From Archeology to Exercise

Digging Around In the Dirt

The version of therapy imagined by Freud was an archeological model. He is credited in many social histories with "discovering" the unconscious, and his rise occurred during a time in history when discovery was still the reigning paradigm. The discovery of the New World. The discovery of the arrangement of the stars. The discovery of pennicillin, chromosomes and sea animals beyond 20,000 leagues. Anyone who reads Freud's autobiography can see his mission, more than learn how to help people, was to write himself into the history books. To make a transformational discovery was paramount. Freud's entire approach had to do with discovery. He had his patients lie back, open their mouths, and free-associate. Let everything come out so I can make some discoveries. This was therapeutic in some ways, but not for the reasons Freud supposed. Cure or not, Freud sat back and took notes, hoping to discover things. Freud developed theories such as the Oedipus complex which were posited as discoveries. One has to wonder what discoveries Freud would have made if he grew up in China, with mythologies quite distinct from the Greek tale of the boy who grew up to marry his mother and murder his father.

The Medical Model

This relentless focus on discovery corresponds to psychotherapy's original insecurity about being a true discipline. Needing to prove it was as valid as other medical practices, it had to continue to appeal to the culture of the doctor. There needed to be an expert. There needed to be copious precautions. There needed to be a tumor to be excised.

The Capacity for Play

The contemporary approach to psychotherapy, echoed throughout Relational, Experiential, and even some Cognitive schools of thought is that therapy is about the opportunity to be somebody new, not discover an old forgotten self. Ken Wilbur talks about the fallacy of Romanticism and its quest to go backwards toward a more true self. In actually, we do not want or need to be two again, or five again, or fifteen again. We may have left-over parts from different ages longing for attention, perhaps release, or perhaps acceptance, and we discover them in our attempts to play together, therapist and client. Kinks, hurt places, stiffness becomes evident. Sometimes a sore spot demands to speak. But not in the spirit of recovering dissociated memories, though this may happen. It is more in the spirit of giving every undernourished or overburdened self-part its own chance to run and jump about.

Old Thoughts on New Year's Resolutions

As we are watching our New Year's Resolution wash away like Dionysian castles in the sand, I thought I'd share this lovely rant from Henry Miller:

...One doesn't get to be an artist overnight. First, you have to be crushed, to have your conflicting points of view annihilated. You have to be wiped out as a human being in order to be born again an individual. You have to be carbonized and mineralized in order to work upwards from the least common denominator of the self. You have to get beyond pity in order to feel from the very roots of your being. One can't make a new heaven and earth with "facts." There are no "facts" -- there is only THE FACT that man, every man everywhere in the world, is on his way to ordination. Some men take the long route and some take the short route. Every man is working out his own destiny in his own way and nobody can be of help except by being kind, generous and patient...

- Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn

The Carrot Approach to Life, or the Stick Approach

If you need to get your donkey to move, you can wack it with a stick or you can lead it with a carrot. But leading it with a carrot creates a much more harmonious relationship. Many, many clients I work with talk about wanting to make an improvement in their lives. And their default method of motivating themselves is to use the stick. How can you recognize that you're using the stick? Here are some of the ways we brutalize ourselves:

Call your self lazy, stupid, weak, pathetic or something other contempuous, shaming epithet.

Flash negative images of what you perceive will happen to you if you don't change your habits: a life of lonliness, people talking badly about you, having to move back in with your parents, having nothing to report at the next high school reunion.

Depriving oneself of pleasure - no vacation for you, bring work home on weekends, don't have that fling.

All of these approaches involve a split between our feeling self and our commanding self. It's as if we become disenfranchised soldiers taking orders from a frightened, equally disenfranchised lieutenant. Our practice of becoming human means cradling that solider in our arms and listening to him, asking what he needs, and holding him accountable, yet with firmness and faith rather that brutality and shame.

The Fallacy of Positivism

Which came first — the optimistic philosophy or the abundant conditions that inspire hope? Were you raised in the hot desert sun with a punitive god? Or did you grow up with plenty, believing you had earned your blessings? 

 

Keep Your Goals To Yourself

Dear readers: I've got big plans! It's going to be great! Just wait til you see what I'm up to! It's not going to be easy though. There's a lot of hard work between here and the finish line. In fact, the more I think about what it will take to get there, the more I feel like just telling you where I'm headed and going back to my humdrum like. But I'm going to resist! I'm going to do what Derek Sivers says and keep my goals to myself.