PRESENCE OF MIND

by Stanley

In the 60s, carried along with the spirit of the times, I was very taken by Zen. Eastern Ways of Liberation were all the thing – Aldous Huxley, the Beatles, Alan Watts and Timothy Leary: “Turn on, Tune in and Drop out.” I loved the outrageous anti- intellectualism of the old Zen Masters who ask the monks questions like: “Does a dog have a Buddha nature? If you say it has I’ll give you thirty blows; if you say it hasn’t I’ll give you thirty blows.” For me, at the time, was all such a relief from Aristotle. As far as I could see, Zen was the only religion (can you call it that?) that perfectly understood how words and systems are not the things themselves. They had no holy book and were even disrespectful of their own traditional origins: “What is the Buddha.” Answer, “A lump of dung.” But along with this apparent bravado they had the keenest perception of what it is to have presence of mind.

Something I learned all those years ago from Zen and the Art of the Motor Cycle Maintenance – a wonderful little book: when a machine goes wrong you can rush in to try and fix it; or you can spend time just looking before you do anything. The first way usually generates more trouble; with the second way you almost don’t have to do anything – after a moment the fault just stares you in the face. Fixing it is now a piece of cake. You could call it the art of pausing.

You could almost claim that simple presence of mind fixes the machine. And when you think about it, pausing like this can fix a lot of other things too. Isn’t what we do in therapy and meditation just giving ourselves an extended pause? Isn’t that too what Darwin did on the Galapagos Islands: “Hey, Wait a minute. How come these finches have different shape beaks on different islands?” But first he had to notice it. Before he even asked this, what turned out to be a world shaking question, was noticing that it was so.

That’s the big trick isn’t it – noticing that it is so !

But it takes time. You have to give things time to show themselves; and time for them to cut through all one’s ready made assumptions of how things are. And don’t say how they are too quickly.

And don’t say you don’t know how they are too quickly either.

VITAL CONNECTIONS

by Stanley

With careless overuse some modes of expression become tired and worn out. I once knew a man who said of every emotional experience: ‘It pisses me off!’ So much was the phrase used to describe everything that it had become meaningless. The cliché no longer revived the freshness of a feeling. It was, in fact, an escape from feeling.

The purpose of psychological refection is to revivify an experience. Not to relive it – that’s a different thing – but to tune into all the subtleties of it that are waiting in the wings. And the way we use language has a lot to do with this process of connection.

Have you ever noticed that the closer you get to the precision of a feeling the harder it is to name it? When I say ‘precision of a feeling’ I mean the sharpness and freshness of it. It’s much like the sensation a colour. A colour is precisely what it is; when I try to accurately name it, I fumble around saying things like: ‘it’s a sort of a bluey-greeny-greyish.’ Then, realising the hopelessness of such a description, I look around the room searching for a colour that will match – usually unsuccessfully. What this means is that the precision of the colour is like nothing else – no word-symbol is accurate enough and no other colour is quite the same.

When you really tune into a feeling it’s the same kind of thing. ‘How do I feel about Aunt Amelia?’ No word symbol is accurate enough to say it exactly and no other feeling is the same; and the closer you tune into how I feel about her, the harder it gets to name it. To give up and say ‘I really don’t know how to describe it’ is honestly true; and moreover, it honours the uniqueness of your perception.

How is it then, in focusing, after fumbling around, a person will suddenly hit on the most ordinary word imaginable and light up as though they have really hit it? Let’s say I have been scratching around, trying to describe how I feel about Aunt Amelia who is coming to stay. ‘Apprehensive? Well, yes, I suppose so’. ‘Scared she’ll dominate me? No, I’m not scared of her any more’. ‘Will I be able to cope with her? I suppose so’. Pause…….. ‘Fact is … she SUFFOCATES me – the whole thing SUFFOCATES me.’ That word seems to absolutely clinch it. I can feel the energy release as I say it. I take a deep breath.

How can this happen? Here we have been talking about how the precision of a feeling is basically indescribable. And now this very ordinary word somehow says it exactly right. No long, meandering description, no elaborate poetic metaphors. How come a commonplace cliché like ‘she suffocates me’ is precisely right?

My theory is that we don’t actually choose words that fit like that; what happens is a deep ‘knowing’ suddenly infuses an ordinary word with its own energy. A word gets close enough to the bodily feeling for a spark to leap across the gap like a flash of lightening, changing a cliché into an experience. How I really experience my Aunt comes alive and the word is its bearer. The word now sounds utterly right. This ordinary word gets a jolt and is electrified into a life that it normally doesn’t have. It isn’t ordinary word any longer. The reality of the experience has burst through. The words and the energy fused together into a single meaning. The words don’t describe the feeling, the word has ignited and has become the feeling – the words have been enlivened by an authentic force; words and felt-sense become a single meaning releasing my blockage and bringing me to a full awareness.

‘She SUFFOCATES me’ now gives me the full physical experience I’m referring to. Now I remember it clearly. Now I absolutely know what I’m talking about. It releases me.

*

From the therapist’s point of view it is vitally important to understand the mechanism I have described above. You won’t interfere with the working of it if you understand it. The moment when the energy of the felt-sense makes contact with the word is of paramount importance. Such a word or phrase can be reflected back to the client exactly, giving it the weight of significance it deserves, seriously acknowledge the moment. It is a moment of self-discovery. In our example, I really didn’t know that my Aunt suffocated me until then. Now I know what happens to me; I can even feel my breathing constricting – and now releasing.

Not every therapeutic encounter follows this blueprint as precisely as my example. Often it does, but more often it is woven into the fabric of the session. But if you understand the underlying mechanism you will see the way the vivid power of an experience, when it happens, coalesces with a certain precise way of putting it - no matter how simple the expression. What matters is that it connects. This moment is very valuable and easily invalidated. Don’t modify it. Let it stand and it will act like a launching pad for further exploration and carry the person to another important step.

NATURAL OPPORTUNISM

by Stanley

There are some things in life of which we like to say: ‘It was meant to be.’ This idea comes from ancient philosophical and religious thought avowing that there is some kind of guiding hand that pulls events the way they are suppose go. ‘It was meant to be’ can be a celebration when thing turn out well; or a resigned acceptance when things go wrong. But we only use the expression to indicate some higher or transcendent intention. We never say, ‘This cup of tea was meant to be’. We say simply ‘I made a cup of tea’. ‘Meant to be’ indicates an influence outside human intention. We call it ‘God’, Fate, Necessity, The Spirit or The Unconscious’. But whatever this agency is, it supposedly has things worked out in advance. It many ways, it relieves us of burdensome responsibilities; we hand things over to a higher power, as they say.

In contrast to this idea, consider that life’s events can be opportune, that we are, like the rest of life, simply opportunists; if there is a niche somewhere, we exploit it. New circumstances give us new possibilities – some work, some don’t. Whenever we sense an opening for enhancement we instinctively move to exploit the opportunity. The word ‘niche’ comes from the Latin which means ‘to make a nest’. In biology it has come to mean that wherever there is an ecological gap, a species will evolve to exploit it, to ‘make a nest’ for itself.

Someone once said that the dust mites in a bed mattress must feel like children let loose in a chocolate factory – only they feed on flakes of human skin. Each person sheds about half a kilo of skin flakes annually – more than enough for a thriving colony of dust mites in any decent mattress. Mites are opportunists, filling every imaginable niche in the world. There are over 50,000 species exploiting an array of habitats too numerous to mention.

Opportunism is a characteristic of life everywhere. I don’t suppose God or any Higher Power had a hand in fashioning dust mites to exploit the comforts of the conjugal bed; so it is hardly possible to say in any meaningful sense that dust mites were meant to be.

The word ‘opportunism’ has come to mean amoral self-seeking; but it means much more to us than it does to dust mites; and being opportunists doesn’t mean that we are fundamentally selfish. A nest is made for more than one. We don’t only want a prosperous niche in life for ourselves, but for our children and those we love. We want them to be able to seize what life has to offer; and not just material prosperity, but all the possibilities of human wellbeing. For us humans a worthwhile niche is simply a good life.

Opportunities happen when there is a space for them to happen. For us humans it’s not an ‘ecological gap’ we seek, but more like ‘psychological gap’ – a psychological space where new things can happen. For many people opportunities don’t happen because their psychological space is already too crowded. A new species of ideas cannot evolve because the psychological space is already teeming with pre-existing necessities that preclude any creativity. There is so much mental overcrowding there is no air to breathe.

What has this got to do with therapy and counselling? Everything!! Actually ‘counselling’ is a terrible word. Good counselling is where one does no ‘counselling’ at all. Good therapy is where you do that unimaginably rare thing – just giving a person space.

Giving someome space means that you never imply a necessity: something that has to be done, something that must be dealt with, a program that should be followed, a conclusion they should reach, a way they should behave, a gaol they should strive for, a way they should think, a problem they must face, an attitude they should take. This only multiplies the over-crowding.

Given space, a person will invariably make the right move – but not a predictable one. Someone is tired and apathetic. Give them the right space and they start crying. That is exactly the right move, exactly what needs to happen. Someone strongly feels the necessity to make difficult relationship work. No advice; just give them the right kind of space and suddenly they get that it’s impossible. That’s exactly the right move. Now there is a way forward, making room for what comes next. Someone is energetically trying to work out a problem. Give them space and they suddenly realise they are dog-tired. To realise that you are dog-tired is to seize an opportunity that was right there in a hidden space. You sit with someone who doesn’t talk and neither do you. Finally, they tell you they can’t talk. But they’ve just told you.

THE BIG NOW.

by Stanley

We are told it is best to live in the now. But seldom are we so gripped by the moment as when the earthquake first struck, seized by the immediate violence, the house brutally shaking as though by some ferocious predator. In this moment you are totally in the present, awestruck by the experience. There is nothing else. Overwhelmed by the BIG NOW .

What you perhaps don’t realise is that all the BIG NOWS you’ve ever had collapse on you at that moment. All at once. All those ‘nows’ fused into one overwhelming experience, merged into the same spasm of fear. They are all same, felt as an overpowering NOW – all experienced instantly.

When there is a great calamity you tend to experience all your overwhelmings at once. They all collapse on you at the same time. Trouble is you can’t get past the conviction that it’s all about the very latest now. In one overpowering moment there is no space between these incidents on the time-track. Time conflates. It is totally THIS experience that is scaring me, it’s this bloody earthquake that is happening NOW that’s frightening. And surely it is – but it also wakes up all the times in your life when there were emergencies and impacts that were life threatnening.

Even after the earthquake it’s particularly hard to see past it. Why do bad moments conflate like this? Why do they condense into one single experience, the last ‘now’? Why does the time-track collapse into one single terrifying moment? The whole mechanism suddenly dawned on me when I saw someone’s reaction to the quake, (and since I have seen many similar). An overwhelming panic reaction seems to be followed by a need to be hugged and held like a child, with the haunting fear of being alone. For days they can be in this childlike state with the persistent feelings of fear and aloneness – the slightest after-tremor triggering the same intense moment of panic. Focusing carefully on this reveals that these feelings are exactly the same as in certain incidents experienced earlier in life, particularly in childhood. A focusing session on the instant of the quake opens up and differentiates all these sequences stretching back in a lifetime and dissipates the continuing restimulation. I have found there is a special way to do this kind of focusing session.

Bad impacts conflate because they all have one thing in common: you are overwhelmed by the now; and this is the reason why each, as it happens, is the only one. Each one is NOW. This last one isn’t a different experience: emotionally it’s the same, the same experience of being overwhelmed and rendered powerless. I cannot emphasis enough that these moments of extreme emergency in one’s life are not differentiated – the impact is felt as THE SAME. This is not to devaluate the awfulness of the earthquake and the devastation it has caused for many, it is merely to look into the psychological effects.

Believe me, there have been times before when you were afraid you were going to die, most likely as a child. As a child, with all the promise of life, you were in fact very close to the death. Before you were conceived you were nothing; now suddenly launched into a foreign space where the air hurts and the light blinds. Frightened and powerless – desperate for the right kind of care. With so fragile a grip on life, it doesn’t take much to scare you to death; and the imprint of such moments become prototypes of all the terrifying fears down the line, right up to the present, whether it’s a car accident, fear in a bumpy aircraft ride, a divorce – or, an earthquake.

MEME SOUP

Take a whole Jung (make sure its fresh), a handful of finely chopped archetypes, a squeeze of Darwin and you have the makings of a lovely Meme Soup.

In Jungian psychology, the collective unconscious is thought of as having an existence beyond the personal; likewise, in archetypal psychology, the archetypal imagination is seen as transpersonal, inhabiting a sort of realm of its own. We are quite used to these ideas, but give them a squeeze of Darwin and we can see it all in the light of evolution.

From The Oxford Dictionary of English (2nd edition revised); meme noun: biology – an element of a culture or system of behaviour passed from one individual to another by imitation or other non-genetic means.

Biologist Richard Dawkins invented the word ‘memes’ to describe how ideas are similar to genetic information in the way they replicate, spread and evolve. ‘Cultural transmission is analogous to genetic transmission’, he said. Both are copying and evolving processes. ‘Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches’.[i] Just as genes propagate themselves, so too do ideas, jumping from mind to mind creating all kinds of myths, vogues and movements that seems to take hold of the collective imagination.

Sounds reasonable enough. But here’s the pièce de résistance: memes are literally alive; they are ‘self-replicating’ and behave exactly like living organisms or viruses And the ‘primal soup’ in which they breed are human brains/minds. Seeing it this way can make all the difference. Over time we can see how these collective ideas are subject to natural selection to create not only short live crazes and fads that quickly go extinct, but also building great cultural institutions that survive. And, very importantly, we can understand how some memes are pathogenic viruses – I mean, they make us ill. If you are host to some of the most malicious, they can kill you. Things like teenage binge drinking, suicide bombing and fundamental religion are not just fads, they are lethal meme infections.

We can completely imagine this from the biological perspective. We can regard culture as a step in organic evolution and see how cultural ideas are meme life-forms with the ability to replicate and spread – just as all living organisms do. In this way, cultural ideas are organisms that breed using humans as their hosts. This is not so different as the notion that we are ‘run’ by archetypes, except that now we can imagine them as part of biological evolution rather than inhabiting an eternal and separate realm. The reason for taking such a unifying step is that ideas and culture bear all the hallmarks of evolutionary growth through natural selection.

It’s difficult to imagine a new pop song as an independent life form with its own replicating mechanism, just like a computer virus. It’s hard to imagine because it is a viewpoint that is foreign to us. Ideas are supposed to be only ‘mental’ – whatever that means. We create ideas and we think of ourselves as responsible for spreading them around; all that happens is we simply communicate mental ideas to each other – that’s the standard view.

And it’s right up to a point – but take one more step and imagine that ideas have a life of their own with all the characteristics of living organisms. Just like bacteria or viruses, they are ‘information packages’ and they replicate by infecting other hosts; and, like computer viruses their ‘purpose’ is to breed by infecting other computers. Once created, an idea has the capacity to spread like wildfire and, under favourable conditions, it does. No single person is responsible for the way it does this. A panic on the stock market spreads in a few moments across the whole world. Whether or not there is any foundation in the panic-idea that starts it is beside the point – it’s whether people believe it. Many memes have defence code in them that says should be believed and are trustworthy.

Once installed, the virus is ‘executable’ and can take command of various functions of a computer. We might say that it is not really ‘alive’, but it behaves as though it is. And you know the old saying: if a thing looks like a rose, smells like a rose, and feels like a rose – it probably is a rose !

The human body is host to trillions of bacteria, fungi and other microbic life-forms. There is ten times number of these organisms than our own cells in the body. From our point of view we have different kinds of symbiotic relationships with microbes – some are friends and some are foes. With friends we both benefit. We would not survive without them. This relationship, mutualism, is a two way deal: the microbes derive their nutriment from us and in return they help us with digestion, stimulate the immune system and use up space that would otherwise be colonised by pathogens. But then, there is also parasitism where the bacteria benefit while the host is harmed. It is a fascinating thought that the one place in the body where no organisms are allowed is in the human brain. This has to remain sterile; but it is the place that memes colonise.

N.K. Humphrey’s said memes should be regarded as living structures, not just metaphorically but technically. When you plant a fertile meme in my mind you literally parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme's propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell.

We are most concerned with memes that resemble parasites – that is, ideas that, once a person is infected, as a host, they are driven to infect other people also. This they will do even though the meme harms the host – as, for example, with the meme instructing a suicide bomber to blow himself up. We must understand that that the compulsion to infect others is not the fault of the host, rather it is in the programming of the meme. In a religious meme it might be the instruction to ‘save’ others or do God’s work.

The analogy of the executable computer virus is quite apt. Religious memes can also be fail-safe; that is, they incorporate code which makes them impervious to any counter measures. For example, all three Abrahamic religions have code that says that the code itself was dictated by God – and God is by definition infallible. This circular bit of programming cannot be invalidated – both terms lead to and confirm each other. The Code is right because it was dictated by God; and God is right because it says so in the code. And all three of these religious memes carry the instruction for hosts to proselytise – that is, replicate the meme across the cultures and down the generations.

Ideas have the power to spread from person to person and to make copies of themselves as they go. Ideas replicate and spread. Ideas that are commonly shared is what distinguishes one culture from another. When successful they aggregating in clusters (or bodies) that we call social institutions that can survive for centuries, like the Catholic Church for example.

Some would say that religions memes can be mutualistic, that is, they can benefit both the meme and the host. This could be so, but is obviously not the case where the meme causes the destruction of the host. Not only is this true of suicide bombers, but is also where the meme requires an action that runs counter to natural human wellbeing. An extreme example of which would be female genital mutilation.

From the meme’s point of view it is irrelevant whether the meme kills the host so long as it can replicate before doing so. So long as a meme is copied and passed on before it kills the host its survival-line is assured. There are many examples of this in the animal kingdom; the bacteria of tuberculosis are a simple example. We always have to remember that in natural selection no one is ‘guiding’ anything.

There are other pathological memes that run counter to human wellbeing. Political doctrines like communism and fascism put the state above the welfare of the individual. In his last hours Hitler said, ‘Individuals die - that is nothing, the state goes on’. The survival of that cluster of ideas called ‘the state’ is what must survive. The people who propagate such memes are irrelevant in themselves. A meme like this has its own compulsive program – a human being is merely a host who incubates it and passes it on. Remember, these are actually ideas that people have in their minds – they believe them, act on them and pass them on. These are what we are calling parasitic memes. They are harmful to their hosts.

Not all memes are bad, of course. We are looking at the whole evolving ecosystem of culture. Just as most of the bacteria we host are harmless or beneficial; so most of the memes that give rise to human culture are likewise helpful to us or neutral.

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[i] Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene'. Oxford University Press, 1989 edition:

GETTING A HANDLE

by Stanley

A useful device in focusing is called ‘getting a handle’. It helps get a grip on a problem that’s a bit slippery. You may have noticed that when you try to think about a personal problem, the mind tends to skid all over the place, lurching between impossible ideas that don’t work – round and round, all of them dead ends; or you just avoid by sliding off into distractions. It’s like skidding about on ice. ‘Getting a handle’ is not solving the problem; it’s just getting a grip on it. Once you know how to do that, workable solutions happen.

The trick is to get a word, a phrase or an image that seems to crystallise the feel of the problem. It could be a phrase like:

it’s never ending; an emptiness; it’s heavy; I can’t be bothered; like a red pulsing ball in my chest; a deadness; a jagged anxiousness; like a post in the ground; like a nothing feeling; like something going zzzzzzz: or images like, a brick wall or a dark prison.

What you want is not just a rough label for the problem. Any old words won’t do. You want a phrase or word or an image that ‘clicks’; something, that, when you think of it, you say, ‘YES, that’s it’ – THAT’S how it feels. Some people work better with words, some with images. When you get a phrase or an image you should check back to the felt-sense (that’s the feel of the problem) to see whether it resonates.

If it does, that’s the handle for the problem; the start point, the gateway to getting it moving. Getting a handle that resonates is very important. It might take you a while to get it, rejecting words that aren’t quite right. You have to be very picky and choosy.

Let’s say you are thinking and feeling the problem. There is a certain sharpness when you strike on how the problem really feels; and you are looking for a word or phase that hits on just how it feels. It’s an amazingly accurate process. You’ll know exactly when you’ve got the right one. Some words are okay, yes, but not quite right. There’s a gap. They don’t react physically somehow. You have to take your time. You’ll know when you’ve got it. It clicks. Your whole organism reacts to it. Yes, that’s it – THAT’S how it feels: that problem gives me a nervous jumpiness (for example).

Why is hitting it accurately with the right words so important? Because it’s the gateway to the problem, to opening it out. Those exact words (a nervous jumpiness) resonate; they fit the feeling like a key. That’s the gateway. But it’s difficult to locate this gateway when you’re skidding all over. So whenever you loose your way or drift or get confused, you come back to the problem and relocate the gateway by just saying the handle: a nervous jumpiness. It goes straight to your midriff. Say it and you’re right back to the sharp, keen feel of the problem. It’s very distinctive. It bites. It’s very like the way a certain smell can immediately vivify an old memory. If the handle is an image, no matter how otherwise strange or unusual, it seems to encapsulate the feel of the problem.

So once you’ve got the handle, what do you do then? You hold to it. Pause with the keen sense of the problem it yields[1] – perhaps only for a moment. If you drift, remind yourself of the handle (nervous jumpiness). Every time you re-vivify the feel of the problem, something slightly shifts. Remember, you’ve never done this before. Not like this. If it is a difficult, long standing problem, perhaps you’ve never really let yourself experience it before – but always skidded off.

As you keep to it, the problem now starts to unstick and shift. As it unravels, ideas will start to occur that you never thought of before; connections to old memories jump out that seem to say: ‘this is also what it’s about’; or an image or a dream more eloquent than words will appear. If you tend to get too far out with these manifestations, you return to the handle. As the problem changes you may need now only to follow where it leads.

The most fascinating thing about this process is that you don’t have to make any decisions. You don’t have to remember anything. It’s not a lesson. It’s not teaching you what to do. You don’t have to do anything more than I have outlined. But you will find that something will change. You may not even be able to put your finger on it. Your way of thinking hasn’t produced a change – it’s deeper than that. But you will find yourself thinking differently anyway, as though the problem has shifted into a slightly different dimension. And I really do mean you will find yourself thinking and feeling differently. I emphasise FIND because thinking doesn’t cause the shift. The shift happens – then you find yourself thinking differently.

This is one of the most important steps of focusing. It’s easier to do with a focusing partner or counsellor, because they will stay with you while you find the handle for a problem – and they’ll feed you back the handle if you get lost – and they’ll stay with you as your explore. However, with a bit of intention you can do this on your own. I do quite often.

Everything I have said here is only a guide. Everyone has their own style. Use this as a guide to find what works best for you.

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[1] See my paper Pausing to Focus.

EVERYBODY LOVES NELSON MANDELA

by Stanley

Some 40 years ago Martin Buber and Carl Rogers engaged in a public debate that has since become famous. Buber was a philosopher not a therapist; Rogers, of course, was the originator of counselling. Buber’s work ‘I – Thou’ is based upon the idea that dialogue is an experience with another person that goes beyond explicit communication. It is not a complete unity with another person. Rather, it is a mutual and equal respect for the differences between two people. This, Buber called the ‘I-thou’ relationship, as different from the ‘I-It’ relationship where the other person is treated as an object.

In the debate, one disagreement between Rogers and Buber was the question of inequality in the therapeutic relationship. Buber’s point was that therapy can never have the equality of ‘I-thou’ because the role of the therapist and the patient are fundamentally different and unequal.

The argument is that the client comes to the therapist for help and therefore there is a power differential, however much we talk of the importance of ‘relationship’. This is the style of doctor/patient or instructor/student [1]. Buber pointed out that these are quite rightly asymmetrical relationships because the instructor teaches the student and the doctor treats the patient. In such interactions, an I-thou dialogue is neither possible, nor desirable. It’s the same for the counsellor, the client requires help and the clinician professes to be able to give it. Thus, by definition, complete equality cannot exist. Rogers, of course, maintained that there was mutuality in his client-centred work.

Rather than follow Roger’s line of argument, I want to suggest that the relationship in counselling is certainly asymmetrical and unequal, but in precisely the opposite way implied by Buber. There is an inequality and it resides in the fact that it is the client who has the greater power, whilst the therapist is, or should be, in a subservient position.

Incidentally, such asymmetry is necessary in any normal, healthy relationship. It swings backward and forward between two people – sometimes one way, sometimes the other, as needs vary.

In person-centred work it is the client who consistently determines the content and direction of the session. The power to explore oneself and one’s direction is the very essence of person-centred work. This never changes, no matter how long the relationship lasts.

(For convenience only I will refer to the therapist as ‘he’ and the client as ‘she’)

As closely as possible the therapist wants to be where she is coming from; he is, if you like, a mirror; but he is not an empty mirror. His mirroring is tinged, but not coloured, by his own personality. Nevertheless, true empathy is possible because there is a commonality of human emotions.

As time goes on there are subtle changes in the relationship. The need for accurate empathic following is always there, but there begins to be room, even a necessity, for his personality to show. In the beginning this might have interfered with her ability to follow herself. As she gains power this is less the case because she has more inner substance to stay with herself and not be thrown off course; but he is always aware of this critical factor, pulling back when it is even dimly necessary; and never happier when she is fully engaged with herself and communicating how it is.

In our profession it is considered mandatory for counsellors to have regular supervision – these are simply counselling sessions designed to keep the counsellor ‘clear’ in his relationship with clients. It’s astonishing that we don’t have the same requirement to keep ‘clear’ our relationships in life that are always challenging and forever changing. If we did, then some form of client-centred work should be a part of the ongoing business of living – as, for some folk, meditation is.

So when should counselling finish. To answer this we have to stop thinking in terms of therapy and remedial treatment. In a sense, person-centred work has become something more than counselling. It is certainly not the cure of sickness; it is not teaching a specific skill. It is not ultimately the solving of personal problems. You can describe it as ‘growth’; but then we have to ask what this means. Does it mean to be ever more adult and grown up? That’s not quite right, is it? In certain ways, one can become more childlike, more spontaneous and silly. For some people it means becoming less responsible; for others more responsible. You can’t describe it in terms of outcome. One person’s outcome is another person’s poison.

Another favourite way to describe its purpose is to say that it helps one to become all that one could be, to realise one’s potential. Good, but there is a nasty little trap in this idea: it can take your eye off the ball; it entices you to overlook where the action is, to measure what you are by something you are not. You become a possibility – a ‘could be’, a potentiality – and never quite as good as you could be. But the real action is where the ball is now’ (see my paper Pausing to Focus).

Perhaps the best description of the work is that of ‘clearing’, as we have said: clarification of what is going on, with an eye for the barely noticeable, for the overlooked unwanted feeling that one is most familiar with, for the off-beat thought that’s not allowed.

Let me give you an example of this last: a naughty thought. Yesterday was Nelson Mandela’s birthday. I had my usual reaction to his name. I asked myself: Why do I hate Nelson Mandela ? … pause … That’s not very nice. Am I jealous? … No, not quite … I know what it is. It’s because my wife and everyone used to think he was so f**ing wonderful … pause … Yes, that’s it, he reminds me of Jacky Slater. Jacky Slater was the boy down the road who was held up to me as being so wonderful, so good. Not like me. Why wasn’t I more like Jacky Slater? He was clever at school, always clean and well dressed. I hated the little turd. I guess my parents were only trying to improve me.

Does this discovery make me wiser? No.

Surprised? Yes.

And I’m allowed to hate Nelson Mandela if I want to.

That feels better !

[1] I am differentiating ‘instructor’ from ‘teacher’. One goes to an instructor to learn a specific technique; whereas the teacher is an educator. Education has, or should have, a broader function; and as such, the practice of education has much to learn from the client-centred approach, as Rogers was never tied of stressing.

WHAT’S GOING ON ?

by Stanley

Freud wrote a paper called ‘Mourning and Melancholia’. (Melancholia is the old fashioned word for depression). He made the observation that mourning the loss of a loved one and melancholia have almost the same symptoms: a sense of loss and sadness, sleeplessness, lack of meaning and motivation in life. He said the similarity was because both cases were suffering from loss. In mourning the person is suffering the loss of another; in melancholia they are suffering from a loss of ‘self’ – the ego he called it.

To be in mourning you must have had some kind of relationship in the first place, otherwise there would be nothing to mourn; likewise, to suffer a loss of self you must have had a self to begin with. But there are some people who have suffered a loss of self so early in life that they have almost forgotten what it is like to have one. They have gotten over it – although they may suspect something is missing. They have, as they say, adjusted. One noticeable characteristic is they have no idea what is going on. I mean they have difficulty grasping life as an ongoing process. To lose ‘self’ is to be disconnected with the flow of life, the flow of life around you that’s going on all the time. You’re not ‘with it’, as they say.

Nouns are a problem here. They make us think in terms of discrete things. ‘Things’ do not flow well. Ideas of the Self or the Spirit tend to fixate the mind on the grand substances, thus missing the flow of what is going on.

Instead of thinking about The Unconscious or The Self or The Soul let’s think in terms of activities and processes – about what is going on. And what goes on for me is unlike what goes on for you.

This distinctiveness is not about our unique abilities, the things we do – like sport or art, music or love of nature. These are all understood as personal preferences. It’s about our specific ‘take’ on the close-in nuances of human interaction. For that sort of carry-on often the only outlet is ‘gossip’. The subtle interplay between familiars where we huddle in secret enclaves to make known our nitpicking loves and hates and to find out what’s going on between Freddy and Fredericka. It’s in these small matters where we can glimpse people’s reality, what’s going on for people and between people.

A mind that has lost the sense of flow is not good at picking up small disparities – being much more interested in static pictures, ideas and outcomes. It’s why women and gay men are better at recognising faces[1] and why they are better at gossip. No doubt this is also why women are better therapists too. It’s the love of detail and the curiosity about people. Of course, what I have just said is more like a piece of gossip itself, which is quite fitting!

This kind of talk between people is quite important. Gossip may seem superficial and judgemental. But it is very specific, delighting the in details. It’s not about me, it’s about other people; and it’s not about the PR stories, it’s a hunger to know what really goes on – or, just as important, what people think is going on, (never forgetting that this is what’s going on too).

Mature discussion is about more important things. But so far, no one has come to me and said: “Stanley, I need a session, I’m terribly worried about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico”. People’s real concerns, here at least, aren’t about the oil spill, or global warming; people don’t have problems with their religion or their spiritual affinities. When they need help it’s with concerns that are much closer to home where it bites: people don’t wrestle with demons on the highway to enlightenment, but in the family lounge room while the television’s going.

“Half the time I think it shouldn’t matter. I should concentrate on seeing things in their proper perspective. If only I could get a more balanced outlook these trivialities wouldn’t seem so important.”

It is always a pain to me when I see people struggling to be better balanced. I mean, it’s OK to be balanced, whatever that means, but to try to be balanced !! For God’s sake, who’s balanced? Science is balanced, philosophy tries to be – but people are not. When I hear someone who has set that up as an ideal for themselves I worry.

High minded theories about the self are great for one’s sense of spiritual significance, but don’t overlook one’s little grumble about who left the food crumbs on the lounge carpet; or why some people leave all the lights on in the house !

Trivia?

No. Bubbling geothermals !

_____________________________

[1] See Interesting article on this in the Christchurch Press 29 June.

Headline - “Its official: men are worse at faces than women”