Healing Intelligence

The Spirit in Psychotherapy - Working with Darkness and Light

Alan Mulhern

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429914454
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Natural healing intelligence is one of the great mysteries of the psyche. It is inherently elusive yet lies at the core of all efforts to cure emotional wounds. Psychotherapy and counselling, when done in depth, pass beyond interpretation to work directly with this powerful force. This book is intended to help those who suffer such emotional wounds by illuminating the path of healing as well as to provide deep insight and effective methods for the practitioner.

Chapter One

Psychotherapy with a spiritual dimension

Psychotherapy is a broad discipline. Even within individual schools, such as the Freudian and Jungian, there are various branches holding different views of its process. For many psychotherapists the word healing enters little into their vocabulary or training. However, some do advocate a spiritual dimension to their work, such as Existentialist and Humanist psychotherapists, others have a deep interest in it, such as Jungian schools, while others make explicit a transcendent and spiritual component to the psyche—the schools of Psychosynthesis and Transpersonal Psychology, for example. Other psychotherapists, although not trained in this area, find spiritual matters arising, yet may have few tools to continue work in this manner. This chapter gives a general overview of the process of psychotherapy incorporating a spiritual dimension. The approach outlined here is inspired by the work of Jung and is close to that envisaged by Assagioli. It also incorporates a meditative-type technique, akin to experiential focusing, which leans towards transpersonal theory and practice. Four stages of this process are outlined, with the spiritual dimension being particularly located in parts three and four. These stages are:

1. Containment and comprehension
2. Analysis of character
3. Alignment with the deep psyche
4. Integration and emergence of a different centre to the personality

Frequently, the activation of spiritual components does not occur until stage three. It is best preceded by a thorough character analysis. Bearing in mind these stages are not strictly sequential but are a broad indication of the path of an intensive psychotherapy, they are now examined briefly so as to provide a psychotherapeutic context for the emergence of spiritual work.

Containment and comprehension

Emotional suffering is the overwhelming reason for approaching psychotherapy. This can be expressed in the outer world in terms of relationship and work problems or it might be experienced mainly internally as in depression or anxiety. The variety of problems is, clearly, very large. This first stage of psychotherapy involves close attention to clients’ symptoms, at first the presenting ones. It implies an admission that clients cannot go on as they are and that they require help. There is, hopefully, a growing, positive relationship between therapist and client: the working alliance. Containment of clients by the therapist is a very primary experience by which they feel held, appreciated, and understood at an emotional level. It resembles the holding and handling period of early mothering. Clients may also benefit from a process of reflection by the therapist in the following two ways: first, by seeing their problems are understood; second, by feeling their essence, true value, or real nature is in some sense being recognised, valued, and reflected back to them. Not everyone comes to therapy looking for an analysis of character. Some come to clarify a situation and wish to use the therapy to explore possibilities before acting. Such legitimate use of the therapeutic space does not necessarily require the extensive tools of depth psychotherapy. The very act of providing comprehension and containment may be enough for many clients to gain perspective on their problems and they may not need to pass to the later stages outlined below. After a limited number of sessions they should have a fair understanding of their suffering and whence it arose.

Analysis of character

In addition to efforts of understanding the presenting crisis, psychotherapy attempts to comprehend the presenting symptom in the context of the character of the client. It looks to early history and family dynamics to discover how character has been formed. It begins, therefore, to analyse the client. It has a number of tools at its disposal, including models of how human character is formed, how defence systems operate, a classification of pathology, and many more.

The client first accesses parts of the personal unconscious, typically emotions held just below the surface of consciousness, presenting themselves as complexes. This stage may be extended beyond a preliminary understanding so that a clearer understanding of the psyche, its suffering, vulnerabilities, defences, and strengths, is identified, especially within the context of the family dynamic and the client’s personal history. A wider range of understanding and interpretation becomes possible. This development of self-understanding is very beneficial, especially in characters where ego strength is reasonably strong and there is no fundamental damage to the psyche. In these cases, change is easier, behaviour can be altered, relationships changed, and entrenched patterns questioned. This stage is often characterised by a reductive analysis in which the behaviour and symptoms of the clients are explained in terms of a model of psychological development and early family dynamics.

The alignment with the deep psyche

In many cases, psychotherapy does not pass beyond the above analytic stage. Much understanding may have been gained and this may be sufficient for many, who may now not only formulate strategies of how to tackle their problems but also be clearer how their character structure has contributed to their suffering. However, others may not have shifted out of the patterns of difficulty and suffering with which they came. Many reasons exist for this. Some have intense wounds that will not heal simply as a result of greater understanding: trauma at a young age, for instance, is extremely resistant to healing; the psyche becomes shaped at its very formation in response to this wound, which is not something added to an otherwise healthy psyche, but rather becomes an integral part of it. Another reason might be that ego consciousness is controlling the therapy, conducting it intellectually, continually attempting to understand the causes of the problem. In these cases the dominance of the ego needs to be questioned and replaced with a closer relationship to the unconscious. Repressive mechanisms and resistance can be strong.

The deep psyche links to the emotional foundation, the archetypal and spiritual functioning of a human being. (Where it touches the numinous, the transcendent, it may be thought of as soul). At these levels, love, sexuality, and spirit are all operative. This third stage, unlike previous ones, cannot be learnt by normal methods. It requires an art, best developed by allowing the energies of the unconscious to emerge and subsequently cooperating with them.

The psychotherapist’s task, at this stage, is to help the client orientate the ego to this deeper psyche. Within Jungian psychotherapy many methods are used in order to access it, the most well known being dream work. Other methods, such as transference work, challenge the ego’s defences: for instance, through the emergence of frustration or despair directed towards the therapist who may contain the build-up of such emotions and then help the client understand this as a projection of a childhood complex. The dominance of the ego needs to be questioned. Jung even spoke of using, in extreme cases, hypnogogic methods to achieve this (CW, Vol. 8, para. 83), by which he means light trance states which bypass the ego and lie between the state of wakefulness and sleep, examples of which will be given throughout this book. As deeper complexes are brought into consciousness and modified, the psyche becomes less burdened by them and there is a closer relationship to the unconscious.

The method of all depth psychotherapy dealing with the unconscious is to work with deeper emotions, complexes, and traumas and seek their expression in consciousness. What distinguishes the Jungian point of view (indeed most psychotherapy of a spiritual orientation) is the overarching hypothesis of a directing centre (or centres) outside of the ego, in the deep psyche.

As opposed to stage two (which Jung called analytic or reductive), stage three he describes as synthetic or constructive since it brings together different parts of the psyche and looks to the future. Assagioli describes this stage as realisation of the true centre. Here, both therapist and client are no longer principally trying to understand or analyse but are engaging with the deeper psyche, listening to and learning from its way of communicating through symbols, dramatic scenes, tales, images, and puns. Such a method uses metaphor rather than logic; it circles around a problem until its meaning naturally reveals itself; it does not primarily use thinking and sensation functions but rather intuition and feeling; it works better with multiple meanings and ambivalences. At this stage, the client begins to express the deeper psyche more forcibly, to appreciate its archetypal and transformative elements, to have new visions of life and to connect to it more deeply. Consciousness is now more closely linked to the deeper psyche. Here transformation begins and healing energy is contacted.

Integration and the emergence of a different centre to the personality

The descent into the unconscious can transform the personality to an extent, depending not only on how rich has been the experience but also on how the deeper material has been integrated. For this to happen a process of character development must occur, otherwise the process remains ungrounded and any gains will be temporary. Integration and the emergence of a different centre to the personality go hand in hand. The reforming personality may then shift from its original position to a new one which is some way between the Self and the ego. The Self is understood here as an inner directing centre within the deep psyche.

It is difficult to be dogmatic about the concept of Self, about whether it is a singular central archetype or the totality of the psyche. In this book it is used in the former sense as the inner director, the organizing principle, the archetype of order as Fordham (1957) called it. The expression deep psyche, used frequently in these pages, is a parallel term to the unconscious, in which the Self is acknowledged as the archetype of order, but in addition to which there are multiple centres of healing intelligence, like chakras in the psyche.

In summary, with respect to the above stages: all four are experienced in a complete psychotherapy. The first lays the foundation, establishing the conditions for trust and the working alliance; the second stage of analysis brings knowledge of character including its emotional and unconscious determinants; the third stage of alignment to the deep psyche shifts the centre of personality towards the deeper psyche and the Self; the fourth, integration, the creative uniting of the deep psyche and consciousness is crucial, enabling the previous stages to be converted to gains.

This whole journey has been called the individuation process and constitutes the spiritual journey championed by Jungian analysts. Such work of expanding consciousness, from its initial, limited and defended position to this more developed one, is often experienced in spiritual terms since work in the unconscious has archetypal components that bestow the energy of transformation and healing. The realms of spirit and deep psyche have been interlinked throughout Jungian thought. Stein comments that this process

is able more completely to represent a person’s wholeness in all its heights and depths, from the instinctual to the spiritual—body, soul and spirit … a person is freed to be himself fully, freely and genuinely. The whole individual changes … this irrational process of individuation is a deeply spiritual one since the contents that emerge from the unconscious are typically numinous.

(Stein, 2005, pp. 11–12)

The idea that psychotherapy consists of different stages is intuitively obvious to any practitioner. The stages of the process outlined by the school of Psychosynthesis (Assagioli, 1965, p. 21) are similar to those outlined in this book. They are first, analysis of character, second, control of its elements, third, realisation of the true centre, fourth, psychosynthesis, the formation or reconstruction of the personality around a new centre. Assagioli also puts stress on the higher self as essential to the transformative process.

Besides the analytic/synthetic distinction given by Jung (a two-part structure of the psychotherapy journey), on another occasion he outlined four stages of the process: Confession, Elucidation, Education, and Transformation (CW, Vol. 5, para. 122). He described the first two stages in some detail. Confession refers to the revealing of the patient’s secrets and suffering, with particular emphasis on the shadow, while Elucidation refers to the stage of analysis with its emphasis on reductive understanding of emotional suffering in the “family drama”. Education refers to the lessons learnt from the earlier stages being applied to social and external situations, while Transformation refers to the concomitant change in the personality, the object of the journey. Besides this generic and early vision (1929), Jung, at other times, gave a more specific outline of the stages of psychotherapy or the individuation process—a fundamental reordering of the personality around a new centre. This begins with an examination of the personal unconscious, proceeds to examine the persona, the shadow, the anima/animus, and leads to the integration of the Self.

The four stages outlined in this chapter are close then to those envisioned by Assagioli and Jung with respect to the psychotherapy process but there are some modifications. First, here the stage of integration is highly emphasised. It often does not get the same coverage as the more dramatic accounts of the descent and the encounter with the unconscious but without it there is no sustained transformation. Both Jung and Assagioli appreciated, of course, that such integration is a process of character reform. Since this “moral” dimension is of such importance to both psychotherapy and spiritual development later chapters will examine more thoroughly what integration, as a practical process, actually means. Second, I place less emphasis on specific archetypal components, such as anima and animus, although the central principle of contact with an archetypal layer of the deep psyche is maintained since this is where healing intelligence originates. Other central Jungian concepts such as the shadow and the Self have been retained and held as being of the highest importance.

Such an individuation journey has been criticised as highly individualistic, perhaps cutting the client off from the world of social relations, cocooning him in an individual philosophy based on purely personal development. However, psychotherapists who work with a spiritual dimension are well aware that the stages of life, with their social and intimate relations, are of the utmost importance. What can be appropriate for a fifty-year-old may be most unsuitable for a young adult. Teenagers generally need to realize themselves in their peer group and establish their identity—an isolationist philosophy is rarely of use to them. A thirty-year-old may have marriage as his next rite of passage; his path of development may require relationship, courtship and reproduction. The next stage may be parenthood, responsibility, and so on. Individuation, broadly conceived, requires individuals to pass through their stages of development in order to fulfil themselves. Proper therapy will help them face their rites of passage and progress to the next stage of development and many of these stages are in a socially related context. Neither is it accurate to say all individuals pass through the same stages. Some will have unique destinies quite unlike those of the general population. For these, too, a thorough analysis is most useful since this uniqueness is valued, developed, and integrated by such a process.

The above model—stages one to four of the psychotherapy journey—is a generic one. There are many exceptions to this notion of a developmental goal or individuation process and many useful things can be accomplished by psychotherapy without completing its later stages as outlined here. Understanding can be advanced, consciousness raised, and relationships improved without resort to the numinous or archetypal aspects of healing. Improved ego functioning, greater intellectual understanding of one’s problems, encouragement of greater control or moderation—all have their place in attempts to improve human character. All this might be said to belong to the earlier stages. In brief, the complete individuation journey is an ideal to which there are many exceptions. It is not the sole purpose of coming to therapy.

At the other end of the spectrum some practitioners, perhaps in a spiritual group with a psychotherapeutic orientation, may concentrate on stage three, the alignment to the deep psyche, while giving little importance to stages one and two. They may believe in the power of spirit, a higher self, or God with such conviction that the mundane task of analysing character can seem at best a waste of time or at worst an indulgence in victim psychology. Not for them is the painstaking work at the base of the mountain of individuation, struggling with complexes, character formation, and interpersonal difficulties. They focus on the rarefied heights of the summit—transformation and archetypal experience. Rather than flounder at the base of this mountain, or risk hubris (like Icarus’ flight in the heavens), the more productive perspective, I believe, is to embrace both ends of this spectrum, engaging in the solid task of character analysis while searching for transformational, spiritual energy as well as promoting integration. So what is distinctive about such psychotherapy?

First, psychotherapy with a spiritual dimension will, when appropriate, pass to the later stages of alignment to the deep psyche and integration. Understanding is not enough, transformation is the goal, healing is its path.

Second, since it is more purposive and less reductive than a more traditional psychotherapy this work with a spiritual dimension v...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter One: Psychotherapy with a spiritual dimension
• Chapter Two: Alignment of consciousness to the deep psyche
• Chapter Three: Therapist and client in the deep psyche
• Chapter Four: Integration of consciousness with deep psyche
• Chapter Five: Reflections on healing intelligence
• Chapter Six: Integration with the spirit
• Chapter Seven: Questions and reflections
• Appendix
• Glossary
• References
• Index