Self-Discovery the Jungian Way (RLE: Jung)

The Watchword Technique

Michael Daniels

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317644743
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Jungian Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Clearly and entertainingly written, this book presents an exciting new technique of self-analysis. Based on the psychological theories of C.G. Jung, the 'Watchword' technique will enable you to identify your psychological type and to explore the structure and dynamics of your personality. As you learn to recognize the various forces and tendencies within the psyche, you will acquire greater understanding of your inner self and your personal relationships.

This practical method of self-exploration guides you systematically along the difficult path towards the ultimate goal of self-realization or individuation. It uses a structured form of word association which you assess and interpret yourself, following simple guidelines that require no numerical scoring.

Easy to understand and fun to use, the book makes an intriguing and useful introductory guide to Jungian analytical psychology. It will appeal to a wide range of readers, including professional psychologists and students of psychology, counsellors and psychotherapists, as well as anyone interested in self-exploration and personal growth.

1 Towards self-knowledge

‘Know thyself’, Socrates urges us, for ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’. Throughout history and across the cultural divide, self-knowledge has been recognized as a major – perhaps the major – mark of the truly mature, enlightened person and, simultaneously, as a royal road to ultimate fulfilment.

CURIOSITY AND ENTERTAINMENT

Most people, if asked, would readily accept the importance of self-understanding. Furthermore, if the current fashion for the kind of ‘test-yourself’ questionnaires found in popular magazines and across the Internet is anything to go by, it would seem that many of us have an almost insatiable curiosity to discover unknown ‘facts’ about ourselves – our latent talents, secret longings, sexual attractiveness, basic values, emotional needs, intellectual capacity, and so on. Much of this interest, I am sure, is motivated by a simple desire to be amused and flattered rather than by any genuine attempt to discover the ‘truth’ about our personalities or situations. Yet somewhere, at the back of our minds perhaps, there may be the vague, unvoiced hope that we might learn something of value.

Of course, the ‘tests’ that appear in the popular media have been designed primarily for their entertainment value and for their supposed ability to increase sales and readership, not for their psychological validity. They are not intended to be taken too seriously by the reader, or to make any lasting contribution to human knowledge. They are cultural ephemera to be enjoyed in an idle moment, shared and discussed over a coffee break, and disposed of and forgotten by the next morning. For this reason, they have rarely been constructed in any rigorous manner and it is unusual for their results to have been assessed for accuracy. Put simply, you cannot be sure that what the test indicates about you is in any way true (although test results, like newspaper horoscopes, are often so general that they may apply to almost anyone).

PSYCHOLOGICAL MEASUREMENT

In contrast to the kind of questionnaires mentioned above (which are usually devised by journalists or bloggers) the psychological profession has, over the years, developed a whole barrage of ‘standardized’ tests and assessment procedures for measuring everything from academic aptitude to zenophobia, adjustment to zestfulness. These tests have generally been constructed and evaluated according to accepted ‘scientific’ principles and as such they may be expected to produce data which describe faithfully the characteristics being assessed.

Unfortunately, the sheer number and bewildering variety of available psychological tests makes it impossible in practice for laypersons to make any sensible decisions about what ought to be measured in their particular cases. Even the average psychologist often finds difficulty in selecting tests for specific purposes and may need to consult colleagues with greater knowledge and experience. More importantly, most psychological tests are complex or highly technical and usually require specialist training in administration, scoring and interpretation if they are to be used with any degree of confidence. For this reason, and because test results can be abused by the unscrupulous or inexperienced, the use of many psychological procedures is restricted to properly qualified individuals who agree to be bound by professional codes of conduct.

Many psychologists now offer assessment facilities on a commercial basis to both individuals and organizations. You may also have come across various agencies that will draw up personal profiles of skills, aptitudes, personality traits, needs or values. Generally this is done for the purpose of vocational guidance, personnel selection or management training, and, in these terms, bona fide psychologists and agencies can provide a valuable service.

THE LIMITATIONS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTS

Although it will often be found interesting and helpful to obtain such a psychological profile, there are also very real personal dangers in this kind of objective description of the self. Most importantly, we may come to believe that our personality is fixed and unalterable; that we will always be intelligent, popular or anxious, for example, because we ‘possess’ these particular qualities. Secondly, such characterization leads us subtly into thinking of ourselves as just a collection of unrelated psychological components. This belief inevitably takes away from us the sense of unity and wholeness that is the cornerstone of our experience of being persons. Psychological tests may point out the trees, but what about the wood? Where am ‘I’ in all this complex description of ‘attributes’?

More than this, psychological tests don’t explain anything; they cannot indicate meaning, context, or personal significance. It may or may not be interesting to learn that I have a high anxiety level. But why am I anxious? What led to these feelings? What does my anxiety mean to me? What does it signify in the context of my present situation? What can or should I do about it? These are questions that remain unanswered from test results for they are indeed unanswerable in this manner.

If I may be permitted an analogy that is, perhaps, not as trite as it may at first appear, the psychological measurement of a person is rather like describing a book by listing its subject matter and literary qualities. Thus the book is an historical novel set in the Victorian era, written in English, intelligently constructed, fascinating, insightful, factually accurate – overall a good read. Such a description is, of course, useful up to a point. It may, for example, help us to decide whether or not to buy it as a present for a friend. But it is no substitute for reading the book. It gives us no idea of the book’s story, meaning, or ultimate significance. In the final analysis, it is simply irrelevant.

The plain fact is that psychological tests have been designed by psychologists for psychologists (and for their paymasters) and that the purpose of the vast majority of these tests is to categorize and label other people so that their objective characteristics may be studied ‘scientifically’ and so that individuals may be assigned appropriate social roles or placed in their ‘rightful’ societal position. Even where tests are used diagnostically, for example in clinical or educational settings, their purpose is generally to justify and direct some kind of professional therapeutic intervention. In these cases it is more important that the psychologist can interpret and act on the results than that the client may gain insight into his or her own behaviour. With very few exceptions, psychological tests have not been developed as aids to self-understanding and their suitability for this purpose is therefore severely limited.

To continue the analogy used above, psychological tests describe people as a bookseller or librarian might describe a book. As such these descriptions are very useful for those in the business of buying, selling or cataloguing. But booksellers and librarians rarely read the volumes on their shelves and they certainly don’t need to understand them in order to do their job properly. Psychologists with test batteries are not so very different.

THE NEED FOR UNDERSTANDING

Very few of us would claim that we could understand another person, whether a friend or a character in a novel for that matter, by being shown their psychological ‘profile’ – and we should not be hoodwinked into believing that self-understanding may be acquired in this way. Like characters in novels, real people can be truly understood only by appreciating the story of their lives. This is why we prefer to read the full narrative of a novel or biography or, failing that, an accurate synopsis. We would feel totally cheated and frustrated if the book or synopsis merely contained a set of test scores for each of the story’s principal players. To know people is to know what has happened to them, what they are experiencing and doing now, and what they anticipate for the future. More than this, we need to understand how past, present and future are linked in a coherent and believable narrative unity. To do this we must interpret their lives. We must make sense of their actions and words. We must create a meaning that might eventually place everything into perspective.

The process of coming to know ourselves is, I believe, essentially the same. We must discover or, more accurately, continually re-create the story of our own lives – the pattern and meaning that can make sense of our individual journey. Such a story not only maps out past progress and enables us to take current bearings, but it may also indicate the way forward. In this manner our personal narrative provides a sense of direction, with positive guidance for the future, as well as offering an interpretation of past and present events.

LEARNING TO OBSERVE THE SELF

To begin our process of self-discovery we need to do two things. Firstly, we must learn to pay attention to our own situation, experience, thoughts, feelings and actions. Secondly, we must look for underlying patterns, structures and meanings. Although we may attempt these activities unaided, history teaches us that people have always sought external assistance of one kind or another. This has typically taken the form of learning special techniques of attentional training or self-examination (e.g., meditation, the keeping of diaries, free association, dream recall) usually combined with a particular system of psychological or psychospiritual interpretation (e.g., the Hebrew Cabala, Buddhist Abidharma, Freudian or Jungian analysis). Often such training takes place under the personal guidance of a teacher, guru, mentor, counsellor or therapist.

The reasons for this reliance on external aid are complex. Most crucially, it seems that people need to be taught how to observe themselves effectively. In any other branch of knowledge it is axiomatic that students must first learn basic observation skills. Fledgling geologists must be taught how to observe rock and soil, painters and photographers how to view a scene, physicians how to examine their patients, counsellors and therapists how to listen to their clients. We all know and take for granted the difference that a trained eye or ear can make in these areas.

When it comes to self-observation, however, most of us rather arrogantly and naively assume that we are naturally qualified. Perhaps this is because we feel we have some kind of immediate and direct access to the contents of our own minds – access that is denied to others and therefore something they cannot help us with. Yet a moment’s thought will reveal the fallacy of this view. In the first place we must all have surely experienced occasions when another person has shown greater insight into our personality or situation than we were immediately capable of. Secondly, of course, most of the time we don’t observe ourselves at all – and certainly not in any rigorous or systematic fashion. We go through life largely on auto-pilot, only partially conscious and rarely in any sense truly self-conscious. We say, do and think things blithely, spontaneously, with little forethought and less reflection. We are, as Gurdjieff (1974) put it, to all intents ‘asleep’; shaken briefly into wakefulness only on rare occasions of shock or personal trauma.

SCHOOLS AND SYSTEMS

Whenever we wake up sufficiently to take the process of self-observation seriously, we will immediately encounter further difficulties. One problem is that of knowing exactly what to observe. Clearly we cannot attend to everything that we experience and do and, like our trainee geologists and painters, we must learn to notice what is important and to ignore irrelevant details.

In practice, what we are taught to observe depends critically upon the particular school or system of self-understanding that we follow. For example, Buddhists will be taught to pay attention, via their meditation practice, to bodily sensations and to the spontaneous flow of disconnected thoughts as they arise and disappear in consciousness. Gestalt therapists train their clients to recognize their emotions and to focus upon ‘here and now’ events. Freudian psychoanalysts encourage patients to ‘free associate’ (saying everything that comes into the mind without censoring thoughts in any way) and to talk freely about past experiences. Jungian analysts often emphasize the remembering and interpretation of dreams. Transactional analysis involves a system for examining patterns of communication between people. Rational-emotive therapy forces individuals to recognize and question the irrational beliefs that they hold about themselves and others. Whichever system is followed, a common denominator of all these ‘insight’ therapies is that people are taught to pay attention to some aspect of their being that they had previously been unable, unwilling, or simply too lazy to observe. The major differences between the various techniques are primarily a consequence of each method adopting its own theoretical perspective or interpretive system.

I do not wish to get involved in arguments about which procedure, perspective or system is ‘best’. All have their advocates and devotees, and all can produce strings of clients who will swear to the success of the approach in their own particular cases. For what it is worth, the available objective evidence, based on comparisons of various forms of psychotherapy, indicates that all methods are reasonably effective and that no one method is consistently better than any other (see, for example, Duncan et al., 2010; Rachman and Wilson, 1980; Smith et al., 1980). What appears much more important than technical approach is the nature of the relationship between therapist and client. There is also some indication that the effectiveness of an approach depends partly upon the nature of the problems a person has and also upon individual temperament or character. What this evidence clearly suggests, however, is that some form of self-examination is certainly better than none.

SELF-DECEPTION AND THE ROLE OF THE OTHER

No matter which technique of self-observation is adopted, a problem that is always faced is that of bias or self-deception. Most of us like to think well of ourselves and it is all too easy to allow our personal vanity and need for esteem to distort the evidence of our senses. In this way we all show a tendency to ‘cook the books’ so that we are revealed, for example, to be warm, good, popular, consistent or untroubled (some people, however, have such a low opinion of themselves that they may unrealistically emphasize their bad qualities).

One of the main arguments in favour of employing a teacher or therapist is that it is often much harder to fool someone else than it is to deceive ourselves. Because of this, such people may, if they are doing their job properly, act as a faithful mirror to the self, helping to reveal us to ourselves in our true light and colours. This is important because experience shows that the process of self-study, when working effectively, generally throws up much highly unpleasant material about the self. For the simple fact is that we are almost certainly not as good, consistent or untroubled as we may care to think and once we start digging into the self we can unearth some messy stuff indeed. Most people’s response to this, rather than working with and learning from the experience, is either to turn a blind eye or to become overwhelmed by feelings of guilt, shame or personal failure. Here a teacher or therapist can help enormously by encouraging us to keep things in proper perspective and by opening up ways of making sense of it all.

A related reason for working with another is the ability of an independent mind to confront and challenge the self, providing a much-needed stimulus to personal growth. In the absence of this kind of challenge it is easy to avoid paying attention to personal problems that ideally should be worked upon. Also we allow ourselves to continue through life unchanged, with our old, habitual, often stereotyped and unhelpful attitudes intact.

PARTIAL METHODS

Many people have no desire to follow a prolonged course of intense personal discipline or individual therapy. Or they may simply not have the time, opportunity or resources to further their interest. Such people usually rely on other external aids to self-understanding such as books, workshops or short courses in order to provide basic ideas and practical material which they may then utilize in their own time as they see fit.

The last few decades have seen a burgeoning of interest in this approach to self-discovery. This is witnessed, for example, by the huge growth in the number of books published each year on various techniques of self-development such as meditation, dream analysis, auto-hypnosis, positive thinking, the I Ching, and creative visualization. Then again there are innumerable courses and workshops being offered in every major city on such things as assertiveness training, co-counselling, encounter, dance therapy, psychodrama, or Reichian massage. Endless variety here for all interests, tastes and pockets.

Provided these methods are approached with a degree of care, discrimination, objectivity and, not least, humour, there is much of value that can be learned. In the absence of these qualities, it must also be said that there are definite associated hazards. In addition to the problem of self-deception, there is the more immediate danger of rushing headlong into activities that may serve no useful purpose in our particular case. It is sad to relate that many people, failing to realize any clear overall strategy for self-development, become addicted to these techniques, either sticking rigidly and dogmatically to a chosen favourite or jumping wildly from one to another in a seemingly desperate search for new experience or new ‘truths’ about the self. But the very nature of most of these activities is that they provide partial answers to circumscribed problems. They are not panaceas for every ill, nor are they intended to become crutches upon which people become dependent. Above all, they are not religions or ideologies. They should be approached cautiously and intelligently, used only when appropriate, and abandoned as soon as they have outlived their purpose.

The major limitation of these partial techniques is that they fail to provide any overall picture of the self and its narrative history. Because of this they cannot serve to guide our lives in any meaningful fashion. They may provide helpful short-term relief and practical assistance in specific situations, but even then only when we have decided that this is what our life’s story requires of us at this moment in time. But how do we make these decisions? How do we discover our self’s story? What ‘method’ can help us in our quest for meaning and personal significance?

One answer to these questions is undoubtedly the process of working with another, as exemplified in genuine spiritual traditions by the dialogue between teacher and student, and in counselling or psychotherapy by that between therapist and client. But what can the individual seeker do? Is there nothing that those who prefer to go it alone can use to aid their atte...