Gaia: Integral Psychotherapy - Topics

Re: A Practical Integral Psychotherapy

http://headandheart.gaia.com — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 22:55:38 GMT

Hi everyone,

Patrick I'm interested in your take on the 3-2-1 process. Could you tell us more about that?

Also, I like what you were saying about challenging under and over evaluation. I often find that a challenge of over evaluation can send the client straight into guilt, which strains the relationship. I wonder if the challenge of overevaluation often calls for another challenge of the ensuing underevaluation and vice versa.

BTW the mandala is beautiful.

Durwin,
Congratulations on your new job. Glad you're loving it.

Thanks for the offer of the paper. I have a feeling I'll be challenging your underevaluation of it.

Best,
Katherine

Re: A Practical Integral Psychotherapy

http://durwinfoster.gaia.com — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 21:08:04 GMT

Hello there:
A brief update on where I am at: I have just started a new job that I plan to have serve as my clinical internship for my counselling psych doctorate. I wish I were in a transpersonal psych program right now, so that I might have an excuse to rest in formlessness :). But of course, grass is always greener...

My job is half-time school counselling at an elementary school with a large population of children dealing with neglect, abuse, refugee status, behavioral problems, learning problems, socioeconomic problems...and I am really loving it there.

I love it because I feel that my clinical interests have been re-awakened by the chance to work with children, who more easily evoke compassion from me (I'm so hard-hearted otherwise :). Plus, finding my way to this position marks a healing from an earlier career trauma (another story). The result of this experience is that I am more sensitive than ever to the impact of trauma on people's lives. So: integrally-informed trauma therapy v. important in my eyes.

I wrote a paper on integrally-informed pragmatic psychotherapy, which I am happy to send to anyone who is interested. It is an ok paper, not a great one. But if you want to read it, you could e-mail me directly at durwinfoster@gmail.com.

Cheers,
Durwin

Re: Empathy and Challenge

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 04:54:29 GMT

Bill, Nice text. As for me, it has alwys been clear that Wilber had no experience in the client-therapist relationship, in a professional way. This is not a problem for me, as I think it is not what he's working on, as Katherine rightly said. But, this becomes a hindrance when Wilber and I-I start to dig in psychotherapeutic tools, like the 3-2-1 process. This is supposed to be "great" shadow work, but I think it is a bit weak. This process completely avoids the relationship in the therapeutical process as you have both mentioned above. Katherine, When to empathise and when to challenge? Great question. I personally challenge self destruction and self glorification, or when people under evaluate themselves or over evaluate. Now the question is who decides what is over and under evaluation? Well, it is absence of a dynamic process for me which is the symptom of it. Stucked in non dynamic guilt (under evaluation) and stuck in non dynamic anger or inflation (over evaluation). Be well, Patrick

Re: Empathy and Challenge

http://integral-options.gaia.com — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 01:56:59 GMT

Hi Katherine,

Thank you for the thoughtful comments.

Durwin's response to the original posting of this topic was:

I hear your concerns about the challenge of going from the 50,000 feet of integral theory to the 5 feet of therapist and client. I think many of us who are interested in integral theory have struggled with this.

I agree that Wilber does include the full spectrum of developmental models, and hence an equally large number of possibilities for how a therapist relates to the client. I think this is one of the most useful (for me) elements of his work. And I also think it addresses the Rollo May quote you offered.

The "mirroring" that May witnessed is appropriate to a whole other level of wounding than May's existential approach. Mirroring, as far as I can tell, is most appropriate with clients who have a fragile self-sense and never received the essential mirroring they needed from the parents. I've seen this among my personal training clients that had abusive childhoods (I learn more about my clients in the training session than even their spouses know sometimes), and consequently have low self-esteem and a too-permeable self.

May's existential approach would seem more suited to those with healthy egos but who are seeking some deeper relationship with self and world. So to him, the session he witnessed would look "wrong." Clients with early developmental stage wounding might, however, initially need that entangled relationship with the therapist in order to build a more solid ego structure.

In regard to your questions about empathy and knowing when to challenge, I think these are important questions for all of us. There has recently (among integral bloggers) been some backlash against KW and II, a sense that it has become cultish (I have no idea if there is any foundation for this), and it has caused a lot of people to take a step back from KW's work, which I think is useful. Too many of us were simply blown away by the beauty of it that we didn't ask any validity questions -- I think that is changing.

Related to your thoughts, I wonder if there is a spectrum of empathy (a developmental line?), from mirroring all the way up to true compassion (in the Buddhist sense), which includes empathy, but can, as part of its "skillful means," also be challenging. I can only think about this as theory, since I am not a therapist, but it seems this might be one way to look at which form of interaction with clients might best serve their needs.

I agree completely with what say about the power of ego being shattered, how freeing that can be. But as you suggest, it's a fine line. The client would need to have a healthy enough ego to withstand such an experience. [One of the issues I have with Mark Epstein is that he doesn't make that distinction in his books -- all clients are candidates to have their egos dissolved.]

Thanks for the tip on the Willow Pearson article -- I downloaded it today.

I hope to hear what others hear think on these topics as well.

Peace,
Bill

Empathy and Challenge

http://headandheart.gaia.com — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 22:18:05 GMT

Hi WH and hi Clare too,

I think you raise a really important point, which is, what is a practical integral psychotherapy? I think this is really what this pod could aim to discover. My curiosity is definitely about how therapists are applying the model and the benefits they are seeing.

I also really resonate with your emphasis on empathy and the therapeutic relationship. Certainly, empathy and it's pre-requisite--presence are high order capacities.

My opinion with reagards to Wilber is that I think we need to keep in mind that Wilber's work is what he calls a map, not the territory. I've heard Wilber paraphrased as saying that his theory is the view from 10,000 feet. (I may have that slightly wrong but that the general idea. If anyone knows the actual quote please feel free to throw it in.) Or put another way his work is the theory, ours is the practice.

That said, Wilber's model includes the humanistic psychologists, specifically Carl Rogers with his emphasis on empathy, congruence and unconditional positive regard, which you also, I think rightly, highlight in your post.

I think it would be a great place to start to examine our own beliefs and experiences about empathy and relationship from an integral perspective. I would offer that each of the psychological theories that Wilber includes has a distinct view of the client/therapist relationship with differing focuses ranging from transference/countertransference to safety, to creating enough distinction between client and therapist personalities. I was also really intrigued by Jon's assertion that transference/countertransference is largely a subtle realm phenomenon. An full spectrum analysis of the therapeutic relationship would be very interesting indeed.

I would like to put forth an idea/question to see if it sparks further interest and debate.

Rollo May one of the great existentialists was asked to judge a client-centered therapy session. His response was "that he often felt that there were not two distinct people in the room. When the therapist only reflects the patient's words, there transpires 'only an amorphous kind of identity rather than two subjects interacting in a world in which both participate, and in which love and hate, trust and doubt, conflicts and dependence, come out and can be understood and assimilated." May was concerned that the therapist's overidentification with the patient could 'take away the patient's opportunity to experience himself as a subject in his own right or to take a stand against the therapist, to experience being in an interpersonal world.'"

The larger quote is from Current Psychotherapies 6th edition year 2000 editors Corsini and Wedding.
The internal quote is from The Problem of Evil: An Open Letter to Carl Rogers by Rollo May, 1982 in The Journal of Humanistic Psychology

So my question revolves around an idea, which is relevant in therapy, in personal relationships, and in relationships with spiritual teachers. How do we know when to empathize and when to challenge/confront? Certainly, empathy is essential, however, sometimes empathy can be taken as collusion and we don't want to collude with clients' erroneous beliefs or their behaviours that are causing them difficulty. How much can you look after someone's ego and still give them an opportunity to grow?

I recently had an experience where I was given some no-holds-barred feedback about some work I had done. My ego was crushed. It's still lying on the floor in a million pieces, and right now I feel like I'm looking at it wondering if I should bother to pick it up and put it back together, or not. Clearly, a short term depression has set in. But the strange thing is, I feel oddly less defensive, more open, more loving, more humble. For me at least, moments of clarity and fullness of heart often follow experiences of loss, pain and ego-shattering failures. I feel stronger. And I have the opportunity to reflect on why I didn't do a better job, how I tend to castigate myself when I don't do well, and how I expect a very minimal effort to be rewarded with praise it doesn't deserve.

I wouldn't want to deny my clients the experience of realizing they are not prisoners of their ego desires. And at the same time some clients are very fragile. Serious depression is a real possibility and the therapeutic relationship can be destroyed by a lack of empathy.

I think it's simple to say that we need to be aware of both challenge and empathy. Simple enough to say we should have empathy for a client while at the same time challenging them. But, I think, in practice this very fine balance requires incredibly skillful means. I'd love to hear how exactly you/we as therapists negotiate it.

There is an interesting discussion on integral naked between Diane Hamilton, Sam Bercholz and Viddyudeva about this topic. I think you can find it on Integral Naked listed under Guests/Viddyudeva/A Cry for the Middle Way

Also Willow Pearson has a beautiful and thoughtful article about therapeutic presence called Integral Practice for Psychotherapists: Therapeutic Presencing. You can find it on her website www.lionessroars.org under Psychotherapy on her menu. Then, in the left hand column there is a link that reads: Integral Practice for Psychotherapists.

Blessings,
Katherine

Re: A Practical Integral Psychotherapy

http://seagull.gaia.com — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 13:31:58 GMT

Hear Hear William,

I resonate with your post.

Clare

A Practical Integral Psychotherapy

http://integral-options.gaia.com — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 01:16:09 GMT

[This was originally posted at my Integral Options Cafe blog. I am not a therapist (yet -- I start a PhD program in clinical psych at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology next fall). I'm still trying to understand what might constitute an "integral psychotherapy," and these are some preliminary thoughts. I welcome and encourage a discussion of these ideas, and pointing out, especially by those of you who are practicing therapists, where I might be naive in my views.]

Integral Psychotherapy

When I read Ken Wilber's Integral Psychology many years ago, I thought I had found the holy grail of psychology models. In some ways that is true -- Wilber's book offers a theoretical framework by which to look at various pathologies within a developmental model. Some therapies are more effective for certain pathologies than for others, depending in large part on the source of the pathology developmentally (for example, early childhood or existential). Understanding the spectrum of development and the available theories of treatment allows the therapist to tailor the therapy to the pathology. In essence, no one approach works for all clients.

As I have started "studying" some forms of therapy that are currently in use (self psychology, relational psychotherapy, internal family systems therapy, object relations therapy, and so on), what has become painfully clear to me is that Wilber has never worked a day in his life as a therapist. Theoretical frameworks are all well and fine, but they are generally useless in the therapy room. For all his understanding of theory, I can't recall a single instance in Integral Psychology in which Wilber speaks about the relationship between the therapist and the client, which from my experience is the foundation that must come before any theoretical model.

One book that I have recently started is Relational Psychotherapy: A Primer, by Patricia A. DeYoung. Until very recently, I had never heard of relational psychotherapy [thanks Susie!], but having just begun this book, it feels to me like an actual integral psychotherapy.

The last time I was in therapy, the single most beneficial moments came when I was able to express some fear or anxiety and Maude (my therapist) was able to hear me and respond with empathy -- not pathologizing my feelings in any way, but being totally present to what I was expressing.

In relational psychotherapy, empathy on the part of the therapist is the key to the therapeutic relationship. Without empathy, there cannot be the safety for the client to become open and relearn old and dysfunctional relational patterns.

The second key element of relational psychotherapy is the understanding that whatever fears, anxieties, and other difficult feelings the client has are not merely within the client, but rather were learned and are still expressed within relational patterns -- where the self interacts with others. Whatever challenges the client is facing are not inherent in the client -- they occur in the boundary between self and other.

DeYoung says:

[W]hat's wrong is neither entirely inside the client, in his psychological makeup or dysfunctional patterns, nor entirely outside in the world, in forces that impinge on him. Instead, according to a relational model of psychotherapy, the problem exists in those spaces or activities where outside influences and inside responses interact to create the shape and feel of a "self."

This is very similar to the internal family systems model. Moreover, what Richard Schwartz is doing in internal family systems with being totally present and responding with empathy at all times (knowing there will be lapses, and that those lapses must become a part of the therapeutic process) -- responding from the Self, the internal witness -- is not much different than this model. I suspect there are a lot of very good therapists operating from a relational perspective without knowing it.

The true value of this model as an integral psychotherapy is that therapists are free to -- and are encouraged to -- draw from a variety of therapeutic interventions, while always being aware that the authentic relationship with the client is the primary concern.

The therapist must be able to be open and fully present and empathic for the relationship to flourish. Empathy is not a low-level developmental trait -- it requires considerable self development and a significant degree of developmental advancement. If we consider empathy a developmental line, it can be developed separate from other lines, but this is more difficult.

It seems to me that in order for a therapist to effectively employ this model, there needs to be some familiarity with the Self, with higher order compassion and empathy, and with the ability to stay present even when his/her own emotions are being triggered by a difficult client or a challenging moment in the therapy.

Knowing one's parts, or subpersonalities, would be incredibly useful in doing this kind of work. If the therapist is able to recognize when a part has been triggered in the therapy room, and if s/he has some experience in knowing how to stay grounded in the Self, rather than letting the part take over, then the work would be much easier.

Any version of an integral psychotherapy must first recognize the value of the empathic relationship with the client, the value of multiple tools for different issues, and that the self/other relationship (aside from certain severe psychological defects) is the fertile ground where most pathologies arise.

Re: How is integral psychotherapy helping you and your clients

http://headandheart.gaia.com — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 04:41:26 GMT

Jon,
I am at long last coming round to replying to your very thought provoking and inspiring post. I mentioned to you privately, but will mention here again for other members of the pod, that I've been processing some procrastination that has its roots in fear. I love to write, but I find I get scared about being seen/heard. What if I say something stupid? What if I don't think of anything intelligent to say? What if I try too hard to sound intelligent and reveal my own insecurity and make an ass of myself while doing it. So this is my way of handling that. It's sort of a jump before you can be pushed approach. I'm not trying to solicit support just my way of facing my fear. It sort of works, usually.

I was very interested in your assertion that transference is as much a subtle body/causal body resonance. I certainly agree that the affect we have on our clients and they on us at the subtle level is both helpful and rife with unspoken, unconscious transference and countertransference. My guess would be that possibly the majority of therapeutic change (and mistakes) are keenly felt at this level by therapist and client. I have also noticed at times, that clients didn't seem to respond to dynamics that I thought they must feel at the subtle level. It seems as if there can be a sort of subtle numbness which can look like naivete and care-taking or bullishness.

I am also intrigued by the notion of transference as causal body resonance. I'd love it if you'd comment more on this.

There are so many other interesting pieces in your post, but for now I'd like to leave my comments to this discussion in the hopes that you and anyone else are interested in exploring this idea further?...

Re: How is integral psychotherapy helping you and your clients

http://headandheart.gaia.com — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 04:17:55 GMT

Hi Frans,
thanks for replying about how integral helps you and your clients. It is a great relief for me as well to have a framework for understanding clients that is all quadrant, all level. Before I found integral, trying to settle on one (or a few) theories of psychotherapy always felt like sawing off my left arm. In other words, nothing felt whole and therefore I didn't feel I was true to my own wholeness in adhering to a partial theory.

I'd love to hear more about how you work with dogs in nature.

Re: Role of therapy in post-postmodern context

http://lifeluvver.gaia.com — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 22:58:47 GMT

Thanks, Durwin

Re: How is integral psychotherapy helping you and your clients

http://lifeluvver.gaia.com — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 21:04:03 GMT

Part two.

2) I subscribe to integrally-informed John Rowan's dictum that a therapist should be intimately acquainted with prepersonal, personal and transpersonal modes of relatedness. Ingress into the transpersonal is a confused issue largely dust-kicked by the current incongruence of definitions regarding what is religious, what is spiritual and what is transpersonal and compounded by widely-differing notions of what is health - and the latter has been defined by Ken and Treya in Grace and Grit in lotsa different ways. Integralism hoovers up the dust-cloud very nicely ..in ways I will not elaborate upon here...but paves the way for understanding how best to differentially approach a client with a crisis of religious faith, an individual crippled by impulsively acting at odds with her/his humanist "spiritual" beliefs, a person using "spiritual bypass" (Re;Grof) to block bereavement grief. Most orthodox pastoral counselling remains uninformed as to how best to tackle these issues and tends to collapse them into a single issue using the much misunderstood, watered-down Rogerian core conditions..which to my mind in hese cases tend to be as effective as an anosmic tracker dog. By contrast, an effective integrally-informed approach can "diagnose" the issues according to fulcrum mistranslations and empathically respond to the various strands of "dysfunction" with what Chogyam Trungpa would refer to as "real-" as opposed to "idiot compassion", thereby instituting insight on the part of the client, and a healing, reparative experience, to boot. I do my best in this domain; I am still learning. But I am taking on an increasing number of Buddhists through word-of-mouth referrals so I reckon being integrally-informed has gotten me doing something right.

3) How I am in the therapy room. Molto vipassana, yoga, ILP, over the last few years has rendered me alive to the subtleties of the transferential and countertransferential domain within my own inner event horizon with several notable benefits;

a) I am alive to the encounter, trained to dissociate less with clients, interested, prone to seeing the buddhata, the shakti, the sheer humanity in the Other in this miracle of we-ness...and the client picks up on this. Current research suggests that it is the quality of interactiveness in a therapy room which determines the success of quality therapy rather than a cognitive insight garnered by more instrumentally-biased interventions.

b) Spending a lot of time Witnessing in the therapy room (and I am not perfect; I can shrink-wrap my awareness into thinking about lunch with the best of 'em when hungry) tends to do something with resonance..the clients relatively-undisclosed dharma body resonates with mine facilitating personal understanding..many eureka moments..many morphogenetically-resonant "I was just gonna say that.." moments making us closer..I do feel that transference is as much a subtle body/causal body resonance..and after all, the Advaita Vedanta and Samkhya-Yoga systems delineate the vasanas and samskaras as residing in the causal and they transduce downwards..(I am thinking about doing an MSc Psychotherapy by writing a thesis on "Transference as a Subtle Body Process" but I dunno as yet whether they'd buy it in the current Establishment)

Anyway..there's a lot more to say. My blog may be worth perusing in the coming season if this all floats yr boat.

Re: How is integral psychotherapy helping you and your clients

http://lifeluvver.gaia.com — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 20:10:06 GMT

Hello Katherine, allow me to introduce myself. My name is jon Pearson. I am a UKCP (United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy) registered psychotherapist of 11 years experience working from the Manchester Institute for Psychotherapy. I have been reading Ken Wilbers corpus since 1983. Since that time I have practised Yoga across all my disclosed and disclosing fulcrums and have taught Yoga as what I think of as an AQAL tango since 1990. I am partially osmosed into Vajrayana Buddhism. An actively-engaged parent to a wonderful 10 yr old boy, I subscribe to the notion of health, not as the World Health Organisation's definition of it as the "..absence of (pathology)" but, in the words of Katherine Mansfield, as "Being all that I can be".

My original training modality has been in Transactional Analysis. However, as an integrally-informed student, I quickly became aware of the limitations of an approach targeted primarily at fulcrums 3 and 4. The current Relational approach in TA has sought to redress this imbalance by incorporating material garnered from Kohut's Ego Psychology, contemporary psychoanalysis and object relations theory in order to account for the Fulcrum 2 or borderline/narcissistic entrapments we are all prone to manifest to some degree. I have taken this approach on board in order to evolve into a broad-spectrum psychotherapist and I am successful in my work.

This approach, wonderful as it is in that it accounts for the first six fulcrums and is osmosing into all four quadrants (accounting for cultural differences (LR), CNS physiology (UR), and tenuously, social policy (LR) latter of which needs more work tho Denis Postle's website is a joy in this respect)....does not as yet account for the transpersonal...which in this country certainly means you know something about that ole elevationist Jung...an issue I seek to resolve in that I am evolving an integral model of TA which seeks to rectify that balance about which more in due time....

So; how is knowing a bit about AQAL helping my clients. Myriad ways. Amongst them;

1) When sitting with, say, a young working-class unmarried mother of 3 young kids who lives on the upper floor of a tenement receiving welfare support, it really is not possible to use a purely LR therapeutic relationship to empower her out of the merdes of her life; trying to change the UL belief movie is like eating butter with a red hot needle. An integrally-informed therapist would seek to mobilise appropriate support agencies to oprimise her wellbeing whilst, and as a part of, engendering a therapeutic relationship to provide restitution in the L-quadrants. Much orthodox thinking in psychotherapeutic circles would eschew this course of action in that it a) flies in the face of therapist opacity and b) as a consequence potentially sets up a relationship of co-dependence or symbiosis. My thinking is that these kinds of remedial steps are redolent of using my energies to get my clients energies going just like dealing with a schizoid processin a high-functionning client but within the realms of all quadrants...if the unmarried mother is not noticing a difference inher internal or external life after a year of LR concerted efforts (bracketing here the disablements of a crumbling social service system) then the client's inertia increasingly becomes the focus of enquiry..

Gotta sign off here briefly and will continue shortly...

Re: Role of therapy in post-postmodern context

http://durwinfoster.gaia.com — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 19:38:24 GMT

Off the top of my head, I'm not sure how to do that ...I suppose I could cut and paste...there may be a way to link to it...
Durwin

Re: Role of therapy in post-postmodern context

http://lifeluvver.gaia.com — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 19:21:50 GMT

Hi Durwin, could you reroute my contributions to this discussion on this thread to save me writing all that stuff out again please? Life is too short for reiteration, I feel..

Re: How is integral psychotherapy helping you and your clients

http://onthetrail.gaia.com — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 20:03:40 GMT

Hi Katherine, I can tell you how my practice is integral and how it benefits me and my clients. First of all I should specify that I'm not a psychologist/therapist in the official sense of the word - all my work comes from word-of-mouth and I mostly deal with people who are looking for answers in their quest to further development and an increasing number of people who have issues relating to family/personal relationship and those who are dealing with death in some form. Durwin and I met on the II pod and he asked me to join this pod to get some of my ideas out. I work with individuals and groups through their interaction with animals - dogs specifically. The biggest part of the work is done in wilderness or park settings, and nature and our relationship to nature is the background to all we do (obviously culture and society play a part here as well). I find that integral comes in most specifically in that I am at integral levels of development, and as such am able to interpret what is happenig in my clients' world from an integral perspective. "Being present" is the most important condition I try to establish (hence the work with animals in nature) as I find that my clients are able to take a higher-level view of their reality and are much more open to gaining insights from an integral level. The main benefit to the integral approach seems to me that it makes sense to people, and it seems to generate insights that stick. I started my organization after I got to know integral and AQAL as a concept, and it has as such played quite an important part in setting up "On the Trail". It's been 4 years now, and my work has shifted mostly to working with people, but it'll always be a work in progress, and I welcome this pod as a helpful tool in developing my own insights. Frans

How is integral psychotherapy helping you and your clients

http://headandheart.gaia.com — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 04:57:47 GMT

Hi all,
Durwin has asked me to take over admin of this pod for the time being as his time commitments are currently very demanding. So I'm stepping in and I'll try to be here every few days or so.

It sounds like some of us are hoping to get discussions really moving on this pod. I think there is incredible potential here and we could all benefit from the experience and insight of this community (thanks Patrick for voicing this).

So a few questions to get things moving:

How is your practice integral as opposed to any other type of psychotherapy?

What are you finding are the specific benefits of using an integral approach?

What about frustrations? Blocks? Mysteries?

Do you find that you have clients who are second tier? If so, how is therapy different? Do you find second tier clients have fewer existential worries?

Any other questions, ideas, comments? Let's break it open...

Role of therapy in post-postmodern context

http://durwinfoster.gaia.com — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 16:40:55 GMT

Hello all: This is cross-posted from my blog this morning. It is a first draft -- but I hadn't posed in a while and wanted to put something out there.

What I want to write about this morning is what is the role and place of psychotherapy in a post postmodern context.

Presumably, there will be some role for psychotherapy in the post-postmodern world. Psychotherapy is most generically defined as the intentional activity of one person attempting to improve the well-being of another person, through a deliberate process of some type of interpersonal engagement.

At present, it seems that in the WIE worldview, there is no legitimate place for any kind of therapy. I haven't heard this outright, but neither have I seen any attention given to therapy in the pages of the magazine.

Contrast this with AQAL journal, at present the lead publication of I-I, and you see nearly the opposite case: psychotherapy, followed closely by education, has received the most treatment.

What is going on here?

My opinion is that WIE folks - Andrew Cohen - has thrown the baby of psychotherapy out with its postmodern bathwater. This is an unfortunate state of affairs - and yet, the profession of psychotherapy does carry some culpability for this.

Ken Wilber, in a recent conference call, spoke about how "regression had replaced repression" as the most significant psycho-cultural issue in North American culture, in recent years. If true, this is a statement that psychotherapists need to pay very close attention to. Because in most or many psychotherapy circles, I see how the focus remains largely on undoing repression. This puts psychotherapy behind the growth curve of the culture at large - and more importantly, means that psychotherapy becomes part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

It seems that the development of coaching is one way that psychotherapy has tried to make itself relevant for the post-postmodern context. However, coaching is often criticized by depth psychotherapists for being shallow and - the worse of all sins for depth psychotherapists - "cognitive".

What then are the partial truths of coaching and depth psychotherapies, and how could they be brought together in an approach to psychotherapy that is relevant for the challenges the culture faces, where regression has replaced repression as the most significant psycho-cultural issue? This seems to me to be a relevant topic for our consideration.

Re: What is Integral Psychotherapy?

http://headandheart.gaia.com — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 02:30:53 GMT

Thanks.

Re: What is Integral Psychotherapy?

http://durwinfoster.gaia.com — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 21:13:15 GMT

Hi Katherine: I'll send you Mark's e-mail address.
Durwin

Re: What is Integral Psychotherapy?

http://headandheart.gaia.com — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 21:48:00 GMT

I'd love a copy too.