Chapter Eleven
Stage Four of Psychosynthesis, Response to Self
Let the will of the Self guide and direct my life.
—Roberto Assagioli
As clients continue to be held in spiritual empathy, in altruistic love, deepening their contact with authentic unifying centers, drawing closer to the empathic wisdom and guidance of Self, the next step seems not only logical but inevitable: they begin to respond to Self in their lives. Becoming increasingly aware of their own truth, sensing more strongly their own path, hearing more clearly where they are called, so they begin to express themselves in alignment with their deeper nature and values.1
Like the contact stage, the response stage too has been happening throughout the prior stages of psychosynthesis. From taking action regarding compulsive patterns, to exploring the levels of the unconscious, to assuming responsibility for themselves, to choosing to contact authentic unifying centers, clients have already been responding to the invitations of Self. It is a shift in our focus that moves response from background to foreground, and thus a more accurate name for this last stage might be “a more conscious response to Self.”
So the response stage is about clients making choices in relationship to what seems most true, most right to them. As always, the task of the therapist is to provide spiritual empathy, which in this stage nurtures the ability of clients to act in relationship to their own truth. As always too, this task can present challenges to therapists, but first let us look at a few examples of this stage of psychosynthesis.
CLIENT: What's really up for me today is to talk about my sexual abuse. I've been avoiding bringing it up. I guess I'm feeling safe enough now.
THERAPIST: Okay.
CLIENT: I still feel nervous, look. (Wiping sweat from his brow, smiling.) But it's about being true to myself I guess. Even though a part of me says I'm nuts.
THERAPIST: How so?
CLIENT: You know, like why bring it up—it's not that big a deal. But I know it's important. Breaking silence is something I have to do.
CLIENT: I finally told my boyfriend I didn't like him flirting with other women. Blew me away—he got it! He even thanked me! (Big smile, beaming at therapist.)
THERAPIST: Wow.
CLIENT: Yeah, I can't believe I did it.
THERAPIST: How'd it happen?
CLIENT: We were having dinner and, you know, it felt like the moment. My heart was beating so hard, me thinking like, “He's going to leave me.” But then, you know, it just came out. I was totally amazed.
THERAPIST: How were you able to do that?
CLIENT: Well, talking about it in here helped, for sure. Seeing my fear of losing him, abandonment, my dad, all of that. And something about that moment … something told me this was it. My inner guide.
CLIENT: I've been having a weird experience. Ever since I got into recovery—“turning my will and my life over to the care of God”—my life is way too peaceful. No chaos. No drama. I'm not used to it.
THERAPIST: What's that like?
CLIENT: It's just weird. I don't know. It's quiet, normal I guess. It's uncomfortable. (Laughs.) But it's my path, I know.
THERAPIST: How do you know it's your path?
CLIENT: I've got a relationship with a Higher Power today. I talk to Him. We're on a first-name basis!
THERAPIST: So what does your Higher Power say about this weirdness?
CLIENT: Good question. (Pause.) He says I'll get used to it. I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be.
In all of these vignettes, clients are clearly responding to a sense of being invited or called by a deeper sense of truth: “what feels really up for me,” “something I have to do,” “something told me this was it,” “it's my path.” In psychosynthesis terms, these are responses to Self, moments of conscious Self-realization.
Note that these responses take place within the context of physical sensations (sweating, heart beating hard), emotional reactions (feeling nervous, afraid, uncomfortable), and cognitive functioning (“Part of me says I'm nuts,” “He's going to leave me”). The individuals do not ignore these contents, but move in and through them as they manifest their choices. This is the functioning of “I,” a center of consciousness and will that is distinct-but-not-separate from, transcendent-immanent within, personality content and process.
We also can see the functioning of a sense of rightness, a calling or vocation, operating in a similar manner, distinct-but-not-separate from, transcendent-immanent within, these contents. From “I know it's important,” to “it felt like the moment,” to “it's my path,” all were responding to a source of wisdom deeper or higher than their normal conscious functioning. But this deeper source was fully present to their here-and-now experience.
So here is the transcendent-immanent relationship between “I” and Self. It is a relationship that cannot be completely equated with any particular form, and therefore can be manifest in many different forms. The response stage of psychosynthesis is a time when this relationship, and specifically one's response to that relationship, becomes foreground.
THE I-SELF RELATIONSHIP
Essentially, the “response” in the response stage is a response of the personal will of “I” to the transpersonal will of Self. Assagioli writes of transpersonal will, “It is its action which is felt by the personal self, or ‘I,’ as a ‘pull’ or ‘call’” (Assagioli 1973b, 113). He goes on to describe the relationship of personal and transpersonal will as a dialogue:
Accounts of religious experiences often speak of a “call” from God, or a “pull” from some Higher Power; this sometimes starts a “dialogue” between the man [or woman] and this “higher Source,” in which each alternately invokes and evokes the other. (Assagioli 1973b, 114)
Assagioli at this point presents “I” and Self as distinct entities who can relate to each other via their respective wills. It is plain that he sees the individual as having freedom, as having a choice about whether or not to align with transpersonal will. This then is in no way a domination of personal will by transpersonal will, of “I” by Self. After all, “I” is the projection or reflection of Self, the creation of Self, so for Self to in any way diminish or overpower personal will would negate this very act of creation.
Rather, as a full reflection of Self, having consciousness and will, “I” has the power to say “Yes,” “No,” or “Maybe,” to Self. “I” also has the prerogative to take the initiative, to “invoke and evoke” Self. We have seen this freedom of personal will in the candid give-and-take interchanges that occur between individuals and their authentic unifying centers.
This freedom of personal expression can be seen in the strong, purposeful actions of the clients in our examples. Here are strong expressions of individuality, people making courageous choices in relationship to what they believe is right and good. Implicit is a sense that they could choose otherwise, that here is free will in operation.
However, this experience of independence and freedom in relationship to call is only one type of experience in the response stage. Here is Assagioli again:
There are not really two selves, two independent and separate entities. The Self is one; it manifests in different degrees of awareness and self-realization. The reflection appears to be self-existent but has, in reality, no autonomous substantiality. It is, in other words, not a new and different light but a projection of its luminous source. (Assagioli 2000, 17)
From this point of view, there is no “I,” no personal self, no personal will. There is only Self and transpersonal will. As contrary as this may seem to the free interplay of personal and transpersonal will, we can already see this type of experience in the previous vignettes.2 The man who decided to speak of his sexual abuse, for example, says this was “something I have to do.” In other words, he felt so compelled by his own sense of rightness that it is as if he had no choice but to follow it.
Similarly, the woman speaking her truth to her boyfriend about his flirting with other women said, “But then it just came out. I was surprised.” That is, in a way it was not she acting in this moment but a deeper wisdom acting through her—even despite her fear and uncertainty.
Finally, this seeming lack of personal will is apparent in the recovering alcoholic who turned his “will and life” over to his Higher Power and was swept into a brand new life, one to which he was working to adjust. Here was a surrender of personal will and independent selfhood.
So there is a paradoxical mix of “self” and “no self,” of freedom and destiny, of personal will and transpersonal will, which often appears in the response stage. But whether experiencing oneself as a strong identity actively choosing the path, or feeling swept along by Spirit, this is response to Self. Both experiences may be found at different times, in different people, at different places on their path.3
THE CLIENT IN RESPONSE
What then might be the nature of therapy in the response stage? Below is part of a session with a forty-two-year-old lawyer named Daniel. He has felt called to quit his high-powered job with a prestigious law firm in order to work for a nonprofit environmental protection group:
DANIEL: I'm feeling really off today. I wonder why. I was fine this morning.
THERAPIST: Anything happen?
DANIEL: Not much. Let's see, I had lunch with a friend … yeah, there you go. I've been upset since Don … he's up for partner … thinks I'm totally insane for leaving. He was pretty harsh, I guess. Yeah, since then it's been dark cloud time.
THERAPIST: Want to explore this?
DANIEL: It's in my face—for sure.
THERAPIST: Imagery? Draw? Movement? Sand tray?
DANIEL: Draw, I guess, yeah, let's do it. (After twenty minutes drawing with colored crayons, he sits back, looking at what he drew.) Whew. There's my cloud. Worry, doubt, fear, you name it. Yeah, black and red. (Indicating drawing.) All this meshugaas. That says it. Don sure was supportive. (Ironic chuckle.) But I feel how “on” this new job is for me. I can't explain it. When they called, I knew it was my next step.
THERAPIST: Next step …
DANIEL: Sure, it's a big unknown. New type of law, big pay cut. No apartment in sight. But it's a no-brainer … like my river flows there.
Here we see Daniel encountering obstacles to his call—worry, doubt, fear—but again, obstacles are part of the call; they are stepping-stones on the journey rather than sidetracks from it. The encounter with obstacles or “resistances” invites clients and therapists—if they are willing—to walk with the prior stages of psychosynthesis. And, as always, therapists are encouraged to walk in spiritual empathy, allowing the client's own journey to unfold.
Over the course of therapy, Daniel found himself drawn to further examine his upsetting reactions to those opposed to his leaving the firm. In so doing, he realized that the reason this pressure affected him so intensely was that he was still unconsciously attached to the prestige of his current job—a survival stage dynamic. This attachment was continually being energized by others' negative comments about his choice and by their touting the benefits of the job, thus revealing an inner conflict between Daniel's attachment and his intended response to call. This took Daniel to earlier stages of psychosynthesis.
RETURNING TO EARLIER STAGES IN CONTACT AND RESPONSE
Examining his attachment to his prestigious job, Daniel discovered the inflated sense of self the job gave him, a sense of idealized success and acceptance in the eyes of his parents and society. Seeing through this inflation, he then entered a crisis of transformation as feelings of failure and loneliness emerged. Earlier primal wounding was now surfacing, wounding that the inflated identification—survival personality—had been helping him manage.
Entering into the exploration stage, Daniel was surprised to find himself dealing with grief for his brother who had died when Daniel was a teenager. Although he had grieved his brother's death at the time, Daniel now discovered a new depth of emptiness, anger, and helplessness that had not been touched then (lower unconscious). But in allowing this grieving, Daniel had a strong remembrance of his brother and the love of nature they had shared (higher unconscious). From early explorations of the hills around their home to later extended backpacking trips, their bond had involved a shared wonder for the natural world—a wonder that now figured into Daniel's new career path. His experiential range was expanding, his middle unconscious now including some of the heights and depths that had remained beyond his normal range of experience.
Continuing to be held in an empathic field, Daniel consciously decided to take active steps to nurture these newly uncovered dimensions of himself—the emergence of “I” stage. In an effort to facilitate his interrupted grief process, he chose to visit his brother's grave, to speak with family members about that time, and to acknowledge the anniversary of his brother's death. He also increasingly felt his love and wonder regarding the natural world, as well as his passion and commitment to protect and preserve it.
And a return to the contact stage occurred as well, as Daniel remembered with gratitude the family friend who was there for him when his parents were somewhat lost to him, caught up as they were in their own grief around the death of his brother. Daniel contacted that now-deceased friend in imaginary dialogue, opening himself again to the holding and comfort he had experienced from this person. He also sought out current friends and family members who understood his career choice, and he increased his spiritual practice. Authentic unifying centers increasingly supported his Self-realization.
And of course someone else in the response stage might not do any of the above—it all depends on where the individual feels called. Again, it is the spiritual empathy provided by the therapist that allows the therapist to walk with the client in whatever direction emerges.
PERSONAL AND TRANSPERSONAL WILL AT ODDS
In Daniel's case, his response to call was unwavering, abiding throughout the different inductions occurring in his personality. He was, in Assagioli's words, “eliminating, as much as possible, the obstacles and resistances inherent in [his] personality; by widening the channel of communication with the higher Self … and then letting the creative power of the Spirit act, trusting and obeying it” (Assagioli 2000, 23). In other words, Daniel experienced a strong alignment of personal and transpersonal will, emphasizing the unity of personal self and transpersonal Self.
There are, however, experiences in which personal will and transpersonal will seem out of alignment, when clients find themselves at odds with their own sense of what is right and good. Such a misalignment can be quite disturbing, as it was for eighteen-year-old Ashley:
ASHLEY: I'm totally bummed.
THERAPIST: What's up?
ASHLEY: It's embarrassing. (Long pause.) Okay, I got high last night and … I, I slept with Suzie's boyfriend. Well, ex-boyfriend, really. But I'm still like, weirded out. It's not like me.
THERAPIST: Want to talk about this?
ASHLEY: I guess. It feels so, so, wrong. I just have to tell her, you know. She's my best friend.
THERAPIST: Anything stopping you?
ASHLEY: Just … I'm scared.
THERAPIST: Scared of?
ASHLEY: Of her getting mad, I guess. But she'd be all, “Oh, I forgive you!” I just have to do it, that's all.
Here Ashley is experiencing a dissonance with her own sense of what is good, right, and true. This dissonance has two aspects. The first is a dissonance between her sense of personal identity and deeper Self—that is, a sense of shame (“embarrassing,” “it's not like me”). The second is a dissonance between her will and transpersonal will—that is, a sense of guilt (“It feels so, so wrong”). This is what Maslow called “real guilt,” a guilt that comes from “not being true to yourself, to your own fate in life, to your own intrinsic nature” (Maslow 1962, 114).
Ashley's shame and guilt are what we have termed authentic shame and authentic guilt in order to distinguish them from survival shame (low self-esteem, worthlessness) and survival guilt (judgment, blame) that derive from dissonance with the survival unifying center (Firman and Gila 1997). It is important to make this distinction because these types of experience are addressed in different ways.
Authentic shame and guilt are resolved as the person realigns personal will with transpersonal will, usually by taking inner or outer action to make amends in some way—as in our example, Ashley telling her friend. On the other hand, survival guilt and shame usually involve an exploration of the childhood wounding underlying the survival structures. And of course, there can be a mixture of the two types to be sorted out as well.
As part of Ashley's response to Self, she might find herself following a number of different directions in therapy depending on what issues are inducted by her decision. For example, she might begin to recognize that she habitually uses alcohol in problematic ways and choose to address this in survival stage work. Or her fear might emerge as a major obstacle, leading her into the exploration of her early relationship with a raging, unpredictable mother.
Subsequently she might enter the emergence stage as well by making changes in her life that allow her to include the wounded, sensitive, and more vulnerable aspects of herself. Finally she might return to the contact stage by consulting with internal or external authentic unifying centers—friends, family, religion, support group—regarding her choice to talk to her friend.
Thus the response stage is ultimately about acting from the underlying unity of “I” and Self. Here we seek to act in union with our deeper sense of meaning and purpose in the concrete specifics of our daily lives. But there is another possible issue in the response stage that needs to be addressed.
THE CRYSTALLIZATION OF RESPONSE
There are individuals who respond to an authentic sense of call but then have this response create a formation in the personality that becomes problematical. In these cases, the person's commitment to the call devolves into survival personality, and what was once a free response of the whole person becomes an identification limited to only a portion of the personality. This happened to Shana.
Shana, a member of a minority group, grew up with a keen awareness of the discrimination and injustice in society. She reported that in her late twenties she experienced a profound union with God and felt a strong call to work against some of these injustices. She joined a group committed to social justice and over the next ten years became a leader in this work. Here is a key part of her session:
SHANA: I hate to admit … I'm exhausted. Burned out. I feel bad.
THERAPIST: Bad?
SHANA: Yes. The work is so important, you know, the world needs it so much. When I think of all the suffering, the oppression … how can I not serve?
THERAPIST: What do you wish for yourself in this?
SHANA: I'm not sure. Well, to have infinite energy, ideally … but that's not realistic. So I don't know, maybe some balance. Time for myself?
THERAPIST: How would that be?
SHANA: Part of me would be overjoyed. I'd get back to regular meditation, read those books piling up on my nightstand. But wham—part of me is right here, “That's selfish, not compassionate. I'll let people at the Center down. What about The Struggle?” Whew. My server part, I guess. I feel like a bad little girl.
THERAPIST: How do you respond to the server part?
SHANA: If we keep going like this, there won't be any service. (Sighs.)
THERAPIST: And the server part?
SHANA: Umm … she says, “What about that night, when you were so close to God? How can we turn away from that?” Yes, that was powerful. Changed my life. You know. But burning out, what good is that? That's not loving kindness, right?
THERAPIST: And the server?
SHANA: She's getting it. “Maybe you have a point.” (Chuckles.) She says, “Maybe we could even serve better if we took some time!” That's the server for you. But I do feel some peace just talking about it.
THERAPIST: Anything God wants to say?
SHANA: “Remember, it's not all your job.”
Initially Shana's burnout issue presented as an obstacle to her calling to serve. As she explored this, she discovered a psychological structure that had in effect co-opted her call and response. What had begun as an authentic response of her whole being to her deepest sense of truth had over time become organized within a part of herself, the “server part,” which then in effect placed her response to Self at odds with other aspects of her personality. The burnout experience was not caused by her service per se, but by an intense inner conflict resulting from her attempt to live from a small part of who she was—the server subpersonality—and to suppress other important aspects of her personality.
So Shana's situation began in authentic contact and response, but over time had shifted into a survival pattern underpinned by wounding—her words “I feel like a bad little girl” indicated that childhood wounding was being touched. As she began to disidentify and disentrance from this survival mode, the wounding was able to emerge and she subsequently engaged this in therapy, bringing compassion and healing to that earlier, younger level in herself.
Technically Shana had moved over time from the response stage back to the survival stage, from stage four to stage zero. Her survival personality had subsumed her most profound experience of Spirit and calling, forming what can be called a transpersonal identification (Firman and Gila 2002). A transpersonal identification is basically the survival personality integrating higher experiences and using these as it uses everything—to protect the person from early primal wounding. That is its job, a crucial and life-saving job during traumatic times; we can be grateful for this even as we work to free ourselves from the control of these patterns.4
In effect, Shana was called through her experience of burnout to uncover this transpersonal identification that had developed incrementally over time, and so to reestablish a more conscious relationship with Spirit. In her response to this call, she examined her burnout—the apparent obstacle on her path—finding this was a stepping-stone on her unfolding journey.
Shana's journey illustrates once again that our relationship to Self abides though all the stages of psychosynthesis. The stages of contact and response simply indicate a more conscious and intentional expression of this abiding union with Self. The fundamental transcendent-immanent union of “I” and Self is present and operative through the struggles of survival, the adventure of exploration, and the freedom of emergence.
THE SELF-REALIZATION HYPOTHESIS
The fact that contact and response can be seen—however dimly—in the other stages of psychosynthesis brings up an important point for the understanding and expression of altruistic love: every human being is in union with Self, and so with each other and the world. At the deepest level this is who we are and what we seek to realize. Everyone. Even our worst enemies.
This view is what might be called the Self-realization hypothesis: Everyone is on the path of Self-realization, however distorted and broken this path may appear. Whether we are infant or elder, saint or sinner, ill or well, believer or unbeliever, our lives are ultimately about realizing and expressing this unitive love that underpins our being.
The Self-realization hypothesis can be found in the work of a number of psychological thinkers. For example, William James (1961) believed that alcoholism was an expression of the spiritual quest, an insight extended by Christina Grof (1993) as a spiritual “thirst for wholeness” that drives addictions. We make a similar analysis in our first two books (Firman and Gila 1997; 2002), considering patterns of addiction, compulsivity, and psychological disturbances as attempts to integrate the higher and lower unconscious.
In the field of psychoanalysis, Christopher Bollas (1987) saw the hope for transformational experience (the quest for the “transformational object”) driving the pursuit of the perfect partner, the compulsivity of the gambler, the repetition of traumatic events, and even the criminal's search for the perfect crime. And the Jungian James Hillman (1996) affirms the fundamental experience of call (the “soul's code”) even though it may lead to psychological disorders and even antisocial behavior.
As stated earlier, within humanistic psychology, Rogers' notion of the actualizing tendency clearly indicates a deep call to actualization that “exists in every individual” even though “deeply buried under layer after layer of encrusted psychological defenses” (Rogers 1961, 350–1). More recently, Arthur Bohart and Robert Rosenbaum claim that a person is always seeking to “orchestrate” or “compose” his or her life and that the therapist needs to recognize and support this positive thrust even as the person struggles with creative “forms” that are painful and destructive:
Appreciating the client in the sense of sensing and relating to the “good form” implicit in their struggle to organize and compose their lives becomes a major therapeutic interaction. Any personal organization can be carried forward in productive, or unproductive ways. We can think of where the client is as a kind of “rough draft” that can be sharpened in positive or negative ways. The therapist relates to the potential good form (i.e., where the client is trying to go in a positive sense) in the client's model and thereby facilitates the client to help him or herself carry it forward. “Interventions” then become ways of responding from such an appreciation—a way of expressing that appreciation. As such, “interventions” are fundamentally grounded in empathy. (Bohart and Rosenbaum 1995, 10)
Finally, Huston Smith powerfully expresses the Self-realization hypothesis as the search for being:
Even the addict who prowls the streets for his angry “fix” and the assassin who stalks his fated prey are reaching out for being. The alleys that they walk are blind ones; judged in terms of the larger being they preclude or the damage they work on the being of others they stand condemned. But if it were possible to consider the cocaine's “rush” by itself, apart from its consequences, it would be judged good; the same holds for the satisfaction that sweeps over the assassin as he effects his revenge. (Smith 1976, 77)
Each and every human being is seeking good, even if that search is taking distorted and destructive forms. The Self-realization hypothesis thus supports our loving others and so our working with them in love. No matter what people are doing, we can know they are somehow, in some way, seeking to realize Self. This does not mean we enable addiction, condone criminality, or allow people to use or abuse us; it means that we can love those caught in these behaviors—even while we help them address the behaviors—knowing they are ultimately attempting to realize our mutual union in Spirit.
Also, quite practically, the Self-realization hypothesis can at times lead to our helping clients discover this deeper motivation beneath their painful patterns and destructive behaviors. Over time, the person struggling with addiction may find this is an attempt to manage the anxiety from childhood abuse and to achieve connection and intimacy; the person trapped in a painful pattern of thought and behavior may find this is underpinned by early emotional abandonment and a search for a sense of safety and holding; even antisocial behavior may be revealed as the person's best effort to find a sense of individuality and belonging to counter an inner helplessness and isolation created by nonempathic environments.
Of course these are not simple, easy realizations for those suffering in these ways, and may involve a long struggle with the painful consequences of their attitudes and behavior. And yes, some apparently never awaken from entrancement to consciously touch this deeper loving ground of existence in a stable way. Nevertheless, the Self-realization hypothesis holds that altruistic love is the reality underlying all of life, no matter how broken and seemingly hopeless life may seem.
In fact, we believe that anyone called to the path of being a psychotherapist is most likely acting from the Self-realization hypothesis to some extent. How else do we explain people capable of loving the unlovable, hoping for the hopeless, ministering to the incurable, and discerning the spark of human spirit even in the most desperate situations?
We have now come full circle. This book has been written in support of those called to the vocation of psychotherapy as an expression of altruistic, empathic love. We have hoped to show that from many different viewpoints and disciplines this love can be viewed as the healing and nurturing factor operating in psychotherapy. Let us in closing examine where we have come in revealing psychosynthesis as a psychology of love and then address the therapists called to love in this way.