Economics
Against psychotherapy...
29/07/08 14:01 Filed in: Psychotherapy
I wanted to say a few words about questions that I am asked all the time about psychotherapy.
First, I am not a therapist. It’s not what I do for work nor would I wish it to be. I have worked in mental health and I hold a recognised qualification in analytical psychology. I have in the past spent brief periods doing relationship and marriage counselling. I chose not to work as a therapist.
I have been asked if “I believe” in psychotherapy. My answer is that I don’t, which is not the same as saying that I do not approve of therapists or necessarily, disapprove of their work.
I believe that therapists face terrible and enormous pressures in their work resulting from our social, political and economic failures. Many work hard and receive little or no credit for all that they do. The problems that they face frequently come from areas they cannot possibly address.
What I dislike most about psychotherapy is that it turns all the problems in on the individual. You are the one that is wrong. It can also produce a victim culture, one where if I’m only a result of past causes, then I’m a victim of those causes when my life goes wrong. I believe that we are all more than the products of our past.
I’ve been writing this blog in various forms for many months now. I have joined blog social networks, like blog catalog. I have made a few friends there too! But it gave me the opportunity to see a new world full of different types of therapist.
In correspondence with a friend here, we talked about “quick fix” merchants. Quick fix merchants reflect our culture, where we treat ourselves like we treat our cars. We take our cars to the garage and we want to know ‘what’s wrong with it, how much will it cost and how long will it take?’
On the internet, these people are everywhere. They promise health, seven steps to success, happiness and self-esteem, sometimes for prices as low as $29.99!
They are generally American and perhaps they are part of the cultural tradition of that country, where snake oil salesmen and travelling circus quacks originated.
There are far worse examples on the net, and they are often called “Doctor”. They promote psychological dependency and “appropriate” medication with an enthusiasm that I might reserve for a good night out. I find those the most terrifying of all.
It’s something about our state of mind and our culture. People feel bored, alienated and sick at heart. They feel like life has lost its purpose. So they are fast to jump at all these quick fixes.
Psychology has tried to gain respectability in the medical world by resorting to scientism. I do not believe all aspects of our lives are accessible to science, nor would I trust science to tell me how I should feel, believe or experience the world.
Perhaps I should say more about economics. I have skirted around any direct comment on economics before, but it dominates our thinking and our way of life. Its maxim is ‘More, more, more!” It’s nothing less than a slave driver. No one has free time, no one has leisure, no one has time to feel or think; we don’t have time to live anymore. Our very existence is under pressure and it’s fraught with anxiety.
In my post here, Beyond Psychology, I was grappling with my own uncertainty. I still am. I talked about a new philosophy. Perhaps I might have talked about a therapy of ideas that would have been equally valid. But I’m not sure of either expression. I’m concerned about a world dominated by intellect, where feelings, emotions and creativity are subjugated by thought, especially scientific thought. I question to what extent economic man is also one-dimensional intellectual man.
There’s something else I want to say before concluding about psychotherapy and good psychotherapists. It’s something I struggled with when I thought I might become a therapist. Psychotherapists may fill a gap in our lonely and alienated lives that I feel may be better attended by lovers and close friends with whom we can talk and share intimate understanding. I suspect that the best psychotherapists are little more than paid surrogate friends and lovers. There are profound complications in the psychotherapeutic relationship when the psychotherapist assumes the role of a lover. He or she is treading on very dangerous ground.
In summary, I am against psychotherapy. It is being held accountable for that which it cannot possibly apprehend. Further, it individualises many problems that are the product of our society. It makes every problem, an inner problem and that’s not where problems come from. They come from a world which we have created, and which we can choose to change.
A footnote about suffering
None of what I have written is intended to deny the reality of psychological suffering. It is very real and very painful. Sometimes a therapist or medicine may help in the remediation of this suffering…that I do not deny.
My experience, however, is that ultimately the sufferer who recovers, recovers more as a result of their own courage and determination, than the application of therapy or the use of medication.
The best therapists, in my opinion, are those who enable sufferers to find answers within themselves, which will necessarily entail looking beyond themselves, and beyond their personal histories for the source of their difficulties.
First, I am not a therapist. It’s not what I do for work nor would I wish it to be. I have worked in mental health and I hold a recognised qualification in analytical psychology. I have in the past spent brief periods doing relationship and marriage counselling. I chose not to work as a therapist.
I have been asked if “I believe” in psychotherapy. My answer is that I don’t, which is not the same as saying that I do not approve of therapists or necessarily, disapprove of their work.
I believe that therapists face terrible and enormous pressures in their work resulting from our social, political and economic failures. Many work hard and receive little or no credit for all that they do. The problems that they face frequently come from areas they cannot possibly address.
What I dislike most about psychotherapy is that it turns all the problems in on the individual. You are the one that is wrong. It can also produce a victim culture, one where if I’m only a result of past causes, then I’m a victim of those causes when my life goes wrong. I believe that we are all more than the products of our past.
I’ve been writing this blog in various forms for many months now. I have joined blog social networks, like blog catalog. I have made a few friends there too! But it gave me the opportunity to see a new world full of different types of therapist.
In correspondence with a friend here, we talked about “quick fix” merchants. Quick fix merchants reflect our culture, where we treat ourselves like we treat our cars. We take our cars to the garage and we want to know ‘what’s wrong with it, how much will it cost and how long will it take?’
On the internet, these people are everywhere. They promise health, seven steps to success, happiness and self-esteem, sometimes for prices as low as $29.99!
They are generally American and perhaps they are part of the cultural tradition of that country, where snake oil salesmen and travelling circus quacks originated.
There are far worse examples on the net, and they are often called “Doctor”. They promote psychological dependency and “appropriate” medication with an enthusiasm that I might reserve for a good night out. I find those the most terrifying of all.
It’s something about our state of mind and our culture. People feel bored, alienated and sick at heart. They feel like life has lost its purpose. So they are fast to jump at all these quick fixes.
Psychology has tried to gain respectability in the medical world by resorting to scientism. I do not believe all aspects of our lives are accessible to science, nor would I trust science to tell me how I should feel, believe or experience the world.
Perhaps I should say more about economics. I have skirted around any direct comment on economics before, but it dominates our thinking and our way of life. Its maxim is ‘More, more, more!” It’s nothing less than a slave driver. No one has free time, no one has leisure, no one has time to feel or think; we don’t have time to live anymore. Our very existence is under pressure and it’s fraught with anxiety.
In my post here, Beyond Psychology, I was grappling with my own uncertainty. I still am. I talked about a new philosophy. Perhaps I might have talked about a therapy of ideas that would have been equally valid. But I’m not sure of either expression. I’m concerned about a world dominated by intellect, where feelings, emotions and creativity are subjugated by thought, especially scientific thought. I question to what extent economic man is also one-dimensional intellectual man.
There’s something else I want to say before concluding about psychotherapy and good psychotherapists. It’s something I struggled with when I thought I might become a therapist. Psychotherapists may fill a gap in our lonely and alienated lives that I feel may be better attended by lovers and close friends with whom we can talk and share intimate understanding. I suspect that the best psychotherapists are little more than paid surrogate friends and lovers. There are profound complications in the psychotherapeutic relationship when the psychotherapist assumes the role of a lover. He or she is treading on very dangerous ground.
In summary, I am against psychotherapy. It is being held accountable for that which it cannot possibly apprehend. Further, it individualises many problems that are the product of our society. It makes every problem, an inner problem and that’s not where problems come from. They come from a world which we have created, and which we can choose to change.
A footnote about suffering
None of what I have written is intended to deny the reality of psychological suffering. It is very real and very painful. Sometimes a therapist or medicine may help in the remediation of this suffering…that I do not deny.
My experience, however, is that ultimately the sufferer who recovers, recovers more as a result of their own courage and determination, than the application of therapy or the use of medication.
The best therapists, in my opinion, are those who enable sufferers to find answers within themselves, which will necessarily entail looking beyond themselves, and beyond their personal histories for the source of their difficulties.
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The Emperor's new clothes - On personal development and change
30/05/08 12:26 Filed in: Psychology and the social world
This post should be credited at its outset. It was inspired by the writing of another, an exceptional, talented and compassionate holistic counsellor, therapist and coach, called Tamera. You can find her blog here
A recent post of hers caused me to reflect on exactly how we exist in this world and about what holds us back in personal development, from realising our life’s potential and desires.
Living in a world dominated by rational science with its tendency to analyse and categorise our being means that we often compartmentalise ourselves into various states of thinking, feeling and being. We have notions of intellect and thought (rational powers of cognition, perception and differentiation), emotions, intuition and other personal traits like will comprised within our personal make-up yet we appear to express them separately. I know I’ve been tussling with this a lot. I have written about it before both here and in my “farrago”. I adopted the term “consciousness”, both individual and collective (social) to try and relate to our state of being in some sort of wholeness embracing all aspects of our existence.
Previously I wrote: “Notions of will, intellect and emotions working separately are unattractive (to me) since they suggest that areas of one's being might be compartmentalised and operate separately. I am certain that this is not helpful: It might be like, "I work with my intellect", "I love my partner with my feelings" and "my acts of assertion, achievement or success are achieved by my will". How saddening this is, to break up one's self in a way that allows one to express only a part of oneself in given contexts. This compartmentalisation is perhaps the product of post-industrial man, a new machine culture, where work, loving and social being, and success operate in separate personal domains. It is for this reason that I prefer the notion of consciousness where all of our faculties might operate together.”
I believe that what makes for an experience of wholeness in our life is a sense of enlightened consciousness – of being conscious of consciousness in a way. It’s an act of profound understanding, an awareness of our being in a world that exists both within and outside ourselves. But it is also a sense that we make our world and take responsibility for it. I believe it is this special understanding that facilitates progress, development, discovery, invention and change. Consciousness brings with it an awareness that our limitations are made by ourselves, either individually or collectively. Knowing and understanding the nature and source of our limitations can bring about the most wonderful possibilities of positive personal and social development, of change in our personal and social worlds.
Perhaps that is a little abstract so I’ll give a couple of examples that come to mind. I write endlessly about the nature of love. We experience love as an emotion within ourselves. What love means and what it stands for is influenced by a whole host of factors beyond ourselves. How we love is an integral part of our belief systems, of our consciousness, and of our culture that forms part of consciousness. Our beliefs about love are upheld by our families, our friends, the media, art and literature, politicians, churches and corporations, as well as our experience. Being conscious means that we have the gift of understanding, our own sense of knowing what love means and where our feelings, thoughts and beliefs about it come from. Being conscious also brings with it a sense of knowing that we may take responsibility and that we can change our lives and how we love. But it’s easy for me to say and much harder to do!
I have a certain understanding, a personal impression and sense of the wholeness that growing consciousness brings with it. What produces that sense of wholeness and often charisma in others, especially in those who become our leaders, is a sense of their own “personal knowing”: Of their consciousness of their own being in the world, and their sense of assurance that comes from taking responsibility not only for themselves in the world, but for their entire world. That’s a big one!
Perhaps the key barriers to consciousness (Others might say this differently: Some might say success or personal fulfilment. They are equally valid as they all go hand-in-hand) are about fear, self-esteem and self-confidence. Being conscious is not always a comfortable place. It can be scary too. Children in their innocence will often exhibit a greater degree of consciousness and fearlessness than us “conditioned” adults. It was a child, after all, that spotted that the “emperor’s new clothes” were nothing more than his “birthday suit”.
Being “unafraid” to express our self-belief is a wonderful release. I believe that the greatest antagonist to love is fear. Hate is not the opposite to love. It is fear. More than anything, I have come to believe that it is fear in whatever form that holds us back in our lives. Some fears are wholly sensible. They guide us in avoiding danger or life-threatening perils. That is the right place for fear. But so many of our fears are not so healthy. They are what hold us back in life, from the realisation of who we are and who we might be. Self-esteem might carry us forward where fear holds us back.
I know I’ve been guilty frequently of being held back by fear or negative self-beliefs too; more frequently than I would readily care to admit.
A little under thirty years ago I read the book “A road less travelled” by American psychotherapist, Morgan Scott Peck. I was riveted. It was sheer inspiration. I have read hundreds of psychology books since but this work still stands out. It’s about the journey of personal fulfilment. At the end of the book, Scott Peck talks about achieving a state of “grace”. (Can’t you just tell what will happen next? It did.) I’d call it something else. But he attributes the phenomena associated with “grace” as that which:
1. nurtures human life (and spiritual growth)
2. are incompletely understood by scientific thinking
3. are commonplace among humanity
4. originate outside conscious human will (the individual)
I believe he was very nearly “right on the button” but instead of developing a notion of consciousness in all its aspects of being in the world, he, in my opinion, goes completely off the rails and gets “God”. So that which he can no longer understand in terms of the world as it exists within the psyche and outside the individual, he attributes to a divine power. In a subsequent work he goes on to judge what is good and what is evil according to his newly found religious beliefs. For me at that point, he lost the plot. What a great pity. He had so much to say.
My point here is that psychology as a mode of personal exploration fails us. The answers are not all within ourselves but in our interaction with the world we make and our beliefs about that world. Only through an understanding of all the dimensions of ourselves within our world can we seek to understand it.
I believe that the biggest barrier to realising that understanding is fear.
Footnote:
Some people in the past have accused me of being naïve and idealistic. I know what they mean but I might express it differently. They claim that my work fails to acknowledge the realities of economics, economic survival and power in our lives. For me, economics and power are important dimensions of consciousness. They exist and are a fact of life. I am not sure that their consideration belongs here.
Much of our reality is informed by economics and power. It is the dominant paradigm (Dare I use that word?!) of our western world. I am sure, however, that its culture does not always serve us well. By necessity, we live with it and it would be “naïve” to believe otherwise. But often I question how well it serves us. I do not believe that focussing one’s life on financial, economic and power outcomes is likely to lead to any form of enduring personal fulfilment. Infinite economic expansion is impossible. Money is a medium of exchange and not an end in itself. We all need it. As the western world slides inexorably towards recession, perhaps a change in economic consciousness might show us the way out. For sure, some change is inevitable, although I am apprehensive about what it might be. So many periods of economic turmoil have found temporary relief in war and conflict.
So, to my critics, I know all about economics and power. We all see its distorted influences in our lives daily. But we accept it as a given fact of life. Only through developing a wider understanding of the world in we wish to dwell in as well as the world that exists, will it change. There is nothing inevitable or god-given in anything made by humankind. We can change. But we can only change by understanding the realities of what exists and that which might serve our future better. That is about consciousness; nothing more, nothing less. We make and we choose the world we live in as it in turn makes who we are. Consciousness, choice, and freedom are about taking responsibility for our world. And taking responsibility is a choice for us too.
A recent post of hers caused me to reflect on exactly how we exist in this world and about what holds us back in personal development, from realising our life’s potential and desires.
Living in a world dominated by rational science with its tendency to analyse and categorise our being means that we often compartmentalise ourselves into various states of thinking, feeling and being. We have notions of intellect and thought (rational powers of cognition, perception and differentiation), emotions, intuition and other personal traits like will comprised within our personal make-up yet we appear to express them separately. I know I’ve been tussling with this a lot. I have written about it before both here and in my “farrago”. I adopted the term “consciousness”, both individual and collective (social) to try and relate to our state of being in some sort of wholeness embracing all aspects of our existence.
Previously I wrote: “Notions of will, intellect and emotions working separately are unattractive (to me) since they suggest that areas of one's being might be compartmentalised and operate separately. I am certain that this is not helpful: It might be like, "I work with my intellect", "I love my partner with my feelings" and "my acts of assertion, achievement or success are achieved by my will". How saddening this is, to break up one's self in a way that allows one to express only a part of oneself in given contexts. This compartmentalisation is perhaps the product of post-industrial man, a new machine culture, where work, loving and social being, and success operate in separate personal domains. It is for this reason that I prefer the notion of consciousness where all of our faculties might operate together.”
I believe that what makes for an experience of wholeness in our life is a sense of enlightened consciousness – of being conscious of consciousness in a way. It’s an act of profound understanding, an awareness of our being in a world that exists both within and outside ourselves. But it is also a sense that we make our world and take responsibility for it. I believe it is this special understanding that facilitates progress, development, discovery, invention and change. Consciousness brings with it an awareness that our limitations are made by ourselves, either individually or collectively. Knowing and understanding the nature and source of our limitations can bring about the most wonderful possibilities of positive personal and social development, of change in our personal and social worlds.
Perhaps that is a little abstract so I’ll give a couple of examples that come to mind. I write endlessly about the nature of love. We experience love as an emotion within ourselves. What love means and what it stands for is influenced by a whole host of factors beyond ourselves. How we love is an integral part of our belief systems, of our consciousness, and of our culture that forms part of consciousness. Our beliefs about love are upheld by our families, our friends, the media, art and literature, politicians, churches and corporations, as well as our experience. Being conscious means that we have the gift of understanding, our own sense of knowing what love means and where our feelings, thoughts and beliefs about it come from. Being conscious also brings with it a sense of knowing that we may take responsibility and that we can change our lives and how we love. But it’s easy for me to say and much harder to do!
I have a certain understanding, a personal impression and sense of the wholeness that growing consciousness brings with it. What produces that sense of wholeness and often charisma in others, especially in those who become our leaders, is a sense of their own “personal knowing”: Of their consciousness of their own being in the world, and their sense of assurance that comes from taking responsibility not only for themselves in the world, but for their entire world. That’s a big one!
Perhaps the key barriers to consciousness (Others might say this differently: Some might say success or personal fulfilment. They are equally valid as they all go hand-in-hand) are about fear, self-esteem and self-confidence. Being conscious is not always a comfortable place. It can be scary too. Children in their innocence will often exhibit a greater degree of consciousness and fearlessness than us “conditioned” adults. It was a child, after all, that spotted that the “emperor’s new clothes” were nothing more than his “birthday suit”.
Being “unafraid” to express our self-belief is a wonderful release. I believe that the greatest antagonist to love is fear. Hate is not the opposite to love. It is fear. More than anything, I have come to believe that it is fear in whatever form that holds us back in our lives. Some fears are wholly sensible. They guide us in avoiding danger or life-threatening perils. That is the right place for fear. But so many of our fears are not so healthy. They are what hold us back in life, from the realisation of who we are and who we might be. Self-esteem might carry us forward where fear holds us back.
I know I’ve been guilty frequently of being held back by fear or negative self-beliefs too; more frequently than I would readily care to admit.
A little under thirty years ago I read the book “A road less travelled” by American psychotherapist, Morgan Scott Peck. I was riveted. It was sheer inspiration. I have read hundreds of psychology books since but this work still stands out. It’s about the journey of personal fulfilment. At the end of the book, Scott Peck talks about achieving a state of “grace”. (Can’t you just tell what will happen next? It did.) I’d call it something else. But he attributes the phenomena associated with “grace” as that which:
1. nurtures human life (and spiritual growth)
2. are incompletely understood by scientific thinking
3. are commonplace among humanity
4. originate outside conscious human will (the individual)
I believe he was very nearly “right on the button” but instead of developing a notion of consciousness in all its aspects of being in the world, he, in my opinion, goes completely off the rails and gets “God”. So that which he can no longer understand in terms of the world as it exists within the psyche and outside the individual, he attributes to a divine power. In a subsequent work he goes on to judge what is good and what is evil according to his newly found religious beliefs. For me at that point, he lost the plot. What a great pity. He had so much to say.
My point here is that psychology as a mode of personal exploration fails us. The answers are not all within ourselves but in our interaction with the world we make and our beliefs about that world. Only through an understanding of all the dimensions of ourselves within our world can we seek to understand it.
I believe that the biggest barrier to realising that understanding is fear.
Footnote:
Some people in the past have accused me of being naïve and idealistic. I know what they mean but I might express it differently. They claim that my work fails to acknowledge the realities of economics, economic survival and power in our lives. For me, economics and power are important dimensions of consciousness. They exist and are a fact of life. I am not sure that their consideration belongs here.
Much of our reality is informed by economics and power. It is the dominant paradigm (Dare I use that word?!) of our western world. I am sure, however, that its culture does not always serve us well. By necessity, we live with it and it would be “naïve” to believe otherwise. But often I question how well it serves us. I do not believe that focussing one’s life on financial, economic and power outcomes is likely to lead to any form of enduring personal fulfilment. Infinite economic expansion is impossible. Money is a medium of exchange and not an end in itself. We all need it. As the western world slides inexorably towards recession, perhaps a change in economic consciousness might show us the way out. For sure, some change is inevitable, although I am apprehensive about what it might be. So many periods of economic turmoil have found temporary relief in war and conflict.
So, to my critics, I know all about economics and power. We all see its distorted influences in our lives daily. But we accept it as a given fact of life. Only through developing a wider understanding of the world in we wish to dwell in as well as the world that exists, will it change. There is nothing inevitable or god-given in anything made by humankind. We can change. But we can only change by understanding the realities of what exists and that which might serve our future better. That is about consciousness; nothing more, nothing less. We make and we choose the world we live in as it in turn makes who we are. Consciousness, choice, and freedom are about taking responsibility for our world. And taking responsibility is a choice for us too.