscious being to expand and increase yourself as a conscious being. It is the effort to expand your capacity to know, to love, to choose. The cultivation of wisdom and virtue is simply this: the capacity to know, love, and choose what is true, what is good, what is beautiful, what makes life genuinely worthwhile. You as a consicous being more lucid, wise and rational, more strong and courageous, more nourished and happy. Psychological work, by contrast, is work we do on something we have, something within us. When you go to the gym, you focus on some object within you, such as your muscular structure, and when you go to a Psychotherapist or Psychologist you focus, for example, on some disorderd psychological pattern within yourself. "I become this arsehole, and only afterwards do I realise I entered into that triggered state. How do I understand (i.e. analyse) that, and what techniques can I use to change it?" The therapist may start by encouraging you to recognise that you are not an arsehole, rather your psychology is, so to speak, for that is a truth which clears the space for new psychological patterns, which better reflect your conscious values. Polarity: a way of understanding these things I am speaking of two poles between which life is divided: consciousness, and unconscious psychological forces. In between these two poles sits a wide spectrum of thought, emotion, desire and behaviour, which are more conscious as you head in one direction, and more unconscious as you head in the other. The middle ground constitutes some mixture of the two poles. That is, emotions and behaviour can be expressions of intelligence. Or they can be expressions of unconscious forces. Often they are an expression of both, but to differing degrees in each case, in each moment, in each person. This image of two poles and of a spectrum in between helps us to think about the domain of philosophy versus the domain of psychology. Or the domain of Philosophical Counselling versus the domain of Psychotherapy. It helps us to understand how these disciplines cross-over at places as well. It therefore helps us to understand why a philosophical counsellor might also want the knowledge and skills of Psychotherapy as well, in order to practice Philosophical Counselling in a more holistic, effective way. It also helps us to think about different kinds of Psychotherapy, for not all sit at one end of the pole. Some dwell further in, toward the middle, for example when Humanistic Therapy adapts phenomenology to therapeutic ends, or when CBT imitates the cultivation of wisdom and virtue but engages in a more mechanistic conception of human nature. To complicate matters, it would be a mistake to assume that while the pole of "unconscious psychological forces" is something to which we are often blind, by contrast the pole of consciousness is clear and lucid for us. That is not necessarily true. Indeed it is often untrue. Consciousness can be swamped by other forces, for example those psychological forces in us. Then the person is like one possessed, not aware, not in control. They may be absent, on auto-pilot, or they may be neurotic and ruminating, or egoic and ruminating—there may be much going on in their head—but they are not truly conscious. This is why we need philosophical work: to wake up, and strengthen ourselves as conscious beings, becoming more fully alive. This is also why we need Psychotherapy: to diminish the power our unconscious psychology has over us, overwhelming and distorting our conscious life. Psychotherapy clears the ground for philosophy Hopefully a vision of the nature of the psychological and of Psychotherapy on the one hand, versus the philosophical and Philosophical Counselling on the other, is coming more into view. Irvin Yalom can help us to draw the fundamental conclusion at the end of this long, more theoretical section. I appeal to him not because he is a pioneer in the field of Existential Therapy, which he is, but because he is considered a master-therapist more widely--a wise elder, a leading voice in Psychotherapy today. Yalom wrote a book called The Gift of Therapy, which is an open letter to new therapists offering advice on what therapy is and how to do it. The first chapter expresses his most fundamental idea, which is a popular idea in Psychotherapy more broadly. Whether or not Yalom realises it, the idea, and the example he uses, are taken from Aristotle and the philosophical tradition. It is that a person's being is composed of act and potency. Potentiality is all that makes us fully human. It strives to come into act: to become active. If our potentiality fails to unfold, it is generally because there is some obstruction, as there is when the acorn falls onto rocks rather than soil and fails to become the oak tree, or as there is when disease creates disorder within. Yalom writes about this metaphysics of act and potency as he finds it in the psychotherapeutic tradition, that "It forever changed my approach to psychotherapy by offering me a new vision of my work: My task was to remove obstacles blocking my patient's path. I did not have to do the entire job; I did not have to inspirit the patient with the desire to grow, with curiosity, will, zest for life, caring, loyalty, or any of the myriad characteristics that make us fully human. No, what I had to do was to identify and remove obstacles. The rest would follow automatically, fueled by the self-actualizing forces within the patient." Yalom makes the kinds of errors here which I discussed earlier, when I spoke of how our culture reduces us to our psychology, and so neglects the concept and work of wisdom and virtue. For he recognises that we need to do psychological work, but frames the work which makes us fully human in psychological terms—unconscious "self-actualizing" forces—even as he implicitly presents that work as something other than psychological. This is an example of the philosophical incoherency that plagues Psychotherapy. Why not leave psychological work to those self-actualising forces as well? Leaving this aside, the important point is that Yalom presents a powerful vision of the relationship between psychological work and what, in fact, is philosophical work. Psychotherapy cultivates a clear space, it clears the ground of obstacles. Philosophical Counselling helps the client grow as a conscious person in wisdom, virtue, and flourishing. Philosophical Counselling needs Psychotherapy, because it needs a clear ground. As I said earlier in my definition of human nature, those psychological forces "also shape us. They can hinder, blind, or distort our consciousness—our capacity to see what is true and good, and to live according to that vision." Most of a person's philosophy is merely the projction of their psychology. At the same time, Psychotherapy "needs" Philosophical Counselling insofar as philosophical growth is the ultimate point of Psychotherapy. Psychological work is not an end in itself. If we treat it as that, which our culture does, we become superficial, materialistic, hedonistic, and ultimately more egotistical. The end of psychological work, the ultimate point, is so that we are free and able to do the other work of becoming more fully human, of becoming more wise and virtuous and so flourishing as human beings. Philosphical growth needs psychological work, but philosophical growth is the point of psychological work. Of course, as I have repeatedly said, things are not always so straightforward. Psychotherapy is not that neat. Neither is philosophy. Psycho-therapy is...therapy: curative, remedial, bringing order to disorder. Yalom is right. Yet, philosophical work removes error and disorder; it too is corrective. Not only that, but Psychotherapy often works on positive outcomes, whether that be a more passionate life in Humanistic Psychotherapy, or a more positively skilfull and successful way of being through cognitive-behavioural work. How do we make sense of this? Perhaps the polarity above can help us. Philosophical Counselling and Psychotherapy each do both kinds of work, but Philosophical Counselling does much more of one, while Psychotherapy does much more of the other. The centre of gravity is opposite in each case. It is worth noting that this more nuanced conception reflects the classical understanding of human nature which Plato and Aristotle, and their later students such as Thomas Aquinas, developed in detail. Imagination, for example, is a mid-way faculty between the psychological (animal sense knowledge) and the intellectual. Summary Let's summarise some of the ideas we have discussed, which is to say, my picture of the relationship between philosophical and psychological work:
Comments are closed.
|