Jung At Heart

As we move into the presidential campaign, one word seems to be everywhere -- CHANGE. No candidate wants to be the one standing for the status quo. And then this week I read Stephen Diamond's blog entry on change or acceptance in therapy. Which set me to thinking about what we mean by change in either of these contexts.

Someone last night was telling me that she had changed herself from an introvert into an extravert, by way of explaining her enthusiasm for door to door campaigning. But did she really change her basic self or did she learn to adopt what we Jungian would call an extraverted persona? C. G. Jung applied the words extravert and introvert in a different manner than they are most often used in today’s world. As they are popularly used, the term extraverted is understood to mean sociable or outgoing, while the term introverted is understood to mean shy or withdrawn. Jung, however, originally intended the words to have an entirely different meaning. He used the words to describe the preferred focus of one’s energy on either the outer or the inner world. Extraverts orient their energy to the outer world, while Introverts orient their energy to the inner world. My best guess is that the direction of her energy remains toward her inner world but she has learned how to present herself in an extraverted manner when the occasion demands it.

In a similar fashion, people who only know me from my teaching or workshop presentations would swear that I am extraverted. I am at ease speaking in front of groups, animated, energetic. But what they do not realize is that is a costume of sorts that I wear for those settings, that I wear because I have a role to play. The "real" Cheryl is the introverted one.

So, in order to be effective as a teacher or speaker, I did not change who I am; rather I became adept at donning the costume of a more extraverted version of myself.  In part in order to do that I need to be more accepting of who I am, of my basic nature in order to take on a persona that works for me. 

Therapy for many people, maybe most who seek it is about change -- changing how they feel, changing relationships, changing the direction of their lives.  And many times they don't have a clear idea of what that means, just that they are unhappy as things are. I often ask patients what is the life that they want? What would it look like? How would it be different? And what stands between them and having that life? Then comes the hard work of dealing with those obstacles, often self-created. It is important to deal with the past, to work through those issues and finally come to acceptance that it is what it is. And get on to the business of playing the cards that we have been dealt. Because we can't change the circumstances of our birth, the parents we have, the childhood we lived, the forces that shaped us. We can change how we see those things but they themselves will not change. In fact it is acceptance that paves the way for change.

One of the goals of the personal myth exploration is to reveal the story being lived, because until it is revealed, it cannot be changed. Change as a goal sounds very appealing. But the work to make it is another task altogether.

Good news! According to TVoholic, HBO has given the go for a second season of In Treatment,  which will return sometime in 2009. I am looking forward to it as you are and will, of course, blog each episode as I did this year. Most of the patients wil not be returning, though Paul and Gina will be back. What kinds of patients/issues would you like to see Paul deal with?

This is one of those posts in which my two worlds -- knitting and my work -- collide briefly.

In two knitting communities that I am a sometime member of, there are discussion threads on knitting as therapy, meaning more less in place of actual therapy. Von Franz wrote of knitting:

Everybody who has knitted or done weaving or embroidery knows what an agreeable effect this can have, for you can be quiet and lazy and also spin your own thoughts while working. You can relax and follow your fantasy and then get up and say you have done something! Also the work exercises patience...Only those who have done such work know of all the catastrophes which can happen -- such as losing a row of stitches just when you are decreasing! It is a very self-educative activity and brings out feminine nature. It is immensely important for women to do such work and not give it up in the modern rush. (The Feminine in Fairy Tales, Spring Publications, 1972, p. 40)

recognizing the value of handcrafts like knitting. And this makes a great deal of sense. Indeed, I read a post today by Dr. Smak about the meditative value of knitting which is the value that I see. And similarly with painting or writing or working in clay. They are all means for allowing us to surrender the monkey mind a bit, to allow to filter in some deeper part of ourselves which works on whatever it is that we are occupied with. But as therapeutic as these things can be, they are not in themselves therapy. Therapy puts into words the feelings and experiences and perceptions that can keep us from the life we want. Art, music, knitting, writing gives us means of expressing some of those same things, some ways of working with them transformatively or meditatively. 

Which is not to say that therapy is what any painter or knitter or writer needs. Only that each can nourish the other in the process of expanding consciousness and developing our lives. My analysis is knit into every piece I have worked on during it. Dreams, interpretations, thoughts all became part of the fabric of what I made. Each enriching the other.

Scientific American, in one of their "60 second science" features, reports on a study recently published which appears to replicate the findings of a study from at least a decade ago in the UK -- namely that grief counseling after traumatic events may be more harm than help. Again this finding seems obvious if we consider that grief and other uncomfortable emotions are normal following such events. It is only when, by community consensus, such emotions and reactions persist and interfere with normal life that treatment may be called for.

As an example, when I first met my ex-husband's mother 40 years ago, I asked her if she had any siblings. She teared up and said she had had a brother but he died. Judging from her reaction, I thought this must have been recent. But I discovered that actually her brother had died more than 50 years previous when he was a toddler and she was a young child. We could certainly say that such a reaction is unusual, but she managed quite handily to deal with the ups and downs of normal life -- a marriage, two children, family, outside interests. And she could certainly have benefitted from therapy to deal with the issues in her family that left her with a terrible burden of guilt. But, by all reasonable criteria, she was a healthy functioning adult and not in need of treatment.

Taking something like this on a larger scale, like the aftermath of 9/11, we can see that it is expectable that those who lost loved ones that day or had their own narrow escapes or lived or worked in Manhattan, might well have lingering effects of that experience. But the vast majority of those people have gone on with their lives, even though they may still have difficulty thinking about or talking about those events. It is that small portion of people whose grief and reactions have paralyzed them, frozen them in that time, who would most benefit from treatment. But we cannot know who those people will be until time has passed, until time has had opportunity to heal wounds, as it most often does.

The intentions behind grief and crisis counseling are good but research has again suggested they are not helpful.

Therapeutic space is an important issue not much written about but which reflects certain basic attitudes about therapy. I wrote about some of that here and here. The question arises now because I am planning some changes to my space and a friend asked me about my choices.

As I said in my earlier post, I choose to have my office in my home. This is a philosophical choice based on my understandings about therapy. Both of the analysts I have worked with have had their offices in their homes, so it is something I am used to. And to the extent that most of us model our way of practicing on those therapists we admire, they are a part of my choice. But more than that, I see this choice reflecting the fact that I do not see therapy as a medical treatment. I see therapy as a part of life and needing to be grounded in the ordinary stuff of daily life lest it become too rarified and too removed from day to day existence. My office space is not just another room in my house -- there are no photos of my children and no deeply revealing personal items. Access to my personal living space is closed off. But it is clear that  it is located in the place where I live. Occasionally there are noises from life going on elsewhere in the house. Or the smells of food cooking. I take care to make it that my husband, the only person who shares the house with me, is not able to hear what is said in my office -- for the most part, I see patients at times when he is out doing his own work. 

For you In Treatment fans, my space is personal like Paul's is -- in my home, yet not part of every day family gathering. Furniture reminiscent of what might be in a living room, yet not part of family living space. Comfortable, personal, yet observably not family space. Now my furniture is a more motley collection, but falls along the same dimensions a Paul's. And the presence of my desk marks it subtly as an office. 

There have been times when the fact that my office is in my home raised issues for my patients, especially when my children were younger and could from time to time be heard on the stairs or elsewhere in the house I lived in then. Sometimes patents would begin to feel envious of them, or want to be one of my children Or imagine living in my house. But that became part of the material we worked with, part of the fabric of the therapy.

I have thoughts of writing a piece about how therapist's shape their spaces someday and have collected some data toward that. One finding that emerged is that of the two dozen therapists who completed my questionnaire, those who identified themselves as cognitive-behavioral in orientation saw ease of parking or proximity to mass transit as key elements in their choices, whereas depth oriented therapists focused on the atmosphere created by furnishings and art in the space itself -- outer vs inner space considerations. I like that.