Intuition in Psychotherapy

From Research to Practice

Marilyn Stickle, Margaret Arnd-Caddigan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780429788246
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Cognitive Psychology & Cognition
• Index: Psychology

Intuition in Psychotherapy provides an unprecedented look at the phenomenon of clinical intuition, outlining its role in psychotherapy and providing a framework to develop intuitive skills that will positively impact practice.

Based on qualitative research and extensive first-hand interviews, the text illuminates how an awareness of intuitive processes can benefit therapists' diagnostic and treatment outcomes. Chapters provide a context for the use of intuition within current thinking in psychotherapy and highlight different forms of intuition that can be purposefully incorporated into clinical practice. Suitable for trainee and practicing psychotherapists, the text explores common intuitive processes and offers guidance for how practitioners might develop a unique therapeutic style.

As understanding of intuition becomes mainstream in psychotherapy practice, Intuition in Psychotherapy will serve as a key point of reference for years to come.

1

Current Knowledge and Perspectives

What we currently understand about intuition spans multiple disciplines with very different perspectives on the subject. These differing viewpoints share some common features as well as distinctions regarding how intuition is defined, how it operates, and the legitimacy of intuitively derived information.

The perspectives of business research, cognitive psychologists, psychoanalysts, nonanalytic psychotherapy theory, feminist scholarship, research centered on how intuition is used in psychotherapy and counseling, transpersonal psychology, the psi research, and finally a synthesis of the diverse threads of scholarship on intuition all contribute to a complex understanding of the phenomenon. This corpus with distinct differences in understanding highlights the need for additional research in general and a clear need for greater insight into the nature of intuition in the clinical context.

Business Research and Cognitive Psychology

Arguably, the interest among academic researchers in intuition may have been spurred by the recognition that very successful businessmen declared that they were using intuition to make important decisions. Ray and Myers (1989) recognized that “By the eighties, many business people acknowledged that intuition is an obvious cornerstone of business” (p. 247). He noted,

Fairly solid evidence indicates that those who rely on intuition in their decision-making make more profitable decisions than do others… . eighty percent of those company leaders who had doubled their companies’ profits in a five-year period had above-average precognitive powers (intuition).

(p. 249)

At that point, researchers in the fields of business (management and entrepreneurship) and cognitive psychology turned their attention to studying what, exactly, intuition is, under what circumstances intuition is likely to be more or less reliable, and how one might enhance their intuitive capacities. Their work is collapsed here because of the degree to which they referenced each other’s theories and findings.

Like all researchers, they brought their worldview to their work. Thus, without reflecting on this fact, most of the studies generated by these two disciplines begin with the assumption that intuition is a cognitive process that is the result of the operations of an isolated mind: that is, it happens within the mind-brain of the intuiter. This is a starkly different starting point than others who have studied the phenomenon, as will be explained in successive sections. Both business researchers and cognitive psychologists tend to understand intuition to be a cognitive capacity.

System 1 thinking and reasoning [intuition] is hypothesized as evolutionarily the more ancient of the two systems … its core processes are rapid, parallel, and automatic, permitting judgment in the absence of conscious reasoning… . System 2 deliberative problem solving is more recent, its core processes are slower, serial, and effortful, permitting conscious abstract reasoning and hypothetical thinking.

(Gore & Sadler-Smith, 2011, p. 304)

It must be noted that the notion that intuitive and deliberative judgment represent the results of two separate processes or systems has been challenged. Kruglanski and Gigerenzer (2011) are among a growing number of researchers who have hypothesized a unimodal model, in which “intuitive and deliberative judgments need not be based on different rules: The very same rules can underlie both” (p. 98).

Both models—the dual system or process model and the unimodal—posit that intuition is an individual phenomenon. For example, Kruglanski and Gigerenzer (2011) explicitly hypothesize that intuitive judgments, like deliberative ones, are accurate based on individual differences in processing capacity.

As a reflection of the assumption that intuition is a cognitive process within a single mind, the research protocols these researchers have employed focus on a person in an impersonal situation. For example, many of the studies focus on probabilistic inferences, such as requiring the research participants to quickly determine whether or not a city is the state capital (Glockner, 2008). Such judgments may have limited relevance to a clinical context. In the clinical context, there are two subjects. This may lead one to consider the possibility that intuition that involves two or more people may be different in important ways from intuition regarding impersonal objects or problems.

Another difficulty in potentially applying this research to the clinical context is the definition these researchers have used in their work. There is broad agreement that intuition is a response that is triggered with no apparent conscious effort (Hogarth, 2001). The term “response” becomes very important to this definition. In the cognitive psychology research, intuition is narrowly defined as the process of decision making that culminates in action (Betsch, 2008; Hogarth, 2010; Lieberman, 2000). It is differentiated from actions that are reflexes or instinctual (Hogarth, 2010). This definition excludes the experience of sudden insight or the acquisition of knowledge or information without a subsequent action. As will become clear, this contradicts the experiences of the therapists in this study.

While the cognitive research posits that intuition is a cognitive process, they agree that intuition has both physical and emotional components, although they disagree on the value of the emotional aspects of the phenomenon. For example, Deutsch and Strack (2008) have suggested that physical stimuli (such as a facial expression) automatically trigger a feeling state in the observers. These feelings are usually categorical, such as pleasant or unpleasant/approach or avoidance. The feelings may culminate in a bodily reaction, like a “gut feeling” (Damasio, 1999, cited in Gore & Sadler-Smith, 2011).

Departing momentarily from the cognitive research, Hans Welling (2005) has identified several feeling states that are regularly associated with the experience of intuition. The first feeling state he identified was a “feeling of confusion, alertness, or being disturbed or troubled” (p. 25). Another experience may be a pregestaltic experience, expressed in the negative in statements such as “there is something missing … something is wrong” (p. 26), or it may be expressed in the positive as “a sense of solution, [or] things are falling into place” (p. 26). One may find oneself with the feeling that something is somehow important “without knowing how they are related to one’s feelings” (p. 26). One feeling that occurs with great regularity is the sense of certitude or feeling that the knowledge gained by the intuitive process is absolutely accurate (Petitmengin-Peugeot, 1999). There may also be a feeling of coherence or that the meaning of something is fully revealed (Charles, 2004; Petitmengin-Peugeot, 1999).

While the cognitive psychologists broadly agree that intuition is the nonconscious processing of information that includes an affective component, there are two very different views on the value of affect, as well as different explanations for how the intuitive process unfolds. One model is represented in the popular literature on intuition. This is the heuristic model, championed by Kahneman (2011). A heuristic is a simplifying shortcut to solve a problem and relies on trial and error. The heuristic model of intuition suggests that past knowledge and experience form cognitive patterns that are then applied to a current situation that shares some important features with those past experiences. The proponents of this model believe that the process is a highly biased operation, as it is the result of ease of retrieval (Kahneman). This, in turn, is an emotion-based process (Kahneman). This bias, according to Kahneman, renders intuition highly unreliable in most circumstances.

The learning theory models suggest a different process and outcome for intuition. These models share the understanding that intuition is the product of implicit learning (see, for example, Plessner, Betsch, & Betsch, 2008, for several such models). Rather than holding that emotions sully the decision-making process, the learning theory models suggest that “[I]mmediate feelings can reflect the sum of experiences made with an attitude object” (Betsch, 2008, p. 13). That is, emotions allow one to bypass slower cognitive processes. These researchers tend to credit intuition as more reliable than the heuristic model suggests.

Both the cognitive psychologists and business researchers have studied successful individuals who use intuition in business as well as other professions. Based on the business and cognitive psychology research, Agor (1989) developed a set of guidelines for developing intuition for successful decision making. He suggested that in order to develop intuition, you must first and foremost value the capacity, and develop the intention to use and trust it. This requires time. Agor suggested that you devote time to intuition and create a special space for developing it, tuning in to it on a daily basis. He indicated that you should engage in relaxation exercises to release physical and emotional tension on a daily basis. He likewise recommended a regular meditation practice to quiet the mind. With a quiet mind, Agor suggested you should adopt a stance of openness and receptivity, and enhance your sensitivity to internal and external stimuli. The research he reviewed indicated that honesty is a prerequisite for well-developed intuition. This means that you must develop the ability to observe and release forms of self-deception, develop the courage to face yourself, and ultimately trust yourself. He also recommended participating in nonverbal creative practices, such as art and music. The ability to see and accept things as they are is an important component to intuitive decision making, so blinkering what you want or fear is an important component in developing intuition. Agor also suggested love, acceptance, and nonattachment are important qualities to cultivate. He recommended keeping a journal to note when intuition is accurate and under what circumstance it proves to be inaccurate. Finally, he noted that finding a supportive group of people who accept and encourage the use of intuition will help you on the path to becoming more intuitive.

As will become clear over the course of this book, these suggestions are largely supported by the intuitive psychotherapists whom we interviewed.

The business and cognitive psychology models of intuition are centered on understanding intuition as a process within an individual mind. These processes must culminate in a decision to act in order for these researchers to label the experience intuition. This decision-making process is either tainted by or enhanced by emotional valuations within the operation, depending on which model one adopts. The result of differentially valuing the role of emotions leads to the theorists placing different assessments on the reliability of intuition.

Psychoanalysis: Intuition, Telepathy, and Unconscious Communication

Within psychoanalysis, there are three terms used that relate to the present study of participants’ understanding and experience of intuition. These terms are intuition, telepathy, and unconscious communication.

Within the history of psychoanalytic thought, attitudes regarding intuition have evolved over time. Freud was outspoken in his aversion to intuition in relation to his scientific discovery. He affirmed this position in The Question of a Weltanschauung (1933/1989), wherein he stated that psychoanalysis is a science and therefore distinct from lower forms of religious thought. As a part of the weltanschauung of science, Freud stressed that psychoanalysis was based on empirical research, not knowledge “derived from revelation, intuition or divination” (p. 784). Even prior to this statement, Freud related intuition to occultism and other forms of extrasensory perception, which he roundly devalued (Reiner, 2004). For example, in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920/1989), he rejected the role of intuition in the clinical process.

While Freud overtly rejected intuition as an analytic tool, there is some evidence that he either did not see telepathy as a form of intuition, or else he changed his mind regarding the phenomenon. Radin (2006) has suggested that Freud had a personal experience that may have ushered in a change of heart. Ernest Jones (1957), a student of Freud, presented a compelling case that such a shift indeed occurred. For example, in 1921, Freud wrote in a letter to the psychic researcher Hereward Carrington, “If I had my life to live over again, I should devote myself to psychical research rather than psychoanalysis” (Jones, 1957, p. 392). In 1932, Freud stated in his New Introductory Lectures that “telepathy might be the kernel of truth that had become surrounded by fantastic occult beliefs” (Jones, 1975, p. 405). Freud may have moved from understanding telepathy as occultism to a legitimate phenomenon that could be explained scientifically once the occult trappings were excised.

Since Freud, the term “intuition” has met with mixed reaction among analysts. Piha (2005) has summarized some of the positions analysts have published on the topic of intuition. Rather than listing these in chronological order, he placed them on a continuum from disparaging to accepting. While Freud eschewed intuition in some of his work, Piha suggested that “he also implied in On Beginning Treatment (1913) that analysts should rely heavily on intuition” (p. 26).

Since Freud, more negative valuations of intuition tend to cluster around the notion that it is the product of narcissistic countertransference, and highly unreliable (Piha, 2005). Piha considered Kohut (1971) to be exemplary of this position. Equally pejorative, he noted that Tahka (1993) warned that the analyst’s intuition is a countertransferential reaction that is born of the “insufficient capacity to tolerate puzzlement and delay” (p. 27).

More sympathetic to the concept, Moore and Fine (1990), based on the work of Arlow (1979), defined intuition as a preconscious synthesis of observations collected over time. In spite of this less demeaning understanding, they nonetheless warned that intuition is ultimately an inferior means of processing information (Piha, 2005).

According to Piha (2005), Arlow (1979) was an early proponent of the position that intuition is the result of metacommunication. That is, it is based on gesture, posture, rate of spee...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Current Knowledge and Perspectives
• 2 Therapists’ Understanding of Their Intuition
• 3 How Therapists Use Intuition in Therapy
• 4 Focus of Therapists’ Attention
• 5 Forms of Clinical Intuition
• 6 Experiences and Practices Associated With Clinical Intuition
• 7 Characteristics and Values of Intuitive Therapists
• 8 Concerns Regarding Clinical Intuition
• 9 Teaching Clients to Trust Their Intuition
• 10 Overarching Themes in Clinical Intuition
• Conclusion
• Appendix A: Research Methodology
• Appendix B: Participant Questionnaire
• Appendix C: Chapter Tables of Research Findings
• Appendix D: Additional Resources
• Index