My Favourite Counselling Theory – What’s special and what appeals to me? Honestly, do I know the answer? I do not pretend to know; firstly, because of the limited knowledge that I have about them. Freud for instance has written over 32 books and articles (or more); or Jung has written around over hundreds of articles and books. Even if one intents to read them all considering the limits of language one wonders whether one can ever grasp the depth of the mind of the writer. Secondly, the little that I managed to get hold of perplexes me; I feel more ignorant. A novice sitting at the shores of the ocean of psychological science (read as therapies) sees a hue through the psychoanalytic, another through humanistic and still another through cognitive prisms. Every one of them seems to be true and beautiful. Yet nothing by itself seems to be telling a complete story. These at most seem to be pieces of a large and intricate jigsaw.
Something deep tells me there must be still something more needed to further towards a resolution. C.G. Jung for instance speaks in his auto-biography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections that he living in the end of the nineteenth century is conscious of the having his root somewhere in the middle ages (1983), and later he came up with his theory of collective unconscious. The biologists and the evolutionists would explain it away through genetic carriers. But then, is that all to it? What about the thousands of years of people’s unbroken tradition of rebirth, karma and so on (Jung do indeed was aware of such theories and one may wonder whether Jung went implied more than he wrote)? Are we merely connected; and realising that connectedness do we find meaning to our current existence? Can we pass on our religious beliefs as unscientific and not empirically verifiable? Or are we to find that hidden secret crevice where through one can subsume to that reality of our past and the future? Aren’t our anguish, trauma and anxiety – the so called psychic pathologies of the present an invitation to move further toward that truth which leads to the ultimate resolution of all pathologies and life’s dilemmas leading to fully realising, realised (in the immediate present) lives? When I read the Carl Rogerian constructs, I am even more puzzled at our incapacity to relate at the depth. We seem look at persons and relate with them in the bits and pieces of the views of the theories and constructs presented to us.
The Gestaltian preoccupation with relational and flexural nature of the “now” reality (from Lewin’s of Field theory) considers only what is happening to the person in the here and now to resolve the present ‘figure’, and it may bring equilibrium to the person and so it may seem apparently appealing, but it winks at the depth and complexity of human life in its entirety including the past, present and future. It perhaps does not lead persons to fuller and deeper life and resolutions. The Existentialist psychologists among whom F.S. Pearls claims to be one (1969) initially intended to take persons to meaning. However, unlike their founding philosophers, they limit itself to choices that persons should make in freedom to resolve the issues of human existence.
The person centred therapy’s assertion of the basic goodness of humans, and that a person develops to be “fully functioning” persons with the qualities of openness to experience, living in the here and now, “organismic trusting”, freedom, and creativity (Rogers, 1990) if given the ideal conditions such as unconditional positive regard and “organismic valuing”, instils hope and is redeeming. But who can give such ideal conditions? Where on earth can we find such conditions? Even if a therapist provides such ideal condition, the moment that one gets out of that island of the therapy room, s/he enters into the vast ocean of everything opposite. When we think further of the construct of in-congruency we immediately led to think of client’s in-congruency as transferred on to the counsellor and vice versa; humanities incongruence is passed on to one another and to our progenies. thus, going by the assumptions of the person centred therapy, the whole of humanity travails under the weight of its own making. The whole humanity longs for a therapy; this is what religions call redemption, mukthi, or by any other term. Consequently, we look for a saviour. Thus shouldn’t the religion (read as God) be considered the substratum of all human sciences?
This is in no way to negate therapies or that they are out of bound and has no role in helping people to find release and wellness rather they, I feel, as I said in the opening paragraph, are tail, trunk, ears or stomach of the elephant.
Nevertheless, I need to answer the question: which therapy do I like? And why? I am fascinated by all of them. All of them, because in each we see the pieces of the jigsaw and wonder at the mystery of human psyche. I look for something that would assimilate and is open to that which would be coming in the future. One such theory, according to my limited understanding is Jungian therapy.
Jung is perhaps the first to argue that psychotherapy should separate itself from psychiatry and lay man should learn the psychology and practice psychotherapies (1983). That is to say one should not limit oneself to psychopathologies. He contended that there is logic in pathologies and the inner world of the so called sick persons makes sense to the diligent. Thus Jung called for a relationship to the person and relate with him in more or less equal terms in therapy. He like the existentialists advocated for an approach where one does not straight jacket persons and their conditions. He, as we find in his autobiography, attended to and addressed the interior, exterior, and “spiritual” (including collective inheritance) aspects of the person. Only when one addresses the issues holistically the person sees his own richness and move towards more integrate and creative lives. A thought more on the “spiritual aspects”:
Jung was living at a time when spirituality, better, religion was considered as taboo by his peers. His mentor Freud considered religion as producing pathological mind. Adler was disinterested in the spiritual aspects. Jung though was convinced of God, spirituality etc. he dared not to speak about them. However, religion dominated a good part of his personal life. He towards at the end of his life when interviewer asked him, “Do you believe in God?” he said, “It’s difficult to say. I do not believe. But I know.” When you know you do not require a faith; God was an immediate experience for him. He elaborated further that as a natural consequence of the former, God intervention as a redeemer is also known to him. God intervenes in the person’s life in an inexplicable way. In his practice Jung says he had seen such interventions. Albeit he had made attempts to find causal relationships with psychiatry and psychology without adequate results. Perhaps the inability to grasp this inexplicable phenomenon led the modern psychology’s attempts to integrate spirituality as therapeutic method to shy away from speaking of God. Or at the most they spoke of a “god image” to keep god experience within empirical bound (see Villanova University annual conference (2008) Fred Luskin, "The Psychology of Forgiveness"). Nevertheless, God-experience remains as an enigma and as well as a treasured experience of large number of persons.
Another element of Jungian therapy that is fascinating is his grappling with the occult. He seemed to have the experiences of the souls of the dead. In fact he wrote about saying that his experiences with the dead are real and seem to be playing a role on the psyche of human beings. I trace that passage from his autobiography, “The “newness” in the individual psyche is an endlessly varied recombination of age old components. ... Our ancestral components are only partly at home with our present psyche.” Consequently, those who are with us no more seem to have a grand influence on our present psyche.
That leads to another belief that more than eighty per cent of the humans treasure: life after death. That it is beyond empirical experimentation, the concept of life after death is shrouded myths, imageries and faint insinuations. Though unverifiable, life after death seems to be a real experience motivates people to live, sane, and meaningful lives in the midst of constraining or even tragic experiences. A Conviction about life after death may open up new and deeper therapeutic avenues. In this venture Jung, though stands alone, shows the way.
Still more fascinating is Jungian understanding of collective unconscious. As I said earlier, this is not merely sediment of the centuries of the flow of human history in human unconsciousness, but it has existentialistic consequences. For instance, I wonder why some people caught up in a cycle of the tragedies of life are not able to break free to bloom for instance the “dalits” even after decades of economic and socio-political progressive efforts? Looking from the Jungian collective-unconscious perspective, perhaps we can say that the centuries of oppression are finding its influence and recreating the past oppressed and depressing minds. The mind has to grapple with these realities and integrate to sprout new and more liberating consciousness.
To cut things short, there is no field of human experience that did not attract Jung whether be it dreams, god-experience, para-psychological phenomena, religious symbols, art, architecture (in fact, we have Jung at around the age of 75 builds a villa for himself and considers that as an unfolding of his psyche – a self realisation) or any other. Jung realised human life is a mystery and every phenomenon has a place in understanding a person. His problems are not merely product of a private psyche but the psyche of the entire society of the past and present. This opens up new and creative ways of approaching counselling. Perhaps that insinuates my secret attraction for Jungian therapy.
Jose Pulickal
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