“In the modern era, the emergence of the separate rational ego, believing itself to be wholly autonomous, has in some cases led to pathological states of […] alienation” (Le Grice, 2016). In contrast to this, Vine Deloria Jr describes ‘participation mystique’ - the “idea that a strong […] psychic bond exists between […] peoples and various objects in nature” – something perhaps at best “a highly spiritual communication” but at worst, allegedly, an inability in people “to distinguish themselves from their natural environment” (Coppin & Nelson, 2017). It is interesting that western minds – ones borne of societies in which schizophrenia, for example, is most prevalent – consider such a thing as too much connection to the world around them even possible. Could it be, instead, that this arises because of the lack of a satisfactory cognitive framework for that connection? “The original experience of mystery was […] beyond understanding or articulation…” (Hollis, 1995); perhaps now the mind, positioned as the seat of consciousness, sees danger in such connection, and relegates it to a characteristic of the pejorative “primitive peoples” (Coppin & Nelson, 2017). As Camus (1965) said: “Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined […] The worm is in man’s heart. That is where it must be sought. One must follow and understand this fatal game that leads from lucidity in the face of experience to flight from light.”
My position, straddling cultures as I do, is that connection is in - and is nothing more complicated than feeling - the experience which Jung describes as giving “a colorful and fantastic aspect to the […] world” but which people now have perhaps “lost [..] to such a degree that we do not recognize it when we meet it again, and are baffled at its incomprehensibility” (Coppin & Nelson, 2017). Perhaps it has become incomprehensible because of our privileging of the aspects of it we have deemed desirable, and the efforts we each make to avoid the aspects of it we deem undesirable? This may be the essence of the conflict, for “thinking is derivative, a secondary process. We experience phenomenologically, as a felt movement of body and soul” (Hollis, 1995. From “…the ego’s narrow view of the world, the task is security, dominance and the cessation of conflict; from the perspective of depth psychology, however, the proper role of ego is to stand in a dialogic relationship with the Self and the world” (Hollis, 1996) – “to engage in a genuine dialogue with the unconscious” (Le Grice, 2016). For me, this dialogue already exists, in feeling. The ego, the mind, needs to be re-integrated into the activity of feeling – it needs to be used to attend to feeling, and to the nature and course of any systemic evasion of feeling. Most “of life is a flight from the anxiety of being radically present to ourselves and naked before the universe” (Hollis, 1996), and this avoidance of “the dismal states of the soul becomes itself a form of suffering, for one can never relax, never let go of the frantic desire to be happy and untroubled, can never rest easy” (Hollis, 1996). As Camus (1965) wrote, the war “cannot be negated. One must live it or die of it.” Camus, A. (1965). The Myth of Sisyphus, and Other Essays. H. Hamilton, London. Coppin, J. & Nelson, E. (2017). The Art of Inquiry: A Depth-Psychological Perspective. Spring Publications; Thompson, CT. Hollis, J. (1995). Tracking the Gods: the Place of Myth in Modern Life. Inner City Books, Toronto, ON. Hollis, J. (1996). Swamplands of the Soul: New Life in Dismal Places. Inner City Books, Toronto, ON. Le Grice, K. (2016). Archetypal Reflections: Insights and Ideas from Jungian Psychology. Muswell Hill Press; London/NY. Religion is weaponized and used to commit very real harm time and time again, in the name of spirituality. Intersectional issues such as racism, misogyny, sexual and gender expression are all entwined with the subject.
Therapy continues to be contextualized within the dominant patriarchal culture that upholds narratives situating white cis able-bodied men as superior to trans and cis women, trans men, nonbinary persons, racialized folks, neurodivergent folks, disabled folks, and any others deemed outside that narrow, normative circle. This context can result in the spirituality and religiosity of these folks automatically being delegitimized too. And yet it’s possible to argue that psychopathology is, in fact, a result of some degree of absence of spiritual connection to the life and universe around you – as well as, in some instances, even a result of an overwhelming experience of that connection, an experience that takes an individual beyond what their materialist culture provides any kind of framework for, leaving them totally overwhelmed by something they therefore cannot explain or contain. Spirituality and religiosity can be core components of what a person brings to the therapy experience. A lack of understanding of another’s worldview in this sense – a failure, for example, to look beyond mainstream media portrayals of Islam – can be serious barriers to effective therapy. This is where any ignorance on behalf of the practitioner of any of the ways in which a client experiences oppression can lead to all manner of harmful values being imposed upon them. My own experience and journey has highlighted love as the ground from which all other feelings arise. It appears to me that we feel angry because someone has transgressed our boundaries, for example, or that we feel grief because we have lost something or someone, and that none of this would arise if we did not in fact love ourselves and deem ourselves worthy of love, respect, happiness and safety. The thing that appeals to me about psychodynamic therapy is that it arguably centres feeling as the primary unit of experience. Now, this framing may well be rooted in my own bias, but for me the place where psychodynamic therapy and my own eastern spiritual heritage appear to connect is in the understanding that the thing that animates us, the thing that does all things, does them all through feeling.
For me, psychodynamic therapy is the sharpest tool in the therapist's toolbox for cutting through all of the defences we develop to keep ourselves separated from our experience of feeling and therefore our experience of that thing which animates us - ultimately, from our experience of the feeling of love, the feeling of the benevolent universe itself. |
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