Integral Psychotherapy

Inside Out/Outside In

R. Elliott Ingersoll, David M. Zeitler

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9781438433523, 9781438433516
• eBook ISBN: 9781438433530
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Movements in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

In Integral Psychotherapy, self-help meets rigorous scholarship. Integral Psychotherapy is a dynamic framework for understanding the mind and uniting spirituality and psychotherapy. Authors Elliott Ingersoll and David M. Zeitler use Ken Wilber's Integral Model to guide readers through a startling new view of psychotherapy as a spiritual journey of self-discovery. This is the first book that grounds the Integral approach in mainstream research while showing how Integral Psychotherapy treats body, mind, and spirit, and it offers an accurate history of many psychological ideas (some mistaken) prevalent in our society. Integral Psychotherapy debunks the fads and fashions of self-help gurus while mapping terrain readers can use to bring their lives into focus. With humor and compassion the authors show that the life of the mind is complex and complexity is our friend.

1

Introduction

R. ELLIOTT INGERSOLL

A work of art is never finished, only abandoned.

—Paul Valery

Do you ever feel like something is wrong? That's the feeling a lot of people share in psychotherapy sessions. For some it is a subtle unease like the “splinter in your mind” referred to by philosophers and movie characters like Morpheus in The Matrix. For others it is a sense of anxiety or despair that they numb with alcohol, consumerism, or Sex and the City reruns. For still others it is an inexplicable sense of guilt or embarrassment about being alive. As sages have instructed us for millennia, psychological pain does not have to cause suffering but let's face it—without a concerted effort to shift one's psychological state or stage of development—suffering happens.

Psychological pain can birth suffering so great that people turn to medication or hospital treatment. Others try self-medicating with everything from nicotine to heroin. Still others end their lives by their own hand. Of course, nobody comes to psychotherapy because everything feels right with their life. Even therapists can be plagued with a nagging sense that something is wrong. I certainly number myself among those who can't shake the suspicion that, where life is concerned, some mistake has been made. We engage in psychotherapy to explore this sense of something being “wrong.” If there was a mistake made we want to know who made it and how to address it (as well as whether insurance will pay to fix it).

Most suffering arises from what we psychologically identify with and psychotherapy helps us make our identifications objects of awareness. What we identify as “I” can be found at the root of much suffering. Some of us define “I” in a way that makes demands on others (“I'm the boss here”). Others of us identify “I” in a way that is based on a transitory circumstance (“I'm the toughest or most beautiful one in the room”). Still others mistake temporary pain for a sign that they aren't even worth existing (“I suck,” “I'm a fat pig,” “I'm a loser”). From the perspective of psychotherapy (and most spiritual practices), all of these are mistaken identities. They are more like stories that we tell ourselves—stories that may be hurtful or even lies. However you regard them (stories, lies, or both) the stories we tell ourselves evolve and psychotherapy may be thought of as someone sharing their story with a hope of rewriting the ending. If we use psychotherapy to change the stories we tell ourselves it can decrease our suffering.

There are three ways we explore the self in this book that are related to how we identify what is “I.” First there is what you call “I” at any stage of your development (the topic of Chapter 3). This “I” is what is differentiated from the rest of the world; what for all intents and purposes feels like a “real self” at any particular stage (“I am this, not that; I am married, not single”). Second, there is a possibility at every stage that you may disown a part of yourself leaving a false or at least incomplete “I.” This disowned part of self that is related to what we call “shadow” in Chapter 3 is frequently made up of aspects of ourselves that we pretend are either not there or belong to someone else because they are related to our weaknesses (“because I am married I never get attracted to people other than my spouse”). Finally, there is something that is the ground of the awareness that allows any identification of “I” to take place and in Chapter 8 we discuss that as the true self (who is it who is aware of a self that identifies as married?).

Our psychological experiences; real selves, disowned selves, maybe a true self are artistically crafted in the larger context of an ever-evolving “work in progress” called life. If life is a work in progress perhaps mistakes (suffering, false selves) are part of a design or a part of evolution. But whose design; whose evolution? Some clients feel there is an intelligent design to the universe, whereas others will only go as far as an intentional design. Whether or not the design is well intentioned, mean as hell, or indifferent is another issue that may relate to psychological pain.¹ Psychotherapy is one way we explore the universe, our place in it, and increase our awareness about what is really going on. In the best of all situations, psychotherapy can shift your focus from what seems wrong to what is going on and there a richer life begins for those willing to take the journey.

If there is such a thing as spirituality,² where psychotherapy ends and spiritual realization begins is unclear. One idea we explore in Chapter 8 is that if one can and does transcend (and include) their sense of “I” to identify with the awareness that the sense of “I” arises in, is working with that awareness really psychotherapy? One view is that psychotherapy ends and a deepened spiritual practice begins at the point where you are participating fully in the joys and pains of life without being attached to either. Knowing what you want, feeling a purpose in life, becoming the author (rather than recipient) of your rules for life—these can all be results of psychotherapy that may even lead to spiritual growth. This is a book about a new approach to therapy called Integral Psychotherapy. Integral Psychotherapy is an integrative framework for exploring these questions and understanding how to unlock the richness of your life using Ken Wilber's Integral Model.

This book was initially aimed at the layperson but, as the writing progressed, David and I realized that we couldn't write to a layperson without also addressing psychotherapists. Because there is no introductory text on Integral Psychotherapy proper, my hope is this book will fill that need while also being accessible to the interested layperson. As far as nontherapist readers, it is important to note that psychotherapy is ideally done in person with a trained therapist who can meet you face to face. Despite the proliferation of online psychotherapy, there is still much to be said for an embodied presence with the client that we can never capture beyond a physical distance of more than 10 feet. For the 21st-century client, Integral Psychotherapy offers a broader deeper map of change processes available. That said, many of Integral Psychotherapy's features can be understood and worked with from the printed page for reflection and personal growth. Readers without a background in psychotherapy proper can use this book for self-exploration, as a warm-up for therapy or as an adjunct to therapy. This chapter is divided into seven parts as follows:

• What is Psychotherapy?: This section introduces an Integral description of psychotherapy
• Rules, Tools, and Development: This section introduces the idea of tools that you use to navigate life and the rules you work from and how both change over the course of your life in what we call you center of gravity.
• Expanding Integral Psychotherapy and Introducing Integral Theory: This part elaborates on the description of Integral Psychotherapy while giving a quick tour of the Integral Model. This section also explains why psychotherapy done in an Integral way can be a work of “Kosmic” proportions
• Getting Started—Breaking Taboos: This part of the chapter describes how psychotherapy requires a willingness to break the taboos against changing the story you tell yourself.
• A Primer on the Integral Attitude: This section describes the Integral attitude we use in therapy and you can use to learn to trust yourself. The conundrum presented is that if you can't trust yourself you really can't do anything.
• A Closer Look at the Quadrants and Related Treatment Issues: This section elaborates on each quadrant or perspective as it relates to psychotherapy.
• The Integral Heuristic and DSM: This section discusses the implications of Integral Theory for improving DSM and as a framework within which to understand some of the changes that will be part of DSM-V in 2013.

What is Psychotherapy?

I'll “cut to the chase” here—I do not find the question “What is psychotherapy?” very useful however it is important that I address it in a book on the topic. We know that psychotherapy is a relationship in which a therapist uses certain techniques and processes to assist in the unfolding of the client's self, the identification of disowned selves and (in some cases) pointing clients toward what seems a more fundamental or “true” self. No insurance company will pay for that, however. We therapists have to be able to explain to insurance companies what it is we do but asking “What is psychotherapy?” gives the illusion that there is a simplistic answer. Some brilliant therapists have tried to answer this question but each one eventually concedes that the question is too general. The best you can do with an overgeneralized question is offer an overgeneralized answer. Ericksonian hypnotherapist Jeffrey Zeig³ began his answer to the question “What is psychotherapy?” by quoting Mark Twain (“if the only tool you have is a hammer, an awful lot of things will look like nails”). Zeig went on to say that you couldn't answer the question “What is psychotherapy?” without describing a context in which the answer is given. The closest Zeig gets to an answer is defining psychotherapy as

a change-oriented process that occurs in the context of a contractual, empowering, and empathic professional relationship. Its rationale … focuses on the personality of the client, the technique of psychotherapy, or both. The process is idiosyncratic and determined by interaction of the patients' and therapists' preconceived positions. (p. 14)

If you're anything like me you find this answer is a good start but doesn't touch on the details and it is in the details that we unlock the richness of psychotherapy. I am going to offer an integral description of what psychotherapy is and then spend the rest of the book unpacking that description. The initial description is this. Psychotherapy is the scientific and artistic process of helping clients make aspects of themselves or their lives objects of awareness, helping them identify with and own these objects and then integrating them through a process of disidentification.⁴ Making difficult or painful aspects of your life objects of awareness, owning them and integrating them is one of the keys to unlocking the wealth of possibilities in your life.

Rules, Tools, and Development

To help clients with the process of psychotherapy, therapists must meet clients where they are developmentally, which is one way of understanding what “rules” the client has for living. In therapy we help clients use these rules to make sense of (translate) the world in as healthy a manner as possible given the “tools” they have in their developmental “toolbox.” So here we have two concepts—tools and rules—that we come back to frequently in this book. Your tools and rules are the basis of how you translate (make sense of or “metabolize”) reality. You use your tools and rules in the story you tell yourself about who you are and what is going on in your life.

A complete answer to the question “What is psychotherapy?” requires a framework that includes the depth of what it means to be conscious, what it means to be in relationship, and what the Kosmological⁵ context is for being human and being in relationship. Imagine having treasures buried in your own backyard but never suspecting that they are there. Imagine that digging up even one of these treasures would increase your life satisfaction tenfold. Now imagine someone shows up with a map that not only tells you “hey—there are treasures buried in your yard” but shows you where to dig. Integral Theory provides such an integrative map.⁶ I offer a summary of Integral in a moment but first a bit more about tools and rules.

Center of Gravity: Tools and Rules Again

Who are you? How do you experience life? How do you want to “show up” in the world? What are your gifts? What are the rules you have for life? These questions give focus to self-exploration, psychotherapy, and this book. There is an exercise you can do alone or with a partner that consists of asking, “Who are you really?” over and over again (and answering each time with whatever comes to mind). You can do the exercise in a mirror for that matter asking, “Who am I really?” It is simple but powerful. The idea is that you answer the question each time until you begin to exhaust the obvious responses and are driven to closer examination of the “gap” between who you think you are and who you “really” are. For some this “gap” points the way to who you may consciously become.

Your initial answers to the question “Who am I really” depend on what I refer to as your center of gravity.⁷ Your center of gravity is an important component of what in Chapter 7 I call your “psychological address.” Your center of gravity includes what I call your “developmental toolbox,” your worldview, self-sense, and your values⁸ and is the underlying force for the rules you make for yourself. You may not think you make the rules but you do—that is an important component of self-knowledge. As is seen in the forthcoming pages, I try to use valid and reliable constructs when describing aspects of our center of gravity but let me complicate this by adding that there may be no such thing. A center of gravity is a therapeutic metaphor that may be resourceful for some (but not all) clients. Some Integral writers refer to a center of gravity as if it were as valid as constructs like ego development or cognitive dissonance. It is not and I would no more speak about center of gravity with ontological certainty than I would claim to have seen a pooka⁹ at the local tavern.

Like the story you tell yourself, your center of gravity and your rules evolve as you grow. The content of consciousness changes as your center of gravity broadens and deepens. Put simply, self-identity is “drawing the line” between what is self and what is other. This “line” then leads to rules we make to defend it and to what we think is “wrong” when our life breaks our rules and rudely crosses that line. Who we think we are, what rules we make and what seems wrong at one stage of our development is frequently not a problem at later stages. Of course our rules are not just those we've made consciously. We spend our early years in families soaking up whatever rules that family has and many of us never question those rules as adults. So rather than rules we've made, these are rules we're embedded in.

As our rules and tools evolve, so does our self-identification. The sliding nature of self-identification is the focus of Chapter 3. Self-identification undulates between stabilization and moving on to a new, broader, deeper identity. In psychotherapy there are times when you have to stabilize where you are and times when you have to move on. We call stabilizing where you are translation. Translation is making sense of the world with your existing tools and rules in the healthiest manner possible. In Integral Psychotherapy we would say health is translating accurately from our current center of gravity. This is similar to what Carl Rogers (founder of client-centered therapy) called accurate symbolization. When we accurately symbolize what life presents us with we have the greatest probability of coping with it. If we distort or deny our internal symbols of what life is presenting then we risk psychological illness.¹⁰

An example of a client that psychotherapy helped with translating is Ann, a devout Christian who came to see me for severe anxiety. Ann's Christian faith reflected traditional values that she was quite happy with. Her anxiety was related to her husband losing his job and becoming verbally abusive. According to her center of gravity, her rules, she had somehow failed in keeping the family healthy through this employment crisis. Although a feminist counselor may have tried to get Ann to change her rules, my sense was her rules were adequate to the task—we just needed to make them objects of awareness and help her discern what the purpose was behind the rules. Discernment was an important “tool” in her toolbox that she learned to use in prayer and in life to refocus on what she really valued. Once she discerned her purpose was to reflect the love of Christ in family life, she was able to modify the level of responsibility she had for her husband's feelings and confront him with his responsibility. When she did this they entered couples' counseling with a Christian counselor and were able to work things out. Ann's tools and rules worked fine once she could make the purpose behind them an object of awareness.

Psychotherapy also can help us move to a broader, deeper center of gravity. When the tools and rules we have are not enough to do the job, we are forced into a situation where we ca...

Table of contents

• Series Page
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Perspectives and Psychotherapy
• Chapter 3: The Self-System and Ego Development
• Chapter 4: Lines and Levels of Development
• Chapter 5: Types and Styles
• Chapter 6: States of Consciousness …
• Chapter 7: Psychological Address
• Chapter 8: Spirituality and Integral …
• Appendix: A Case Study
• Notes