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spiritual_emergency · Jan 06, 2011, 12:34 AM

costello: He's just spewing a bunch of nonsense and interacting with people I can't see or hear.

Quote:

Relationship As Healing

If the therapeutic factors in the psychotherapy of the neuroses are puzzling, those in the psychoses are utterly mysterious. So much is this the case that in the average psychiatric opinion, it is generally held that, as a matter of fact, there is no healing for the psychoses, that there can be allviation of symptoms but not cure. I have always been reluctant to accept this closing of the door upon the possibility of healing, and this is because I find, as Jung has found, that the psyche knows better than we do what it is up to in its deep turmoils.

Since the psyche had its own intentions in a psychosis, when the unconsciousness is activated to this extreme degree, a welter of emotions wants to come into play, accompanied by images of a mythological cast that belong to these emotions. Most of these elements of the psyche are very necessary to the further growth and development of the personality. It becomes a very painful experience when they meet a wall of prohibition that dams up their flow and prevents their movement.

Our question is, then, what is it that goes on when psychotherapy does the other thing, allowing all the communications of affect and image to come through and be received into the relationship? What is the nature of this therapeutic bond that makes it work toward reordering and reintegrating the psyche?

Speaking in very general terms, the intention of such therapy is to honor what the other person experiences with a readiness to receive her whole being, to relate to all that is in her, and thus to share in her psychic life and be in it with her during this critical period of growth. This entails attitudes of regard, respect, interest, concern, and partnership in the developmental process, with a full range of emotional experiences. Thus, as Jung has put it, psychotherapy consists of two whole psychic systems interacting in depth, in which action each is deeply affected by the other.

The analogies here to the relation of loving feeling between two persons cannot escape the eye. It is very difficult for the profession of psychotherapy to know what to do with this awkward circumstance. The way to ease the tension around the issue has been from the beginning, to take refuge in the fact of the "transference," which, holding vestiges of previous, parental relationships, minimizes the validity of the presently growing relationship that exists in its own right. The ardor that springs up has been made even more safe by perceiving it as the "transference neurosis," needing a lot of interpretation to keep it under control and finally, to dispell it. A term that has been used for this effort is the graphic phrase, "crushing the transference," thereby telling the whole story in epitome.

There are advantages in acknowledging the therapeutic relationship as one of loving feeling. Chief among these is that the emotional charge and heightened intensity induce at the same time a dramatic activation of the unconscious psyche in great depth, so that the archetypal affect-images become vivid and dynamic. They are stirring in this atmosphere of mutual trust and mutual enthusiasm. It is characteristic of love relations that the archetype of the Center is constellated between two individuals.

Much of the synthesizing and organizing action of the psyche goes on at the level of the unknown, that is, of unconscious process, long before it is a matter of conscious insight - long before it reaches the ego. This unconscious process is essentially emotional in its quality and hence the play of emotion is best allowed to do its own work. Too early a recognition of meaning, and formulation of it, may scotch this subtle process that goes on beneath the surface.

The central archetype is the factor in the psyche that, according to all the evidence in our observations, has the capacity to transform the self. This change involves not only the self-image in the usual sense, but also the structure of the personality as a whole. The means by which this is brought about in the psychotic episode are those that I have described as the "renewal process." When I speak of this kind of "ideation," it should not be thought of as a fanciful play of symbolic ideas. Rather, they occur as powerful, even overpowering, emotional and spiritual experiences. That is the reason for my preferring to refer to these archetypal phenomena as "affect-images," since they are made up principally of emotion and image together as aspects of the same entity.

This means that there comes through this process a new valency, so to speak, for relating in depth. This term is borrowed from chemisty but is also very apt for the psychology of relationship. In chemistry, it means the quality that determines the number of atoms that a particular element may combine with, thus a readiness to unite. This readiness of the individual in the "pychotic" process to relate in depth imperatively requires a corresponding readiness of the therapist to do likewise. Both centers must be prepared to combine, again, a chemical metaphor. When this does occur, the two centers become involved mutually and together undergo an experience of transformation. Things go well as long as the individual and the therapist are able to tolerate the play of the emotions that are released - rage, love, agony, exhaltation, and so on - no matter how intense, as well as the play of all the imagery - mythic, religious, political, and so forth - no matter how unfamiliar.

In the Jungian framework, these two modes belong to the general category of experience that we call "Eros" and "Logos" respectively. Eros tends to move toward entanglement in relationship, Logos toward abstracting out of experience the meaning and understanding. For balance and wholeness, both should come into play and receive their due.

Trials of the Visionary Mind
John Weir Perry Ph. D.