Spirituality -
"The Soul of Psycotherapy"
Spirituality -
"The Soul of Psycotherapy"
Spirituality is an intimate part of human life. Throughout time, people have attempted to understand why things are as they are. More importantly, they have attempted to understand how they are meant to fit into the order of the universe. Spirituality is the defining characteristic of any human being. As such, it should be considered one of the most important foci of psychotherapy — more universal than other developmental phenomena forming the bulwark of psychotherapeutic theory.
Despite the enormous evidence that spirituality is a quintessential element of the human condition, psychotherapy has not generally recognized it as a legitimate area of exploration or dialogue with clients. This lack of legitimacy remains despite the observation that many clients are struggling with spiritual conflicts. It is as though psychotherapists become deaf when spirituality is mentioned.
However, deafness toward the spiritual conflicts of clients lives is slowly beginning to change. The danger now is that the more traditional and intellectually rigorous schools of psychotherapy are not responding as quickly as those that are a part of the new age movement. While I would not denigrate the very real assistance that some clients have found here, I would argue that psychotherapy based primarily on new-age principles does not offer the sophistication in understanding human dilemmas that 100 years of psychotherapeutic experience and research does. Some clinician/theoreticians1,2 are applying the hard-won insights of traditional psychodynamic models, especially self-psychology, to spirituality. Yet, this needs to be true for all clinicians.
This is a time of deep frustration and confusion. The pillars that supported both the individual and culture — church, extended family, social roles — are diminishing. Many of us have welcomed the freedom that this loosening of tradition has brought, while either not seeing or ignoring the enormous price such freedom exacts. Each passing day, this combination seems to foment a host of social problems and adds to an increasing lack of civility. I agree with Hillman and Ventura3 that we have had a century of psychotherapy and the world is, in many ways, worse in spite of it. One aspect of this seems to be because psychotherapy has focused on a variety of issues during this century, but has largely ignored humanity’s most basic spiritual dilemmas.
Psychotherapy need not be spiritually insensitive. It is best served by conceptualizing spirituality as a developmental phenomena like any other. Just as other developmental phenomena are comprised of various and disparate elements, so too is spirituality.
Some of these components might include:
Love and hatred form the foundation of human emotional life. The most important aspect determining the ability to love others is the capacity to love self. Self-love or narcissism is discouraged by Western culture. Narcissistic development, until the work of Kohut, was associated with psychopathology. Kohut illuminated the fact that narcissistic development is an inherent part of identity development, and that it is only from a stable identity that we are able to share love with others. An individual’s spiritual view deeply influences how much love can be allocated to the self. Psychotherapy must understand the intimate relationship between the spiritual world-view of the individual and narcissistic development.
Paradoxically, as Western culture discourages love of the self, it also discourages the experience and expression of hatred. Hatred and love are the twin pillars of emotional development supporting all other derivative emotions. It seems reasonable to assert that ours is a culture deeply conflicted about feelings. Traditional forms of religion and spirituality have bolstered that conflict. Yet feelings arise, whether bidden or not, and must be integrated into our identities. One critical task of the psychotherapist is to aid clients in the integration of both love and hatred into their lives. To do this, the therapist must be prepared to explore the most intimate relational and spiritual aspects of a client’s life.
One of the ways that our culture has sought to deal with its conflicts regarding love and hatred has been through encouragement of the natural human tendency to seek security through moral absolutism. Western culture is perhaps more polarized than at any other time in history. People embrace absolute views of “Right” and “Wrong” on opposing sides of the religious and political spectra. This is the dilemma in macro view. The psychotherapist often witnesses the embrace of moral absolutism in clients desperately searching for stability and security. Yet this embrace has deleterious consequences to a rich and complex emotional life. The task of helping clients embrace a wide range of complicated and contradictory feelings often falls to the psychotherapist. To do so, the therapist must be prepared to look with the client at the spiritual foundations of her/his moral stance.
For psychotherapists to be more effective, they must have as much knowledge as possible of the internal dynamics that influence perceptions and the actions based on those perceptions. Traditionally, this has been the realm of countertransference management. In looking with clients at their spiritual lives, therapists must know as much as possible about the values they hold regarding spirituality. A willingness to monitor our own internal worlds also offers the opportunity for us to grow. This is one of the reciprocal gifts of psychotherapy.
Finally, psychotherapists aid their clients by what they do and by who they are. There are attitudinal qualities that almost obviate the need for specific techniques. This is a notion that goes somewhat against the grain of traditional conceptions of psychotherapeutic technique. Yet, in an area where so little can be definitively known, it is only common sense. To utilize specific techniques requires that the goal or endpoint of an endeavor be known. This is a luxury not afforded those psychotherapists willing to search with their clients for spiritual meaning.B
References 1. Gay, V. “Philosophy, Psychoanalysis and the Problem of Change,” Psychoanalytic Inquiry, vol. 9, pgs. 26-44, (1989). 2. Gay, V. “Understanding the Occult: Fragmentation and Repair of the Self.” Minneapolis : Fortress Press, (1989). 3. Hillman, J., and Ventura, M. “We Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and the World’s Getting Worse,” San Francisco: Harper Collins.
Carlton Cornett, L.C.S.W. is a team leader at the Harriet Cohn Center in Tennessee, and has a private practice in Nashville. This article is an excerpt from “The Soul of Psychotherapy,” by Carlton Cornett. Copyright © 1998 by Carlton Cornett. Reprinted by permission of The Free Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Inc. (212/698-7332)