The Reality Game

A Guide to Humanistic Counselling and Psychotherapy

John Rowan, John Rowan

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317355069
• Edición: 3
• Categoría: Psychology
• Categoría: History & Theory in Psychology

In the years since it was first published, The Reality Game has become a classic text. For all those training and practising in humanistic and integrative psychotherapy it is an essential guide to good practice, and an excellent introduction to the skills used in individual and group therapy. This new edition has been updated to take into account changes in the field and John Rowan's own work, while still providing guidance on establishing and developing the relationship between counsellor and client, and covering: assessment; the initial interview; the opening session; aims; transference; resistance and supervision.

With the student's needs always at the forefront, this extensively revised new edition responds to the questions most often asked by trainees in these disciplines, and includes discussions of ethics and new chapters on transpersonal psychology, and on dialogical self-theory. It will be a must read for psychotherapists and counsellors in practice and training especially those involved in humanistic and integrative psychotherapy.

1
Psychotherapy, counselling, coaching and personal growth

This is a book intended for the practitioner in psychotherapy, counselling, coaching or personal growth who wants to adopt an integrated approach. It is also intended for courses that train people in this approach, or something close to it. While mainly devoted to one-to-one work, nearly everything in this book also applies to groupwork, because this is also an active field for the integrative practitioner.

What is this approach? It comprises Humanistic, Existential, Authentic, Relational and Transpersonal elements, woven into a fabric which shows how they fit together to form a truly human challenge to many of the fashions of the day. We might perhaps call it a Heart approach.

Humanistic psychology was first named when Abraham Maslow, Anthony Sutich and a few others were trying to find a name for a new journal. The Journal of Humanistic Psychology started to come out in 1961. It defined itself as differing from psychoanalysis on the one side and the cognitive or behavioural approach on the other. Humanistic psychology is particularly concerned with self-actualization and with body–mind unity, and has a great deal to say about that, as we shall be seeing later. People in this orientation are very concerned about human diminution, and the way in which social roles can diminish people. It has a good deal to say about liberation from the shackles of compulsion, whether they be internal or external.

It is quite diverse within itself, and includes some people, such as Abraham Maslow (1987) and Carl Rogers (1978), who are optimistic about human nature, and other people, such as Rollo May (1983), Jim Bugental (1999) and Alvin Mahrer (1989), who are not particularly optimistic at all. One of the standard misunderstandings about humanistic psychology is to think that it is all about Maslow and Rogers.

One of the most important ideas is self-actualization. This refers to the theory of Abraham Maslow (1908–1970) that there is a hierarchy of needs, ranging from lower needs such as food and security up to higher needs such as self-esteem and self-actualization. It used to be said that Maslow’s theory was weak because of lack of good research, but in recent years huge amounts of research have come out backing up the Maslow theory in a remarkable way. The work of Kohlberg (on men and boys), Loevinger (on women and girls), Torbert (on managers), Kegan (also in industry and commerce), and particularly Cook-Greuter (1999), all bear witness to this. Ernesto Spinelli (1989) from the existential school has said that ‘The notion of authenticity bears striking similarity to Maslow’s ideas concerning self-actualization’ (p.116). Self-actualization is all about being that self which I truly am, and the notion of the real self is central to humanistic psychology (DeCarvalho 1991). In recent years, it has become clear from the work of Ken Wilber (2000) and others that self-actualization is not the end of the line, so to speak, but simply a way-station on a longer journey, which extends all the way to the heights of mysticism. If we take Wilber as a useful guide, we can distinguish four levels of consciousness useful in therapy, and see more clearly how they are differentiated.

Carl Rogers (1902–1987) believed that people were capable of growing and developing into what he called ‘the fully-functioning person’, and used counselling, psychotherapy and groupwork to achieve this. His ideas are highly compatible with those of Maslow. In his work he laid great stress on empathy, non-possessive warmth and genuineness. This emphasis on genuineness reminds us of the great philosopher Martin Buber, and Rogers and Buber had a famous dialogue which helps us to see the similarities and differences between them rather clearly (Kirschenbaum and Henderson 1990). The person-centred approach is one of the central disciplines within humanistic psychology, and is still being developed today (Mearns and Thorne 2000), even after the death of its founder. It has become clear that Rogers’ thinking is very much in line with the later idea of Constructivist psychotherapy (Neimeyer 2009), and in that sense anticipated much later thinking in a remarkable way.

Humanistic psychotherapy owes to Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957) a strong emphasis on the importance of the body. Alexander Lowen was one of Reich’s students, and introduced an approach to psychotherapy which he called Bioenergetics. Later on, David Boadella (1988) in Britain developed a further extension of this which he called Biosynthesis.

Because all the pioneers of humanistic psychology were very individual people, there is no one single accepted theory that we can lay out and say – this is it. But there are some very consistent themes running through all the material put forward by these people.

The first is that, deep down underneath it all where it really counts, you are OK. This goes against many other and much older theories which say that people are fundamentally bad, selfish, narrow and nasty. By saying that people are fundamentally OK, we do not at all mean that people are not sometimes destructive, or that there is no evil in the world (see for example Goldberg 1995). What we mean is that if someone will agree to work with us on his or her destructive actions or evil wishes, in an atmosphere of trust and acceptance, that person will discover that the evil and destructiveness are just as phoney and just as forgettable as the false niceness of other people, which apparently causes no problems.

In other words, we believe that personal nastiness and personal niceness are most often, in both cases, masks and illusions, put on for reasons which seemed good at the time, but which have now become stuck and rigid, and out of our control. In that sense, if you want to use labels, we are all neurotic. By working on ourselves to unstick the rigidities and loosen the mask, we can eventually learn how to live without needing masks at all – though it may still be useful to put one on occasionally, as we might have a dress suit or an evening gown.

Existentialism is also very varied, and when Mick Cooper (2003) came to write his useful work on such an approach, he too had to make it clear that there was not just one version to consider.

The phenomenological tradition, coming from Edmund Husserl (1859– 1938) originally, says that it is possible to cleanse our perceptions and see things as they are. But we can only do this by a rigorous examination of our assumptions, first of all becoming aware of them and then learning how to set them aside or bracket them (Jennings 1992). This requires a degree of self-knowledge, because otherwise our unaware beliefs can trip us up all the time. This lays great stress on our responsibility for not taking for granted anything about the ground on which we stand when we make any general statement. We have to put everything in doubt, and assume that nothing is absolutely true.

Husserl took from Franz Brentano (1838–1917) the notion of intentionality. This says that consciousness is always directed towards the real world in order to interpret it in a meaningful manner. Consciousness is always consciousness of some thing. So we do not talk about behaviour, we talk about action – a very important difference. The difference is that action is always intentional. Gestalt therapy in particular lays great stress on its phenomenological roots. ‘Phenomenology . . . is the philosophical approach which is at the very heart of Gestalt’ (Clarkson 1989, p.13).

Ronald Laing (1965) pointed to the close connection between phenomenology and existentialism, and so did Merleau-Ponty (1908–61), who said – ‘The world is not what I think, but that which I live’. Phenomenology is one of the most important influences in the new study of consciousness which is arousing so much interest in philosophical circles. A special issue of the journal Self & Society (2014) was devoted to a full discussion of the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. People such as Shaun Gallagher (1997) and Francisco Varela (1997) are arguing that we cannot understand the nature of consciousness until we fully bring phenomenology into the argument.

This tradition lays stress on the inescapable dilemmas of the human condition – death, the inner struggle over anxiety, the need for authentic living. Rollo May (1909–94) is one of those within humanistic psychology who has written a great deal about existentialism, and has claimed that William James (1842–1910) was an existential thinker, who in fact influenced Husserl. May wrote one of the best books (1983) on the existentialist approach to psychology and psychotherapy.

From Heidegger (1889–1976) comes the central idea of authenticity. He says that we are thrown into the world, and that our existence in the world is simply a matter of being-there (Dasein). Authenticity is a combination of self-respect (we are not just part of an undifferentiated world) and self-enactment – we express our care in the world in a visible way. Jim Bugental puts it well when he says:

By authenticity I mean a central genuineness and awareness of being. Authenticity is that presence of an individual in his living in which he is fully aware in the present moment, in the present situation. Authenticity is difficult to convey in words, but experientially it is readily perceived in ourselves or in others.

(Bugental 1981, p.102)

Again, it is Gestalt therapy which has stayed most strictly close to this existentialist position. Fritz Perls claimed that Gestalt therapy was one of three existential therapies, the other two being Frankl’s logotherapy and Binswanger’s dasein therapy (Perls 1969).

But Moreno too (who we shall return to in a moment) thought of himself as an existentialist, and David Brazier says – ‘Psychodrama evolved from the existential approach to psychotherapy of Jacob Levi Moreno. Although it is possible to graft psychodramatic methods on to other philosophical approaches, the method is primarily attuned to an existential outlook’ (Brazier 1991, p.1).

Martin Buber (1878–1965) is another representative of the existential position who has had much influence upon humanistic psychology. He says – ‘There is genuine relation only between genuine persons . . . Men need, and it is granted to them, to confirm one another in their individual being by means of genuine meetings’. The encounter group, one of the innovations of humanistic psychology, is founded on this idea of genuine meetings (Rowan 1992a).

Another humanistic psychotherapist strongly influenced by existentialism is the late James Bugental (first president of the Association for Humanistic Psychology), who actually calls his approach ‘Existential-Humanistic Psychotherapy’. He has written a number of books, including The search for existential identity (all about patient–therapist dialogue), Psychotherapy and process (his main theoretical book), The search for authenticity and The art of psychotherapy. In the latter book he lists his own set of ‘givens’: Embodiedness (implying change), Finitude (implying contingency), Ability to act or not act (implying responsibility), Choicefulness (implying relinquishment) and Separate-but-related-ness (implying being at once a part of and apart from another person). Bugental says this:

For me, the truest existentialism is humanistic and the soundest humanism is existential. The two are not the same, but their overlap is rich in potential for greater understanding of human experience and for greater effectiveness in the effort to enrich that experience.

(Bugental 1981, p.10)

Bugental is one of the most important voices in the humanistic and existential fields.

Much influenced by existentialism is the late Alvin Mahrer, another theorist we shall be referring to in this book. He has reworked the whole humanistic-existential connection in a very exciting way. He continually quotes Binswanger, and to a lesser extent Boss, and also Laing and May. But he is not a slavish follower: he disagrees with the Sartrean position, for example, that one person can never really know another. He shows that it is indeed possible for one person to get inside another person’s skin, to know from the inside what it is like to be that other person (Mahrer 1996).

Possibly the best-known existential therapist is Irvin Yalom (1980), who has written a number of short books which are entertaining and insightful. But I find that his big basic book is too heavy – he has four or five chapters on death anxiety, which I think is too much: very few of my clients are bothered by death anxiety, and to be so insistent seems to me rather dogmatic and not very useful.

In England, a school of existentialism has grown up under the tutelage of Emmy van Deurzen, who has created what almost amounts to a sort of cottage industry, with book after book appearing. She has added to the usual three realms of life – the Umwelt, the Mitwelt and the Eigenwelt – the Uberwelt, thus including the transpersonal aspect. It has to be said, however, that she has herself not done much with the idea, setting, as it were, a place for a guest who never actually turns up. A useful compendium is Barnett and Madison (2012).

But the central issue in it, I would say, is self-responsibility. For the first time in human history, people such as Kierkegaard and Nietzsche urged that we are totally responsible for our own lives, and cannot blame our parents, our teachers, our media or our governors for our faults and failings. Of course, existentialism can be traced back into various historical antecedents (Friedman 1991), but basically it is a recent form of philosophy. It is not to be found in classical philosophy, or in Eastern texts. A recent compendium (Cooper 2003) of existential therapies has made it clear that it represents a wide field, highly compatible with the other elements within this book. More recently, Kirk Schneider (Schneider and Krug 2010) has been arguing that it is much closer to humanistic psychology than most existential writers are willing to admit. Perhaps the best recent account of existential therapy is to be found in the book by Ernesto Spinelli (2015), which argues in a rigorous way that the three basic essentials are relatedness, uncertainty and anxiety.

One of the key concepts in the humanistic and in the existential approach is Authenticity. One of the great authorities on authenticity, James Bugental (1981), had the unique honour of serving on the editorial boards of the Society for Existential Analysis and of the Association for Humanistic Psychology. So when we talk about authenticity, about getting in touch with what is the deepest truth within us, and allowing that to come out, we are not saying something fearful or dangerous. People often say – ‘How do I know I won’t hate my deepest self when I come across it?’ But this is an unrealistic fear, and we may sometimes suspect that it is really designed to enable the person to avoid the necessary effort. A more recent researcher and writer is Jenny Wade (1996), who has shown that human development has, at a certain point, to be divided into male and female types of authenticity – a useful innovation. We shall be examining this point in detail later.

The authentic therapist is naturally creative, and may use ideas or techniques taken from other specialities, such as the Winnicott Squiggle method, or the Narrative Therapy approach (Freedman and Combs 1996), or the Farrelly Provocative Therapy (Farrelly and Brandsma 1989), without specific training in such things. In my experience, a Gestalt therapist can happily use Gestalt Art Therapy with a client, without having had specific training in such a speciality.

Relational approaches are now central to our conception of therapy. One of the most remarkable things that has happened in the field of psychotherapy over the past 20 years is the spread of relational thinking. We used to think of therapy in all its forms as a client encountering a professional. The client had a fixed role, and so did the professional: the professional was there to help the client, using various means. But about 20 years ago – the exact date is disputed – the magic word intersubjectivity started to be used. The idea of intersubjectivity is that the relationship between client and professional is primary, rather than the separate individuals. Language is now seen as an ‘intersubjective dynamics of co-construction of meaning’ (Salvatore and Venuleo 2008). This implies an openness that is quite radical. We now see the whole therapy as a two-person event, in which both parties are equally involved and equally responsible (Sparks 2009). This does not mean (and this was the great struggle of the 1990s) that there is just a social field, and that the individuals disappear: it simply means that equality begins to be respected in quite a new way. We now see that communication is only possible between equals. Many of the most interesting ideas about this now come from the constructivist position (Neimeyer 2009). ‘Constructivism sees meaning making as relational, social and cultural to the core’ (p.ix). There is a good discussion of this in Greenberg, Watson and Lietaer (1998), and it is clear that their excellent description of experiential p...