1. Recently, a psychology of love has been strongly called for by writers within the new field of positive psychology (Hendrick and Hendrick 2005), an approach that focuses on the positive aspects of human beings:
What is more important than love for a happy human life? Our answer is “nothing is more important,” and in this response we advocate love as being a centerpiece of positive psychology. (472)
The study of love needs to become a priority for researchers and funding agencies in the near future. One need only look around to understand that love already is a priority for much of humanity. (480)
2. And this from psychiatrist and well-known author Irvin D. Yalom:
Today, a half century later, [Carl] Rogers' therapeutic approach seems so right, so self-evident, and so buttressed by decades of psychotherapy research that it is difficult to appreciate the intensity of these battles or even to comprehend what they were all about. Experienced therapists today agree that the crucial aspect of therapy, as Rogers grasped early in his career, is the therapeutic relationship. Of course, it is imperative that the therapist relate genuinely to the patient—the more the therapist becomes a real person and avoids self-protective or professional masks or roles, the more the patient will reciprocate and change in a constructive direction. Of course, the therapist should accept the patient nonjudgmentally and unconditionally. And, of course, the therapist must enter empathically into the private world of the client. (Yalom 1980, ix–x)
(See also Bohart and Greenberg 1997; Lewis, Amini, and Lannon 2001; Moursund and Kenny 2002.)
3. See the different forms of love outlined in, for example, Assagioli 1973b; Hendrick and Hendrick 2005; Lewis 1960; May 1969.
1. Assagioli introduces his model as a way of bringing “coordination and synthesis” to the findings from a number of disparate psychological and spiritual approaches, in a way attempting to discern the nature of the human being as revealed by the “lenses” of these different schools. His integral model of the personality thus attempts to take into account nine viewpoints, with the caveat: “This enumeration is merely indicative; the list of the investigators is very incomplete and apologies are made to those not mentioned” (Assagioli 2000, 14). Here is an edited version of Assagioli's list:
Having presented this “indicative” and “incomplete” list, Assagioli continues:
If we assemble ascertained facts, positive and well-authenticated contributions and well-founded interpretations, ignoring the exaggerations and theoretical superstructures of the various schools, we arrive at a pluridimensional conception of the human personality which, though far from perfect or final, is, we think, more inclusive and nearer to reality than previous formulations. (Assagioli 2000, 14)
2. Assagioli also illustrates this process with the example of learning to drive an automobile:
When he was learning to drive, these operations demanded much conscious attention and effort on his part, but as he became more proficient at them, he performed the mechanics of driving with less and less conscious intervention. This subconscious control is usually described as an automatic process. But this is misleading if the term “automatic” is taken to mean something fixed and rigid; on the contrary, in this case we have intelligent action continuously being modified in accordance with information received by sight, hearing, and kinesthetic data. And fully conscious action can be resumed at any moment, at will, if needed. (Assagioli 1973b, 190)
3. Speaking neurobiologically, the loss of aspects of ourselves in trauma can be couched in terms of dissociated neural networks:
When we are overwhelmed by traumatic experiences, our brains lose the ability to maintain neural integration across the various networks dedicated to behavior, emotion, sensation, and conscious awareness. When memories are stored in sensory and emotional networks but are dissociated from those that organize cognition, knowledge, and perspective, we become vulnerable to intrusions of past experience that are triggered by environmental and internal cues. (Cozolino 2006, 32)
It might also be said that what we shall call survival personality and survival unifying center in the next chapter form a strong neural circuit, an “attractor” or “attractor state” (Lewis, Amini, and Lannon 2001; Siegel 1999), which narrows the “window of tolerance.” Here experiences that lie outside the window will cause destabilization in the system leading to experiences of “flooding” in which a person's normal functioning is attenuated.
4. This list is taken from the sheet “Transpersonal Qualities” (Anonymous 1970). Maslow (Maslow 1962; 1971) called such qualities “being values” and “being cognitions,” and they can been seen in Richard Bucke's (1967) “cosmic consciousness”; in those moments William James (1961) studied as “varieties of religious experience”; in what Marghanita Laski (1968) explored as “ecstasy”; and in the “peak experiences” researched by Maslow.
5. Although never discussed by Assagioli, we view the formation of the higher and lower unconscious as a form of splitting of positive and negative “object relations.” These object relations might be conceptualized as (a) a positive personality (idealized inflated sense of self, “idealized ego”) that is in relationship with a positive unifying center (idealized spiritual source, “idealized object”) forming the higher unconscious; and (b) a negative personality (wounded victim, underdog, “bad ego”) that is in relationship with a negative unifying center (shaming critic, inner perpetrator, “bad object”) forming the lower unconscious. As pointed out by Chris Meriam (1994), these structures may be seen to condition in turn the formation of various types of subpersonalities in the middle unconscious as well. See our detailed discussion of splitting in The Primal Wound (Firman and Gila 1997).
6. We elect most often to use the term “I” rather than “personal self,” reserving the word “self” for higher or transpersonal Self. This is helpful in clarifying the distinction between “I” and Self as well as avoiding the confusing proliferation of “selves” that can occur in personality theories, for example, “observing self,” “emotional self,” “physical self,” ad infinitum.
7. Here we are using Assagioli's exercise of “Self-Identification” rather than his “Exercise in Dis-identification.” The reason for this is that the latter exercise is not based on objective inner observation but on making intellectual statements or affirmations about the nature of what is observed—“I have a body but I am not my body. I have my feelings but I am not my feelings. I have thoughts but I am not my thoughts.” Such affirmations go beyond pure introspection, impose a belief system on the experience, and are prone to introducing an element of dissociation from experience (Firman 1991; O'Regan 1984).
8. This level of disidentification can be seen in Roger Walsh's account of an experience during meditation:
The first experience occurred during a moment or two of special clarity in which I was observing—in what I thought to be a non-identified manner—the rising of thoughts. However, I suddenly noticed that I was in fact identifying with, and hence unaware of, certain thoughts, mainly “I” thoughts, e.g., “I'm not identified with any of these thoughts.” Having seen this process, I was able to observe without identification at least some of these “I” thoughts, although obviously I cannot say what percentage of them, since identification with them renders them impossible to observe. Immediately there followed a powerful awareness accompanied by intense emotion that “I” did not exist, and all that existed were “I” thoughts following rapidly one after another. Almost simultaneously the thought, “My God, there's no one there!” arose, and my consciousness reverted back to its accustomed state. (Walsh 1978, 7)
Here the transcendent aspect of “I” initially allowed a disidentification from “I thoughts.” Immediately following this disidentification, the immanent aspect of “I” allowed an engagement with a new experience—the awareness “I do not exist.” The transcendent-immanent nature of “I” allowed a movement from an experience of existing as “I thoughts” to the experience of not existing at all. In psychosynthesis terms, “I” is the one who had both of these experiences.
Psychiatrist and transpersonal thinker Arthur Deikman might consider Walsh's experience a realization of the distinction between the “observing self” and the “objective self” (the “I thoughts”). Deikman makes the same point about the persistence of the observing self even in such an experience of noself: “Once again, the voice in the night declares that there is no voice in the night. ‘He knows ‘I am’ to be a misconception.’ Who knows that?” (Deikman 1982, 141).
This type of noself experience may also be said to give an experience of “nonduality”—a transcendence of the subject-object duality—in contrast to a “dual” sense of self as separate from the objects of experience. Like Deikman, Judith Blackstone, a writer on nondual experience, points to the persistence of “personal subjectivity” in such experiences—quite akin to what we are calling “I”:
We can feel that we are as much the tree or the lamp or the person facing us as we are our own self, but at the same time, we are always our own self, our own personal subjectivity. For example, we cannot perceive the room from the perspective of the other person, or get up and leave the room as the other person. As nondual consciousness we do not experience ourselves as separate from our experience, we are suffused in the stimuli of the present moment, and yet we are still experiencing and knowing. We experience ourselves as transparent, dissolved in empty space, and yet it is our own subjectivity that experiences this. (Blackstone 2006, 31)
As these writers indicate, it seems clear that if one were truly nonexistent in moments of noself or nonduality there would be no one present to engage the experience, no one there to experience anything at all. Assagioli elected to use the term “I” to refer to the “who” who can have such experiences.
9. Assagioli made his point abundantly clear:
This Self is above, and unaffected by, the flow of the mind-stream or by bodily conditions; and the personal conscious self should be considered merely as its reflection, its “projection” in the field of the personality. (Assagioli 2000, 17)
The reflection [“I”] 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)
… the personal conscious self or “I,” which should be considered merely as the reflection of the spiritual Self, its projection, in the field of the personality. (Assagioli 2000, 34)
These cases conform to the conception of the self as a projection of a higher Self. (Assagioli 2000, 68)
10. Some in the field elect to preserve the earlier rendering of Self, although even they agree that the abiding presence of Self throughout all levels must nevertheless be made quite clear (Djukic 1997; Marabini and Marabini 1996).
11. Early psychosynthesis thinker James Vargiu recognized that Self eludes objectification and conceptualization: “But the transcendent nature of the Self [and of ‘I’] places it beyond the power of understanding of the concrete mind, and consequently beyond the possibility of describing it with words. The only recourse is to describe what the Self is not” (Vargiu 1973, 7).
12. Assagioli writes of Self-realization, “This is the realization of the Self, the experience and awareness of the synthesizing spiritual Center” (Assagioli 2000, 34). And he is quite clear that this Self-realization is different from experiences of the higher unconscious: “Spiritual awakening and spiritual realization are something different from conscious awareness of the Self. They include various kinds of awareness of superconscious contents” (Assagioli 2000, 34). However, he does tend to conceptually confuse Self-realization with the integration of higher unconscious contents:
There are two main ways of arriving at spiritual psychosynthesis: One could be called the abrupt, dramatic way, as seen in cases of religious conversion and in the forms of sudden illumination or awakening—and the latter is the technique used in an extreme way by Zen-Buddhism. But in many cases, and perhaps at present in the majority of cases, there is instead a gradual development from the integrated personality towards the inclusion of superconscious elements, a gradual approach of the personal self-consciousness towards the spiritual Self, from self-identity in the personal sense to spiritual realization. (Assagioli 2000, 166–167, emphasis added)
Although otherwise quite clear that Self-realization can occur without higher unconscious content (Assagioli 2000, 183), this passage mixes Self-realization with “the inclusion of superconscious elements.” This confusion is one of the problems with placing Self at the top of the oval-shaped diagram, giving the impression that the path toward Self leads “vertically” through the higher unconscious.
1. Daniel Stern, inspired by his study of infant research, describes precisely such a “layered model” of development:
In contrast to the conventional stage model(s) whereby each successive phase of development not only replaces the preceding one but also essentially dismantles it, reorganizing the entire perspective, the layered model postulated here assumes a progressive accumulation of senses of the self, socioaffective competencies, and ways-of-being-with-others. No emerging domain disappears; each remains active and interacts dynamically with all the others. In fact, each domain facilitates the emergence of the ones that follow. In this way, all senses of self, all socioaffective competencies, and all ways-of-being-with-others remain with us throughout the life span, whereas according to the stage model, earlier developmental organization can be accessed only by means of a process-like regression. (Stern 1985, xii, emphasis added)
2. In the language of neuroscience,
Secure attachments and sense of a safe world create the context for the development of the true self … [that] reflects neural integration and access across modes of information processing, and an awareness of the difference between reflexive and reflective forms of language. The true self embodies an open and ongoing dialogue among the heart, the mind, and the body. (Cozolino 2002, 198)
3. For more about the types and functions of unifying centers, see Firman and Gila (1997; 2000).
4. For more on empathy inducing empathy, see Godfrey T. Barrett-Lennard (1997).
5. This is a common view of many religious and philosophical systems, but can be seen too in Kohut's concept of “cosmic narcissism” that “transcends the bounds of the individual” by “participation in a supraindividual and timeless existence” leading to a “quiet, superior stance which enables him to contemplate his own end philosophically” (Kohut 1985, 119–120).
6. This internal unifying center would be called an “internalized object” or “object representation” in object relations theory, or, in Winnicott's terms, it is the formation of an “internal environment” conditioned by the external empathic holding environment (Winnicott 1987, 34). This same process is described by Kohut as “transmuting internalization”—“the acquisition of permanent psychological structures which continue, endopsychically, the functions which the idealizing self-object had previously fulfilled” (Kohut 1971, 45).
Such internalization of relationship involves the type of phenomenon called “schemata” (Piaget 1976; Piaget and Inhelder 1967); “internal working models of self and attachment figures” (Bowlby 1973; 1988); and “representations of interactions that have been generalized” (Stern 1985). In neuroscience, the notion of internal unifying centers can be understood as neural circuits within the brain that are “sculpted” by connections with attachment figures: “Because mammals need relatedness for their neurophysiology to coalesce correctly, most of what makes a socially functional human comes from connection—the shaping physiologic force of love” (Lewis, Amini, and Lannon 2001, 218).
7. We should note that Assagioli, while maintaining that the potency of the external unifying center “should not be underrated,” considered that the functioning of such a center “does not represent the most direct way or the highest achievement” (Assagioli 2000, 22). This statement is understandable because he did not develop his concept of unifying center to include internal unifying centers (nor of course our other subsequent expansions of his unifying center notion, such as authentic unifying center and survival unifying center). Without including an understanding of this internalization process, one would be in effect “stuck” with the external unifying center as the sole source of empathic mirroring—not an optimum situation, as Assagioli points out.
8. Note that this annihilation is not the noself, selflessness, or ego-transcendence referred to by many spiritual traditions, but an actual assault on our spiritual nature, our essential I-amness. In fact, it takes an empathically nurtured sense of “I” to experience the surrender and no-thingness found in spiritual practice. Primal wounding is an assault on our ability to live, move, and have our being, creating experiences of unbearable anxiety, guilt, shame, isolation, fragmentation, and abandonment.
9. Many thinkers have recognized what we are calling primal wounding and the experiences of nonbeing associated with it. As we have seen, primal wounding is akin to what Winnicott (1987) calls the “annihilation of personal being” or simply “annihilation.” Similarly, Kohut (1977) speaks of “unnamable dread” and “disintegration anxiety” arising from the “danger of the dissolution of the self.” In a like way, the psychoanalyst Michael Balint (1968) describes what he calls “the basic fault” characterized by feelings of “emptiness, being lost, deadness, futility,” which are caused by a “lack of ‘fit’ between the child and the people who represent his environment.”
We can also recognize primal wounding in the thought of Erich Neumann. Neumann talks about a break in the child's “primal relationship” with the mother/Self that then causes the anxious experience of “hunger, pain, emptiness, cold, helplessness, utter loneliness, loss of all security and shelteredness … a headlong fall into the forsakenness and fear of the bottomless void” (Neumann 1973, 75).
Following the likes of philosophers Søren Kierkegaard and Martin Heidegger, existential psychology has from the beginning maintained a focus on nonbeing and its accompanying existential anxiety. For example, Rollo May (1977) describes anxiety as “the realization that one may cease to exist as a self,” and, following theologian Paul Tillich, called this the “threat of nonbeing.”
Another existential psychotherapist, Ludwig Binswanger, states that anxiety is caused by a broken continuity between self and world, leading to “the delivery of the existence to nothingness—the intolerable, dreadful, ‘naked horror’”—a vivid description of nonbeing arising from a break in relationship (Binswanger 1958, 205). Existentialist concepts such as anxiety, nothingness, anguish, angst, and dread, all point to a perception of the nonbeing underlying human life caused by the break between the individual and his world (May, Angel, and Ellenberger 1958).
Within humanistic psychology, Abraham Maslow (1962) points to broken relationship as the cause of an anxiety that cripples human growth. He sees this wound in terms of the “primal, terrifying danger” created by the parents not meeting the child's fundamental needs for safety and belongingness. Without this basic secure connection, the child's “inner Being” or “Self” will be lost, yielding to a “pseudo-self” and “pseudo-growth.”
Lastly, within the field of transpersonal psychology, see Michael Washburn's “wound that exposes the ego to a terrifying ‘black hole’ at the seat of the soul” (Wash-burn 1994, 26); Tom Yeomans' notion of the soul wound (Yeomans 1999); Mark Epstein's “gnawing sense of emptiness” caused by parental neglect (Epstein 1995); and John Welwood's “core wound” caused by “the disconnection from our own being” (Welwood 2000). See also our further discussion of the primal wound (Firman and Gila 1997).
10. In neuroscience terms it might be put like this:
Both the internal neural architecture of the social brain and co-constructed narratives come to reflect the needs of the parent; the growth of the child's self is put on temporary or permanent hold. Constant vigilance to the environment thwarts the organization of a coherent subjective perspective and ongoing sense of self. (Cozolino 2002, 199)
11. Our three dimensions of survival follow Arthur Deikman (1982) and Charles Tart (1987) in incorporating the work of Ronald Shor (1965) to describe their notions of “the trance of ordinary life” and “consensus trance: the sleep of everyday life,” respectively.
Shor, working in the field of hypnosis, outlines the factors that create a strongly hypnotized subject, delineating “three dimensions of hypnotic depth.” The first of these is “hypnotic role-taking involvement” corresponding to our identification with survival personality. In this process, hypnotic subjects cooperate with the hypnotist by beginning to act the role of someone hypnotized, which then becomes unconscious.
The second dimension of hypnotic depth Shor terms simply “trance,” our notion of entrancement in the survival trance. By trance he means a loss of the hypnotic subject's sense of a larger reality (the “generalized reality orientation”) such that the subject's immediate reality becomes narrowed to the immediate hypnotic situation.
Shor's third dimension is “archaic involvement,” which is akin to our concept of attachment to a survival unifying center, in which there is a transference onto the hypnotist of the dependent, open, trusting relationship one had with parents as an infant.
Shor's summation of these three dimensions of hypnotic depth is an apt and chilling description of the human condition, Assagioli's “fundamental infirmity of man” described later in this chapter, and the essence of the survival orientation:
When depth is profound along all three dimensions, a situation exists with the following characteristics: (a) the role-enactments have permeated down to nonconscious levels; (b) the hypnotic happenings become phenomenologically the only possible “reality” for the moment; (c) intense, archaic object relations are formed onto the person of the hypnotist; (d) in general, all classic hypnotic phenomena can be produced. (Shor 1965, 314)
It seems quite significant that Shor's three dimensions of hypnotic depth were employed by both Deikman and Tart independently to explicate their analysis of the larger cultural trance, and that these dimensions are so applicable to psychosynthesis thought as well.
12. Teacher, counselor, and social activist Raúl Quiñones Rosado, in his important study of oppression and liberation, writes:
However, given the pervasiveness of the culture of oppression within the social environment, it is not surprising that socialization results in negative self-image, limiting self-concept, low self-esteem, and lack of self-love for subordinated group members. Conversely, for dominant group members the process results in a positive, albeit, distorted self-image, exaggerated self-concept, inflated self-esteem, and narcissism, particularly when considered relative to subordinated counterparts. From an integral perspective, one must say dominant group members are also negatively impacted. (Quiñones Rosado 2007, 84, emphasis in original)
13. Here is economist E. F. Schumacher:
Most of our life is spent in some kind of thralldom; we are captivated by this or that, drift along in our captivity, and carry out programs which have been lodged in our machine, we do not know how, when, or by whom. (Schumacher 1977, 68)
Psychiatrist Arthur Deikman:
Most persons who stop to observe their thoughts, concerns, and desires become aware that they pass most of their time in a sleep of fantasy—a trance—even if, at the same time, they are consciously pursuing practical goals. (Deikman 1982, 126)
Psychologist Charles Tart:
About one-third of our lives is spent at the level of nocturnal sleeping and dreaming, the remaining two-thirds in consensus trance. (Tart 1987, 213)
See also our treatment of the survival trance in our two earlier works (Firman and Gila 1997; 2002).
1. And again, neuroscience might describe this principle in terms of the “physiologic force of love,” the relational shaping of neural networks: “When a limbic connection has established a neural pattern, it takes a limbic connection to revise it” (Lewis, Amini, and Lannon 2001, 177).
2. See Bohart and Greenberg (1997) for a superb exposition of empathy within a variety of different schools.
3. A neurobiological basis for empathy is currently supported by discoveries such as “limbic resonance,” “mirror neurons,” “adaptive oscillators,” “mindsight,” and “right-hemisphere-to-right-hemisphere communication.” Limbic resonance is “a symphony of mutual exchange and internal adaptation whereby two mammals become attuned to each other's inner states” (Lewis, Amini, and Lannon 2001, 63). Mirror neurons are neurons that fire in resonance to the behavior of the other, allowing one to sense the experience of the other without actually performing the behavior (Winerman 2005). Adaptive oscillators are neurological mechanisms that may support resonance and synchronization between people, allowing participation “in an aspect of the other's experience” and “partially living from the other's center” (Stern 2004, 80–81). Mindsight is a term for the “ability to detect that another person has a mind with a focus of attention, an intention, and an emotional state” mediated by the “right orbitofrontal cortex” (Siegel 1999, 200–201). Finally, Allan Schore (2003) believes communication between the right brains of individuals is key in recognizing the internal state of another, empathic resonance, attachment, and the development of the self system.
4. Jerold D. Bozarth has asserted a much closer relationship among Rogers' three conditions, a perspective quite like what we are suggesting in our term “spiritual empathy.” He writes, “Empathy in client-centered theory is a concept that is integrally integrated with the conditions of congruency and unconditional positive regard,” and, “The empathic and unconditional acceptance is, in essence, the same experience” (Bozarth 1997, 98).
5. The deep connection between empathy and altruism has been studied as the “empathy-altruism hypothesis” (Batson et al. 2005).
6. All the cases and examples presented throughout this book are highly disguised: the client's name is not the true name; the gender of client and therapist may or may not be correct; there are elements of cases that have been borrowed from other cases (again in disguised forms); the cases themselves are not necessarily those of the authors; and quoted dialogues may be paraphrases of the originals. In other words, any resemblance with a specific individual will be completely coincidental.
7. Yes, there are resistances that are not caused by therapists. But these resistances are simply some part of the client—a fear, an anger, a need, a subpersonality—that needs to emerge as part of the client's ongoing unfolding.
For example, Cindy can be seen as resisting letting go of her stress. But this resistance is not something to push past or break through; it is simply a part of her who does not wish to lose the stress as a motivator and so be abandoned by her father and be seen as a “failure.” Rather than pushing past such a resistance it is important to explore this, to empathically connect to the fearful part of her. This type of resistance is not then seen as an obstacle to the process but instead as the next step in the process.
In our work, we seldom use the term “resistance” for this type of dynamic because the term not only has a pejorative connotation but it obscures what is actually happening—there is an unconscious aspect of the person emerging that is the next step on the journey.
8. Practitioners of various spiritual disciplines are sometimes prone to treating survival patterns—“cravings and aversions”—as mere mistakes in consciousness rather than deeply rooted personality structures protecting and managing early wounding. This can lead to treating themselves and others with a nonempathic, authoritarian attitude in hopes that these “illusions” may simply be broken through or dispelled. Here is practitioner and teacher Judith Blackstone voicing this concern:
The lack of refined psychological understanding sometimes results in a lack of compassion toward these states, as can be seen in the attitude of some psychotherapy clients who are also practitioners of Asian religion. They have been taught that since cravings and aversions are not ultimately “true,” they must simply be eradicated or ignored. But, as most psychotherapists know, compassion and acceptance are required for revealing the memories of childhood vulnerability and pain that are embedded in transference behaviors. (Blackstone 2007, 65)
Here the spiritual aspirant is placed in the same resist-or-submit dilemma faced by anyone confronting a survival unifying center demanding a break in one's continuity of being.
9. In one empathy study, participants reported increased “personal agency,” a “redefined sense of self,” and a “renewed sense of being-in-the-world,” the researcher concluding: “When people feel that they are being understood for ‘who they are,’ they have potential to respond by being who they really are, getting to know more of who they really are, and coming to accept and love who they really are” (Myers 2003, 101).
1. Psychoanalyst Alfred Margulies (1989) recognizes this same death and rebirth of the therapist in empathy, tracing this process not only in psychoanalysis (Freud) and existential psychology (Ellenberger, May) but in phenomenology (Husserl, Merleau-Ponty) and the creative process (Keats, Shakespeare). He writes:
The analyst requires of himself or herself the subjugation of usual modes of human interaction, an abstinence imposed by the demands of the method.
This negation of self by the therapist involves a kind of self-aggression: to submerge oneself, to submit to not-knowing, and to put oneself aside. (14)
and
Elsewhere Havens and I (1981) have written of two broad steps toward the goal of sharing the world of the other. The first step is a proscription: “the setting aside of expectations or presuppositions, the avoidance of concluding about the patient” (423). The second step is empathy, the “imaginative projection of one's own consciousness into another being” (Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, 5th Ed). (15–16)
2. This notion that what human beings truly fear is annihilation or nonbeing, and that the much-touted “fear of death” is actually a projection of this fear onto physical death, has been voiced within the field of transpersonal psychology (Loy 1992). However, the “annihilation” referred to by these writers seems to be simply an insight into the transcendence-immanence of “I”—the realization that “I” am not an object of consciousness, that “I” am a “no-thing” that cannot be grasped.
We would say rather that the fear of annihilation is a direct product of primal wounding, and that this fear may then be projected onto physical death or the nothing-ness of “I” (or onto something else entirely as in phobias and paranoid delusions). The terror of annihilation is not some mental mistake; it is a product of oppressive forces in the environment that profoundly shape the psyche and soma—this is not some illusion to be easily dispelled, but can only be healed by a journey of empathic love guided by Self, a journey whose timing cannot be rushed by human design.
3. Bohart and Tallman put it this way:
A shared context of understanding allows the therapist to sensitively time the suggestion of a technique and the client to perceive how to use it and how it might be relevant to what the client is focusing on. In essence, the therapist is handing the client the right tool at the right time as the client engages in his or her active search. (Bohart and Tallman 1997, 406)
4. The importance of therapists “learning to not know” in this way has also been described within the mindfulness approach to psychotherapy (Germer, Siegel, and Fulton 2005, 70–72).
5. Maureen O'Hara (1997) puts forth a strong argument that psychology can move beyond a focus on an “egocentric” understanding of empathy—a focus on the individuals involved—to a study of “sociocentric” or “relational” empathy that recognizes the fundamental unity within which individuals live, move, and have their being. She quotes British biologist J. B. S. Haldane: “If the cooperation of some thousands of millions of cells in our brain can produce our consciousness, the idea becomes vastly more plausible that the cooperation of humanity, or some part of it, may determine what Compte calls a ‘Great Being’” (316). Bryan Wittine describes much the same dynamic:
Insofar as we view our clients egoically, we tend to see them as separate individuals different from ourselves. Insofar as we awaken to transpersonal identity, however, we also experience our essential unity with all human beings and living things. In the eyes of a therapist on a path of self-realization, therefore, the person seated opposite the therapist is not just a constellation of personal characteristics; he or she also becomes an individualized expression of the Self we share. (Wittine 1993, 168–169)
1. As Bohart and Greenberg put it, empathic exploration “can lead to sensitive interpretations that help clients access unconscious experience” and “includes a resonant grasping of the ‘edges’ or implicit aspects of a client's experience to help create new meaning” (Bohart and Greenberg 1997, 5). Even more to the point, in speaking of Rogers' empathic client-centered approach, these authors say Rogers was strengthening two client skills: “(a) the skill of empathically listening to the self and allowing in previously disowned aspects of experience and (b) the ability to reflect on the self (analogous to the observing ego in psychoanalytic theory)” (433).
2. Our concept of empathic resonance is quite like the concept of empathic resonance offered by Bohart and Rosenbaum (1995):
Empathy in this model is resonance. While others have spoken of empathy as resonance, they have typically equated resonance with “having the same feelings as the client.” Yet this is a more narrow meaning of “resonance” than the word implies. One can resonate with another person's experience without having the same feelings.
Resonance is therefore a broader concept than has heretofore been proposed for empathy. Resonance is based metaphorically on the idea of two strings resonating with one another. In general we shall use artistic metaphors to convey what we mean. As a matter of resonance, empathy involves “tuning oneself to the same wave length,” as the client, to “vibrating together.” It is neither the process of “imagining oneself into the other”; cognitively trying to perceive the world as they perceive them; nor trying to feel their feelings, or intuit their feelings. Both of these are content-focused. They rely on a model of empathy as a “jumping the gap” between two monadic, isolated individuals, whose worlds are fundamentally unknown to one another, a perspective that is being challenged by many, including client-centered theorists (Barrett-Lennard 1993; Bohart 1993; O'Hara 1984). (20)
3. From a neuroscience point of view, empathic resonance has been described as a resonance of “states of mind” mediated by the right hemisphere of client and therapist:
A therapist and patient enter into a resonance of states of mind, which allows for the creation of a co-regulating dyadic system. This system is able to emerge in increasingly complex dyadic states by means of the attunement between the two individuals. The patient's subtle nonverbal expressions of her state of mind are perceived by the therapist and responded to with a shift in the therapist's own state, not just with words. In this way, there is a direct resonance between the primary emotional, psychobiological state of the patient and that of the therapist. These nonverbal expressions are mediated by the right hemisphere of one person and then perceived by the right hemisphere of the other. In this way, the essential nonverbal aspect of psychotherapy, and perhaps all emotional relationships, can be conceived as right-hemisphere-to-right-hemisphere resonance between two individuals. (Siegel 1999, 298)
4. We have borrowed the concept of confluence from gestalt therapy:
A sensing and the object sensed, an intention and its realization, one person and another, are confluent when there is no appreciation of a boundary between them, when there is no discrimination of the points of difference or otherness that distinguish them. (Perls, Hefferline, and Goodman 1951, 118)
5. The emergence of primal wounding is quite common in other intimate relationships as well. Many new lovers, for example, after a period of wonderfully intimate closeness, find themselves unpleasantly shocked and surprised by changes in the relationship: “I used to adore him, but now his jokes just make me want to strangle him,” or “For some reason, I feel overwhelmed and angry when we have sex now,” or even “I must have made a horrible mistake in choosing to be with him—little things about him just drive me crazy.” What is wrong here? What happened to the warmth, the intimacy, the romance of the relationship? Nothing is wrong: this is an integral part of the warmth, the intimacy, the romance! (What is wrong is a society that does not prepare us for this.)
6. The type of therapeutic interaction described here brings to mind these sage words of Heinz Kohut:
If there is one lesson that I have learned during my life as an analyst, it is the lesson that what my patients tell me is likely to be true—that many times when I believed that I was right and my patients were wrong, it turned out, though often only after a prolonged search, that my Tightness was superficial whereas their Tightness was profound. (Kohut 1984, 93–94)
7. Some might consider this a case of “projective identification” (Klein) in which the client's feelings of abandonment and overwhelm were projected onto the therapist and so the therapist experienced these feelings herself. But this too would miss the fact that the therapist's own wounds were being energized. It is true that the intensity of the therapist's feelings was a function of the empathic resonance with the client—the high energy of the client's wound produced a high energy resonance in the therapist's wound, creating an intensity beyond that of the therapist's wound alone. However, in order for there to be a resonance at all, there has to be a resonator—the therapist's wounds. For a strong critique of the very notion of projective identification, see Stolorow et al. (1987).
8. There are also times when therapy itself constitutes an empathic failure, causing a negative reaction in the client toward the therapeutic situation. For example, one man had difficulty remaining in the room during his first therapy session, leaving and returning several times. As he began to trust the therapist a bit, he revealed that he felt his coming into therapy was a failure, an admission that he was sick, a loss of his sense of well-being.
In psychoanalytic terms such a reaction is simply the ego's resistance to relinquishing the illusion of self-sufficient control, a “narcissistic injury” (Kohut 1978). In psychosynthesis terms, yes, it is true that entering therapy often means a faltering of the survival personality and the emergence of primal wounding—a strong cause for an aversion to therapy—but the roots of this aversion may well run deeper than this.
These deeper roots can be found in the notions of illness and treatment implied by the term “therapy.” These notions constitute an empathic failure because they do not immediately mirror the health in clients' lives. Clients have been living and perhaps even flourishing in spite of all that has happened to them, and this health can seem lost when they become “a patient in treatment for a mental illness.” A negative reaction to therapy such as that described here may thus be caused by an empathic failure embedded in the very concept of therapy itself.
Furthermore, if the client's condition reveals itself as the product of early wounding, there is an inherent injustice in the therapeutic situation, sometimes voiced by clients: “It's not fair that I have to be doing this work when it was other people who did these things to me.” This is a quite valid point, and to immediately try to push past this with “But now it is yours to deal with, so get on with it” may be our avoidance of the enormity of this injustice—at bottom, a running from the dark mystery of brokenness and evil in the world.
Remember, spiritual empathy will see the person—“I”—who is present within both gifts and wounding, joy and suffering, agony and ecstasy. We need to be able to be empathic along the entire experiential range, from the heights to the depths, open to both the higher and lower unconscious. A focus on either wounds or gifts can be experienced as empathic failure if clients feel reduced to one or the other or feel that one or the other is not given its proper due.
9. Gina O'Connell Higgins here speaks to the psychology of the external as she talks about the many forms of psychological diagnoses: “Since so many forms of distress originate in assault, we need to refocus on what is disruptive to people rather than obsessively categorizing those who are disrupted” (Higgins 1994, 13, emphases in original).
The client's awareness of the larger world emerging in therapy has been called the “world channel” by Amy Mindell:
The world channel emerges when we are attracted to the natural environment and animals, the world or world issues, the weather, other countries and politics, wars, political leaders, or anything larger than an individual or relationship. Sentences, such as “the world is strange” or “so much is happening in the world it makes me cry,” indicate the presence of the world channel. (Mindell 1996, 75)
Mindell further points out that taking such responses seriously within the therapy can lead to clients discerning and responding to a felt call to act in the world based on their awareness.
10. It may be, of course, that a therapist intervenes in these nonempathic ways based on being trained in a psychological approach that does not recognize the transpersonal qualities in these experiences as healthy aspects of the person to be integrated. Following these approaches, one might interpret such experiences as regressive and a threat to mental health. In this case, one might be led to commit empathic failure without necessarily being driven by personal wounding. This brings up, however, the larger issue of psychological theory as a unifying center—one's theory may actually embody empathic failure if, for example, it misunderstands or pathologizes important dimensions of human experience.
1. This notion of therapists using their power in service of the client is quite like what Glenn Larner refers to as “deconstructing therapy” in which “therapists can be powerful, but sacrifice themselves for the sake of the other,” thus allowing “the power of the other to emerge” (Larner 1999, 41). He writes:
Deconstructing psychotherapy is involved in the process of ethical engagement in “I-thou” relations. … Therapeutic power is balanced by the ethical stance towards the other, putting the other first before self, recognizing others as subjects in their own right. (47)
2. Gillian Proctor offers a more refined analysis of therapeutic power, pointing out that the power imbalance in the therapeutic relationship has three aspects: (1) “the power inherent in the roles of therapist and client,” (2) “the power arising from the structural positions in society of the therapist and client,” and (3) “the power arising from the personal histories of the therapist and client and their experiences of power and powerlessness” (Proctor 2002, 7–8).
3. This is not to say that once therapy has terminated, and a particular therapist and client meet after several years, that a different relationship cannot develop (check the law and ethics governing your professional license); it simply means that all such expectations are not to be indulged over the course of therapy. Even so, such a post-therapy relationship will ever be influenced by the earlier therapeutic relationship:
The reality of therapy is that neither you nor your former client will ever outgrow your therapist-client roles, and those roles will inevitably color and distort any other kind of friendship you may attempt to build.
But wait a minute! You really like this client. Does all this mean you have to give up the possibility of ever having him for a friend? We believe, regretfully, that it does. And this brings us full circle to the genuine sadness of termination: for the therapist too, it is an ending. (Moursund and Kenny 2002, 116)
4. Clinical psychologist Gillian Proctor has produced some of the most comprehensive and insightful writing in the area of the use of power in therapy. She analyzes this moral dilemma as a clash between “the competing ethical principles of autonomy and beneficence,” and points out that autonomy needs to take precedence over beneficence, as in Rogers' person-centered approach:
Rogers challenged the power inherent in the role of the therapist in many revolutionary ways. Rogers' person-centred theory is based on the principle of respect for each individual and their autonomy. It is a radical theory of therapy and is heretical to psychiatric understanding of mental illness. The theory of psychological distress is based on internalized oppression, and the effect of person-centred therapy is to reduce the power that others have had over clients and thus increase their own sense of personal power, or ‘power-from-within.’ (Proctor 2002, 84)
The fundamental ethical principle behind PCT [person-centered therapy] … is the autonomy of the client, as opposed to the moral principle of beneficence (doing what's judged to be best for the client) employed by many other models of therapy. Grant (2004:157) argues that the practice of PCT is consistent with the ethics of ‘respect for the right of others to determine their own ways in life’. (Proctor 2005, 283)
5. But note well too: therapists who seek to fight oppression by indoctrinating clients into an identity that resists social injustice are also indulging in oppression. Here clients are still objectified and not allowed to be themselves, only now they are led to develop a social activist survival personality. The person is still an object, though now a socially active one. The only thing that allows a client to find her or his own way is spiritual empathy. Only empathic love can nurture the seed of authenticity, only empathic love is liberating.
1. As clients transition from stage zero toward stage one, they may begin to wonder about a particular compulsivity or addiction operating in their lives. Here it is quite appropriate to ask if the client wishes to explore that compulsion or addiction. If so, the therapist might provide information about the issue, recommend books about it, suggest exploring self-help groups, or even mention rehabilitation programs.
But be careful: such suggestions should not be an acting out of our own need to fix or save the client—our own “codependence.” In that case, all such well-intentioned efforts will simply constitute objectification of the client, that is, empathic failure. Rather, interventions like these need to arise naturally from some voiced concern by the client, some burgeoning desire from the client's own world, so that the suggestions meet the person on the person's own path, for example, “You say that every time you get in a fight with your girlfriend, alcohol is involved. Are you wondering about your alcohol use?”
1. Our use of the term induction was inspired by Aldous Huxley who posited a neurobiological underpinning for the phenomenon:
What is called “induction” is not confined to the lower levels of the brain and nervous system. It also takes place in the cortex, and is the physical basis of that ambivalence of sentiment which is so striking a feature of man's psychological life. Every positive begets its corresponding negative. The sight of something red is followed by a green afterimage. The opposing muscle groups involved in any action automatically bring one another into play. And on a higher level we find such things as a hatred that accompanies love, a derision begotten by respect and awe. In a word, the inductive process is ubiquitously active. (Huxley 1952, 187)
Closer to our use of the term is that found in the physics of electromagnetic induction in which the movement of a magnet in a coil creates an electrical current flowing in a wire.
The question arose as to whether electricity could be produced from magnetism. When this question was answered, the world was never again the same. That discovery transformed Western civilization. Both Joseph Henry of America and Michael Faraday of Scotland independently in 1831 discovered that when a magnet was plunged into a coil of wire, a voltage was induced. Electric current could be made to flow in a wire by simply moving a magnet in or out of a coil of wire. This phenomenon is called electromagnetic induction. (Hewitt 1977, 364–365)
In our model of induction, the movement of Self induces energy to flow in the personality.
2. In terms of attachment theory, Bowlby would say that what are “defensively excluded” in the false self formation “are the signals, arising from both inside and outside the person, that would activate their attachment behaviour and that would enable them both to love and to experience being loved” (Bowlby 1988, 35). It is precisely this potential for being loved and loving that the survival structures are defending against because this is where the wounding is. In short, to allow love into our lives is to become aware of the painful lack of love in our lives—and perhaps in the world.
3. Patterns like these that are reactive to contact with Self can be seen as those that cause a “repression of the sublime” (Haronian 1974); or incite “desacralizing,” that is, the distrust of “the possibility of values and virtues” (Maslow 1971); or form “transpersonal defenses” (Ferrucci 1982; Wilber 1980). However, these patterns are not defending against Self per se, but against the primal wounding being revealed by contact with Self. See also the discussion in our first book (Firman and Gila 1997).
4. A twelve-year-old C. G. Jung seems to have made this mistake of believing there is a dark or evil side to God, which was later to influence his notion that Self has a sinister side as well. The young Jung, after fighting long against having a “forbidden thought” decided this thought, even if evil, was being willed by God, so he must allow himself to have the thought:
I gathered all my courage, as though I were about to leap forthwith into hell-fire, and let the thought come. I saw before me the cathedral, the blue sky. God sits on His golden throne, high above the world—and from under the throne an enormous turd falls upon the sparkling new roof, shatters it, and breaks the walls of the cathedral asunder. (Jung 1963, 39)
Although experiencing a tremendous relief at not repressing this thought any longer, Jung thought this a “shaming experience” and “something bad, evil and sinister” (41). Seemingly there must be an evil side to a God who would will such a thought.
However, if we understand the phenomenon of induction, there is no evil side to God at play here at all. Jung's imagery is in fact a wonderful example of induction: the hypocrisy and superficiality of the religious structures with which Jung was struggling (the cathedral) were being dispelled by a relationship to God. It was not God “doing evil” but rather the truth of God dispelling the illusions and superficiality of the popular religion of the day.
Again, we may, if we wish, blame truth for dispelling our illusions, but this is very different from assuming truth has an evil side. Unfortunately, this type of mistaken interpretation of God influenced some of Jung's later thinking about Self. Furthermore, many holy scriptures that seem to portray the Divine as punishing or destructive may be better understood in the light of induction—these scriptures may simply be attempting to describe the pain we can experience as our illusions are challenged and dispelled by an approach to deeper Truth.
Even those great emblems of a supposedly punishing Deity, the “underworld” and “hell,” can be understood in the light of induction—the great mystic Meister Eckhart put it succinctly: “But I say truly that what burns in hell is nothing!” (Eckhart 1981, 183). This “nothing” is the illusion of separation from God, and this illusion, like Jung's “cathedral,” will indeed be incinerated by the truth of our union with the Divine. But again, this is not “God's punishment” but a simple description of what happens to illusion in the face of truth.
5. This intervention might be seen as a psychosynthesis approach to what is called in cognitive-behavioral therapy “thought blocking” (Rimm and Masters 1979) in which troublesome thoughts are interrupted to make space for the thinking process desired by the client. But this is only done as there is prior work and understanding with this client about subpersonalities and disidentification.
6. The worthlessness and shame derive from the negative personality that receives the criticism and condemnation from the negative unifying center. These are the split-off “negative object relations” that form the architecture of the lower unconscious. (See note 12, chapter 3.)
This is not to say, by the way, that an authentic unifying center cannot give straightforward candid guidance in a stern and authoritative tone. The key is that an authentic unifying center will always have empathy, giving the recipient the sense of being seen, understood, and loved—even while receiving input that may be hard to hear.
1. Assagioli (Assagioli 2000) called stage four “Psychosynthesis: the Formation or Reconstruction of the Personality Around the New Center.” Reading him here could suggest that this stage is then focused on simply the integration of the personality. However, keep in mind that he introduces his stages as away of healing the “fundamental infirmity of man” and of achieving “an harmonious inner integration, true Self-realization, and right relationships with others” (21). So it is clear he is understanding this “reconstruction of the personality” in much larger terms than the term might imply, and is including a response to the deeper promptings of Spirit in all spheres of our lives—the nature of our elaboration of this stage here.
2. Here are powerful statements by Assagioli on the unity of “I” or personal self with Self:
The harmonization, communion, unification, and fusion of the two wills has been—and is—the deep aspiration and, one might say, the highest, even if often unrealized, need of humanity. It has been felt and expressed in various ways according to the various concepts of Reality held by the different types of human beings. Essentially, it means tuning in and willingly participating in the rhythms of Universal Life. In Indian philosophy, this is called sattva, the guna of rhythm and of harmonious response to divine urge. The Chinese call this attitude wu-wei, or identification with the tao. For the Stoics and Spinoza it has been the willing acceptance of one's “destiny.” For those having a devotional nature or a religious conception of faith, it is the relationship and eventual unification of man's will with God's will. (Assagioli 1973b, 130)
And again:
The inner experience of the spiritual Self, and its intimate association with and penetration of the personal self, gives to those who have it a sense of greatness and internal expansion, the conviction of participating in some way in the divine nature. In the religious tradition and spiritual doctrines of every epoch one finds numerous attestations on this subject—some of them expressed in daring terms. In the Bible there is the explicit sentence, “I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High.” St. Augustine declares: “When the soul loves something it becomes like unto it; if it should love terrestrial things it becomes terrestrial, but if it should love God (we may ask) does it not become God?” The most extreme expression of the identity of the human spirit in its pure and real essence with the Supreme Spirit is contained in the central teaching of the Vedanta philosophy: “Tat Twam Asi” (Thou art That) and “Aham evam param Brahman” (In truth I am the Supreme Brahman). (Assagioli 2000, 40)
And finally a crucial and impassioned admonition to remember the “I” side of the I-Self paradox:
In whatever way one may conceive the relationship between the individual Self and the universal Self, be they regarded as identical or similar, distinct or united, it is most important to recognize clearly, and to retain ever present in theory and in practice, the difference that exists between the Self in its essential nature—that which has been called the “Fount,” the “Center,” the “deeper Being,” the “Apex” of ourselves—and the small ordinary personality, the little “self” or ego, of which we are normally conscious. The disregard of this vital distinction leads to absurd and dangerous consequences. (Assagioli 2000, 40)
3. Assagioli (2000) alludes to these two different aspects of response when he refers to two different “methods” or “types” found in this stage. The first type emphasizes the personal will side of the I-Self relationship: “Some people have a distinct vision of their aim from the outset. They are capable of forming a clear picture of themselves as they can and intend to become” (23). This would seem to be those with a strong sense of identity, consciously and willfully pursuing their vision. Assagioli further warns against an imbalance in this response, saying that those following this way should guard against becoming too rigid, and to be “ready to modify or to enlarge it [the vision]—and even to change it altogether as later experiences, fresh outlooks or new clarifications indicate and demand this change” (24).
The second type of response emphasizes the transpersonal will side of the I-Self relationship. Here people exhibit a tendency to “live spontaneously, following indications and intuitions rather than definite plans” and “let themselves be led by the Spirit within or by the will of God, leaving Him to choose what they should become” (23). Assagioli has words of caution for this type of response too, writing that one “should guard against becoming too passive and negative, accepting as intuitions and higher inspirations certain promptings which are, in reality, determined by unconscious forces, wishes and desires” (24)—the important process of discernment discussed in the contact stage earlier.
Assagioli considers both equally valid, writing of them, “But it is well to know, to appreciate and to use both to some extent in order to avoid the limitations and the exaggerations of each by correcting and enriching the one with elements taken from the other” (24).
Indeed, Assagioli's critique and warnings about the “limitations and “exaggerations” of each have to do with leaving one type out. An overemphasis on personal will can lead one to becoming so caught up in the activity and the goal that the original larger vision is lost. On the other hand, an emphasis on transpersonal will can become passive, compliant, and miss taking active steps to support and express the vision.
4. The transpersonal identification has been recognized as “infatuation with the sublime” (Haronian 1983), “dualistic denial” (Firman 1991), and “spiritual bypassing” (Welwood 2000). Operating from this type of survival personality is a powerful way of surviving primal wounding, but, as happens with all other survival patterns, it may become destructive over time. For example, it would seem that transpersonal identifications underlie many problematic “spiritualized” personality types, from the holier-than-thou elitist, to the ungrounded mystical dreamer, to the spiritual leader who abuses followers, to religious fanatics willing to use any means to attain their vision of perfection for the world.
1. Here is a poignant comment by Christina Grof, a pioneer in transpersonal psychology, about her recovery from alcoholism:
Standing on the edge of a new life, I at first felt sad as I reviewed what felt like endless days and months and years of wasted time and productivity during my active drinking career. But then my focus started to shift, and I began to see that the dark years of alcoholism had actually been an important stage in my spiritual journey. I had been given lessons and opportunities and gifts that could have come to me only through that experience. (Grof 1993, 4)