Six Keys to Understanding Psychotherapy
What we need to be reminded of now, in this modern civilization of ours, is not to be told over and over again how complex it is. We know that. We need to be reminded about the simple elements out of which this complexity arose. —Harry V. Jaffa
Understanding is relating; it is fitting things into a context. Nothing can be understood on its own. Had we known no other animate life-form than our own, we should have been utterly mysterious to ourselves as a species. And that would have made it immensely harder for us to understand ourselves as individuals too. —Mary Midgley
What Jaffa and Midgley are doing here is pointing out directions of focus for understanding. One looks to the elemental, the other to the necessity of context. We can make something of the two together as they relate to understanding the world of psychotherapy and human suffering.
There is an ocean of complexity in the lineages, traditions, and current practices of psychotherapy, many with their proprietary terminologies, concepts, theories, methods, and techniques. I have often marveled at the coexistence of so many different perspectives on human suffering and healing, and wondered about the elusive “simple element” that gives rise to all this complexity: the person.
But the person in isolation seems to defy understanding. It is things about a person that lend themselves to analysis. So we begin by looking at the person’s world. Drawing on the wide range of available sources, and reflecting on my own clinical experience, a handful of features belonging to the person’s world consistently emerge:
Being and Becoming — the fact of being in time
Body — the organism and its biological activity
Mind — psychological capacities and mental activity both conscious and unconscious
Subjectivity — the lived world as experienced by the particular person
Intersubjectivity — what occurs between persons and within relationships
Conduct — what the person does
Every person’s life is uniquely organized within the context of these six shared features. Each person interacts, suffers, heals, and re-organizes in his own way, and every course of therapy will be fitted to the person within the same context.
This set of features serves both as keys to understanding the ocean of positions in psychotherapy, and as a map for navigating the intricate territory inhabited by the living person, who is also a patient. Together, patient and therapist can attend to and explore each of the six, without mistaking any one of them for the whole person.