Healing the World and Psychotherapy

I'd love to hear what folks think about the role of psychotherapy in healing the world.  A therapist's main job is to help clients take aspects of themselves or their lives and make them objects of awareness. We do this by meeting clients where they “are” developmentally and helping them translate in as healthy a manner as possible. I tell my students that these are the “big three” rules of therapy.

That said, I also wonder about the relationship between therapeutic work and the current “state” of  things. I hear a lot of people say humanity is on a collision course with multiple disasters. Of course this is characteristic of humanity but the stakes are higher now. If this is so, I've think the smallest change could have the greatest impact. The smallest change in this case is born in the individual who engages a practice like psychotherapy to make aspects of life or self objects of awareness.

Of course, those who might most benefit rarely seek therapy. It is not on the “radar screen” for many people.  People who start wars never call on my services. I even write my senators offering them discounts but “no takers.”

Anyway, if we grow out of the world, could healing in the psyche help heal the world?

Re: Healing the World and Psychotherapy

Thanks for your post, Elliott:  Let me give a go at a response.
The direction I would like to consider is whether integral psychotherapy, in particular, may be able to have a greater impact on the broader world than the forms of psychotherapy that it, speaking ideally, transcends and includes.  I am curious about what we might see emerge from the fact that AQAL is postdisciplinary, and therefore gives folks as diverse as politicians and psychotherapists a common language.

I recently enjoyed reading the third chapter of Integral Politics that Ken Wilber posted on his blog, in which KW specifies aspects such as the translation/transformation axis (with the accompanying two pairs of dynamics of Eros/Thanatos influencing transformation, and Agape/Phobos informing translation).  So, if we see politicians (hopefully) becoming integrally-informed, we might imagine that it would then be easier for them to see the value of psychotherapy – they will already have been orienting to various psycho-dynamics, and so might not feel it to be so foreign to come to a psychotherapist.

This vision of convergence is part of what inspires me about AQAL and integral approaches more generally.

Re: Healing the World and Psychotherapy

I like how you are thinking about this Durwin. I think Psychology is so fundamental to other disciplines, such as politics. I too truly hope that Integral theory will make the insights of develpmental psychology more accessible to discipline areas that once thought it to be foreign language to their feilds. 

What I also love is what Elliott pointed to as far as the small changes that are necessary for a healthier world. The continual insistence on better translation capacities which speaks to the overall healthy horizontal unfolding of our lives is so key if we wish to see a world “transformed”.   

Re: Healing the World and Psychotherapy

I am rather new to Ken and there is a ton to read, so please forgive my lack of “integral language.” Also, the thoughts here are my own and insufficient as I could write an essay on the topic. But just to give it a start, I'll start with the obvious…..

Although it is likely true that many, if not most folks do not seek psychotherapy as a avenue to healing, it would seem to me that in the absence of “psychotherapists” life itself will provide a plethora of good teachers for those who are ready for the transformation. That said, I think in this vein “readiness” is the pivotal concept in that without the readiness to endure the hardship of transformation and subsequent healing, the attempts made to ease the pain are superficial and often become the sources of continued despair.

Of course, we all know that change, transformation, evolution, and all of that, happens developmentally and as best we can conceive in some process of stage acquisition whether it occurs within an individual, a family, a neighborhood, an organization, a country or the world. But can transformation in all of the collective manifestations and extensions of an individual heart occur as reflective of the individual heart, if the individual heart is not changed? History has shown us the outcomes of efforts made by individuals, political dogmatists, to impose their visions upon the world. Clearly, these efforts result in suppression of the vision of “the other” and produce bondage, an unintended outcome to even the best intended. In contrast, great spiritual teachers, those who have moved the spirit rather than the institution, work with the individual heart and not the collective soul to facilitate a river of change.

This is my job as I see it. To work with a heart or two. To facilitate change in the world by aiding one person as he aspires to his own personal, spiritual evolution. Will the world ever be ready? I don't know as there are new hearts born every day. And too, just as an individual has to face his own crises in order to be “born again” perhaps the world, so reflective of our personal, individual transformations must do the same.

Re: Healing the World and Psychotherapy

Thanks for joining the discussion here, Deborah.
I notice you are from Ohio…does that mean you know Elliott Ingersoll by any chance….I will understand if that sounds silly: I imagine that Ohio is big place!
I think one of the fascinating things about the AQAL model or Integral approach is the recognition of the interconnectedness of the quadrants, meaning that the individual and collective, as well as the subjective and objective dimensions of our “being-in-the-world” co-enact each other.  One implication of this is that we want to work as best we can across the experiential, behavioral, cultural and systemic domains at the same time.

But as you say, in practice usually we work one heart at a time, one life at a time – and must attend to our own self-care and development too!

Cheers,
Durwin

Re: Healing the World and Psychotherapy

Hey guys,

I'd like to share my thoughts on this topic by using my own experience as an example. When I was in my early twenties I was in therapy, as a client, and so were most of my friends. I think I can say with assurance that the lessons and insights each of us learned in our individual therapy had a positive, strong ripple effect through our relationships with each other as well as in the relationships in the rest of our lives. Also a small group of friends like mine went on to have a reasonably large influence when you consider how far we travelled and the jobs we've gotten into. In other words, there's no doubt in my mind that the unfolding was happening in all four quadrants at once.

The interesting thing here also, is that seeing the effect over time of a certain amount of boomeritis mixed into the therapy process was part of the awareness that propelled me (and I'm sure others) to differentiate from the green value meme and begin to search for an integral system of values.

Certain post modern/boomeritis beliefs that were thrown around very liberally, in my opinion in the early nineties began to become pretty obvious. I'm referring especially to the narcissism that Ken Wilber so clearly pointed out in Boomeritis. In my experience there was a climate of 'i can't be wrong; you can't be wrong' and all boundaries are a good thing. I think selfishness was promoted as a value in itself and a new set of rules for how to relate was created based on the idea that there were no rules and save you if you didn't know that rule. I won't go on here but political correctness yada yada yada.

So I think there's a certain striving as well as limping forward in development that is fostered in therapy, in addition to the spreading across quadrants. In other words, its all a part of the great unfolding.

Re: Healing the World and Psychotherapy

Hello Katherine:
I really appreciate your personal reflections here.  I like the fact that you point out that there is a value systems shift involved in moving from the green altitude to teal and possibly beyond.

You spoke of a ripple effect.  I am interested to share that Irving Yalom participated as keynote speaker via interactive video  at the Canadian Counselling Association conference here in Vancouver a couple of days ago.  Marv Westwood, a group specialist in shadow work and who also happens to be my supervisor, lead the dialogue with Yalom quite expertly.

But the point I am wanting to make here is that Yalom talked about a ripple effect as a way  that the value of our actions carries on after our death.  (Note that one of Yalom's main areas of focus is existential therapy). 

So I thought this was an interesting link to what you had mentioned: the idea of a ripple effect moving from one person's change, out towards the broader world.

Re: Healing the World and Psychotherapy

It's funny you mention Yalom because I was reading a book by him yesterday afternoon, and took many of his suggestions into my therapy sessions with clients yesterday, with wonderful results.

The book is called The Gift of Therapy, An Open Letter to a New Generation of Therapists and Their Patients. I was struck by how much of himself Yalom brings to therapy and how much emphasis he puts on the relationship between client and counsellor.

He encourages the therapist to let the client matter to you, be dead honest about your own feelings and communicate how the client matters to you. I love this. And I love his, and other existentialists', notion of the therapist being transformed by the client as well as the other way around.

I realized after reading him that I'd been doing a little too much posturing, trying to be the Therapist instead of just myself. The therapist/supervisor that I see is, like Yalom, an existentialist and over 60 years old (I think Yalom must be that old by now no?). I appreciate his humility that I think comes with getting older. Nothing to knock the narcissism out of you like facing death and impermanence.

I think this is pertinent to the discussion about how therapy can change the world. Allowing ourselves to be deeply affected and transformed by an encounter with another person helps us to become more decent human beings.

Re: Healing the World and Psychotherapy

This is a really beautiful point Katherine. It made me think of something I heard Francis Vaughn (spelling??) say on integral naked. She was talking about how presence is the most important component that a therapist brings to a client and that this is the quality she continually teaches her students, as it is the hardest practice for all of us. She said that we could know all the pathologies; maps of levels, lines, states, types like the back of our hand but that, in many ways, this can often come to act more like a screen between us and our patient. Thus presence is more important, more transformative than anything else we bring to a session.

I think this is really beautiful because it reflects a kind of vulnerability that is important to bring to any relationship we have, whether we are a therapist or not. Especially as we get better at integral theory, it is important that we keep practicing the mystery and leave all the maps at the door when we actually make eye contact with another human being.
 
It also reflects the willingness to touch another person's suffering without putting up any walls or screens to filter through what we do and don't want to touch. We can't distance ourselves when we are in full presence and we sit directly in the center of the other person's embaressment, fear, humiliation and pain. This kind of presence from a therapist –speaking as a client and not a therapist– has been the link to my most healing experiences in therapy. That is, when the therapist dropped their narratives or explanations and just sat with open space, equanimity and a willingness to touch the center of my own suffering without being nervous or afraid of it.  

Re: Healing the World and Psychotherapy

What a nice discussion,

In a kind of irreverential tone, let me say what I'm feeling now:

I used to to have great faith in psychotherapy, but this has faded now. I believe more in collective action. I used to be one who agreed with “change yourself and the world will change”.
Actually, I think that psychotherapy's time is finished. It is time to work on the collective psyche.

A lot of psychotherapeutical concepts have infiltrated society and psychotherapist's job is made by coaches, well-beeing promoters, books, spiritual communities.

As a psychotherapist, I feel like a  dynosaure!!

Patrick

Re: Healing the World and Psychotherapy

Hello there:
I appreciate your provocative post!  Yes, I feel some of this pressure and feeling of being “out-of-date” as well…perhaps we ought to rename ourselves as “counselling therapists” or “coaches”….I'll be interested to see how others respond to this.  Seems like an important issue that you raise.

Re: Healing the World and Psychotherapy

 I've found that listening, empathic listening, being wholly open and aware, with no preconceived notions, what I take presence to mean, is key to everyday interpersonal experiences, and fundamental to healing directed relationships. How, in fact, could any of us help another steady their feet on the road of life if we simply project our own consciousness? I'm struck by what Orit comments on in her blog from 6-26-07 concerning listening as a meditation practice. If one was to work diligently, developing a technique for hearing the songs of silence, why shouldn't one utilize that technique to hear the song of spirit radiating from every interaction. When we do this we manifest a psychic invitation to the other to participate, and, if they feel this invitation to be sincere, they become more open. This is what any therapeutic session aught to aim towards; allowing the other to become openly aware. When this is done access is granted to all the answers; direct intuition. Maybe a more effective label for this work would be 'facilitator.'

Re: Healing the World and Psychotherapy

Hi Steven:  Wise words my friend!  I'm thinking: listening to what is, and in a context of deep evolution, also, listening for what's next…listening for what's next seems to me like a kind of “depth solution-focused orientation”…

Re: Healing the World and Psychotherapy

YES!! Depth is important. In The Perennial Philosophy Aldous Huxley holds strong on development towards maximum Depth (internal, self-knowledge based experiences) and Breadth (external, social based experiences). One step towards achieving this is to remain totally recalled i.e. totally aware of our past, how it relates to the present, and the resultant ripples to be expected in the future.

Re: Healing the World and Psychotherapy

On whether psychotherapy is obsolete or not, I'd say that psychotherapy, i.e. helping others integrate their experiences, is not necessarily obsolete, but psychotherapeutic techniques may become, if not obsolete, less logistical. The world is changing and if therapist wish to keep helping they must change as well. That is why discussions like this are so important.

Re: Healing the World and Psychotherapy

Yes Steven,

I agree with you,

This made me think of a question: how will therapy and psychotherapy look in 2020?

How do we all picture the settings, the methods of psychotherapy in a near future.


Love to you all,

Patrick