Hello all. I hope you are all well. It's been a busy few weeks for me with my final exam on the horizon hence the time between blog posts. I don't hold myself to some strict deadline as concerns this. Things get in the way and you have to prioritise. I think me of even a couple of years ago would have allowed the delay to become a 'failure' and another mallet to bash myself over the head with. I'm often quick to start things but sometimes slower to finish. I've come to terms with that. I've found it a really useful and soothing place to arrive at (and hopefully not leave too often). I hope it's somewhere you can find more times than not too.
I find it useful to check in with my motivation. I know I could have dedicated a good deal of time to updating the blog but then I realise that would be my means of procrastinating/avoiding the more pressing work required for my qualification. And if we can just stop and take a breath things become so much clearer. This can wait. What's my motivation? To share my thoughts on psychological considerations as pertains to media. Sure. But also, if I'm honest with myself (and if you're embarked on your own therapeutic journey this is a must) I realise I'm motivated by strokes and attention. By a drive to show (whoever that may be) my thoughts; what I think I know. And in recognising such I was able to prioritise other things and be OK in leaving this dormant.
Anyway! We left off last time with a glance at Structuralism and hinted toward French philosopher Roland Barthes. But before that, I said I'd look at two philosophical disciplines that I feel it is important to mention and distinguish between; Analytic Philosophy and Continental Philosophy.
Analytic Philosophy
As the name suggests, this tradition of philosophy is based on logical, rigorous assessments of our language. This is a very simple way of defining the analytic methodology and for that reason it may be useful to stop there for the purposes of this series. Analytic Philosophy was established in the late 19th century by thinkers like Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell. Like most traditions/methodologies positions have changed as time advances. However, to think of Analytic as just that - an approach that uses symbolic logic and rigorous analysis to validate arguments - is probably most helpful. Analytic Philosophers look at certainties - things that can be explained.
Continental Philosophy
Dubbed so because of its European origins, Continental Philosophy differs from Analytic Philosophy (to keep it simplistic) in the sense that it involves a deeper look at describing the personal experience of the world rather than more logical analysis of a collective experience. Edmund Husserl is famous for using Continental methodology (though Schopenhauer, Hegel and especially Kant predated him) - he is an important name in my studies as a Psychotherapeutic Counsellor and we shall at some point trace his work on Phenomenology - no doubt I will then look towards one of my favourite philosophers, Martin Heidegger. Like Analytic Philosophy, Continental Philosophy appeared somewhere around the turn of the 20th Century, particularly in Germany and France. Continental Philosophers look at that which can not really be explained - certainly not by logic or empirical evidence. It is skeptical of the possibility of objective knowledge and looks at how we as humans experience something. The questions are more existential in their nature, such as 'What kind of person should I be?' Problems of existence can't be answered from a detached, third-person point of view, as if they are a mathematical problem. If you understand the problem in a theoretical way you've already somehow failed to understand the problem. You have to feel this first-person involvement with it (to paraphrase Beatrice Han-Pile, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Essex).
In a nutshell, Analytic is a more logical approach whilst Continental is slightly more abstract. From what I gather, as time has elapsed the demarcation between these two methodologies has diminished and most approaches will now contain elements of both - that is to say it is quite possible to take an Analytic approach which incorporates some Continental processes (and vice versa). In fact, it's what I'm proposing to do when we start to look at Psychotherapy and how it is represented in media. It is an Analytic question - what of the language that is used to represent Psychotherapy - there is an explanation to this - there is something to be known, a certainty. We're asking how we come to know it. It is also Continental; it asks muddier questions like - 'What is Psychotherapy (in and of itself)?' and 'What is Psychotherapy (as it it is experienced)?' 'Why is Psychotherapy?' It's all very well to think about something through the Analytic lens of language and logic - but language and logic are human designs. What if they encumber on and distort what is? Heidegger would say that we need to experience what is, Phenomenologically before clapping these human means of defining and understanding onto it. Anyway, like a Pragmatist I'm using a synthesis of both methodologies (or a bricolage - a term that will return later, I'm sure) and in many ways this links, in a rather deep fashion (perhaps too deep to expound on now) to my wider spiritual beliefs around non-duality (more on that later?). Regardless, I find this splitting of Philosophical Schools pretty useless and ironically an instance of language compartmentalising objects and leading to a misnomer - the name Continental. The fact is, much Analytical Philosophy derives from the Continent too. Separated, there exists a certain tension and rivalry between each school when actually, both can be applied and are applied - either intentionally or indirectly. Once again, the human predilection for sorting things into categories proves counter-productive!
'The Analytic Philosopher will accuse the Continental of being insufficiently clear, while the Continental Philosopher accuses the Analytic Philosopher of being insufficiently.'
One of the most profound impacts that studying Psychology has had on me is that there are some things that cannot be measured (and therefore known) through fact, reason, logic, scientific rigour. This is something I have always had a sense of thanks to my own (Phenomenological) experience in the world for some thirty-five years. I think of the time I felt an impulsive and overwhelming urgency to leave several hours into a sitting for a tattoo to race 90 miles in my car to my mother who was dying of pancreatic cancer - to then feeling an impulse when I arrived to ask my father (who was at her bedside) to leave so I could speak to her privately - to make my peace with her. My mother, who for days was incognisant; cast off into a morphine oblivion was my captive audience. I ended by saying 'I'm sorry it didn't work out between us' and moments later I watched her exhale her final breath. There's nobody can tell me that she wasn't calling out to me whilst I sat in that tattoo studio. There's no explanation, reason, logic or scientific rigour that can account for what I felt and what I experienced.
This memory always reminds me of a scene from the documentary-movie The Bridge. One interviewee recalls a suicide attempt he made from San Francisco's Golden-Gate bridge. He leapt and plummeted the 220 feet and yet following impact upon the water he remained conscious and felt something circling beneath him. He comments, rather darkly that he thought at the time 'Great - I've somehow survived and now I'm gonna be eaten by sharks'. It turned out that seals were circling beneath him. They helped keep him buoyant. Through tears he told the camera, 'You cannot tell me that was not God'.
In studying Psychology and in practising as a Psychotherapeutic Counsellor I've had similar experiences. I have attended hundreds of hours of personal therapy (even before commencing my studies) and group therapy. I have practised as a therapist for over 150 hours with a diverse range of clients. This split between method and practice (as mentioned in Representations I) is wholly salient to this Philosophical split. To shed some light on this allow me a little indulgence. I'm going to share with you an excerpt from a reflective essay I wrote this year which serves to explain my approach, Philosophically, to being a Psychotherapeutic Counsellor:
The non-linearity of development in personal therapy makes reflection a task often clouded in ambiguity. I’ve found it to be a recurring challenge that just when I think I’ve resolved something it resurfaces some time later to (in my perception) invalidate an accomplishment. Some of my clients seem to have experienced the same, perhaps in parallel process. This has encouraged me to think of the process as working not so much by the metric of ‘accomplishments’; as if you have a pedestal to ascend, rung by rung and any falter is an undoing of every point you surmounted. It seems to me that the process involves a constant relationship with our environment, almost like weather. It is a living thing that interacts with our respective worlds and the only way to track this is to reflect on the relationship; figuratively, with regard to the therapeutic process and more literally with the relationship to our clients/therapists and the coinciding relationships that dot their/our lives. This relates to Winnicott’s ‘Holding environment’ (1965).
’There is not one holding environment early in life, but a succession of holding environments, a life history of cultures of embeddedness (Kegan, 1987). With all these shifts, like weather, explaining the process or reflecting on it can sometimes prove incredibly foggy and difficult to articulate. I call to mind my child clients, who, not (yet) equipped with the verbal language to communicate their feelings, sit with me within a held space and communicate through foggier means such as play and metaphor.
My first reflective essay in year one of training described attending the open evening and how I wasn’t sure I could do the course. I went on to explain how I arrived at my decision to undertake the training despite this doubt. I now see that this was a kind of intuitive drive. I discussed my intersection of interests concerning various cognate, psychological themes (Spirituality, Mysticism, Jung) and those of a more personal nature, particularly Jung’s Wounded Healer (1961). It all felt like a synchronicity was at play and this is ultimately what brought me to my decision, despite not being wholly certain, to enrol on the course. One of the most profound realisations from my work so far is that no matter how you prepare yourself for any choice, whether you diligently research, question, analyse and explore a million avenues - along the way scrupulously gathering what you consider is as close to immutable fact as possible - the one fact that remains is that you will always depend upon an element of faith and intuition at the point just before you take the decision. This intuition, in the face of uncertainty is what underpins my approach to therapy and not just in a philosophical or psychological sense but in a physical and spiritual sense.
I think of Heinz Kohut when he says ‘Interpretations are not intellectual constructions. If they are they won’t work’ (1981). I think about this a good deal when working with clients and have indeed experienced the marked difference between coming to an intellectual explanation and an intuitive way of analysing and communicating an understanding of the client’s inner world. The potency of this intuition is predicated entirely on the potency of the relationship with the client. Transactional Analysis has equipped me with many tools with which to support my clients. Identifying Ego States within has offered clients a means of understanding why particular patterns of behaviour recur in their lives. Working with internal models in this way has also led to deeper considerations of script beliefs and in some instances, a better means of challenging these beliefs to the extent of changing them. Of course, transactions are fundamentally executed in relationship and all of the aforementioned tools work precisely within this context. I find most inspiration in Goulding’s writing (1976) and his work at the Western Institute which eschews ideas around the ‘power of the therapist’ and sees the child as ‘adapting to his environment’ and ‘making decisions in order to survive’ (p.377).
My therapist often discourages my intellectualising of events and this I’ve worked on not just in personal therapy but how I approach my client work. Intersubjectivity plays a crucial role in all of this and harks back to Stern; ‘How do I know that you know that I know? And how do you know and how do I know that you feel that I feel?’ (2013). Of course, intuition is only ever that - as much as I trust in it, there is still a tremendous amount of uncertainty in the work. It is Keats who provides the most useful correlative to where I find myself in his concept of negative capability. ‘…that is when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching for fact and reason’ (2020, British Library). I consider my therapeutic approach to be Pathic - a being grasped by the world of experience rather than grasping that is characteristic of the Gnostic approach. ‘The pathic mode involves an immediate communication with others and with things and evokes feelings as well as real and virtual movements. It is most characteristic of young children, who are open to change, flexible and tend to be flooded by ambiguities and possibilities’ (Mook, 1999). More succinct still is Irving Yalom, “…the capacity to tolerate uncertainty is a prerequisite for the profession’ (1989).
I’ve found myself feeling a lot less pressure to ‘know’ from an epistemological point of view and moreover I’ve felt a greater desire to explore how I know what I know (also encouraged by the research assignment in the final year). Derick Varn when talking about systemisations makes the bold assertion ‘You can’t have a model that completely explains everything within a system’ (2020). I’ve thought a lot about this with reference to psychotherapy and the multiple models long established. My integrative approach has been emboldened, particularly when I think of knowledge, certainty and Irvine Yalom’s thoughts on the matter. ‘The powerful temptation to achieve certainty through embracing an ideological school and a tight therapeutic system is treacherous: such belief may block the uncertain and spontaneous encounter necessary for effective therapy’ (1989). Spontaneous encounter, to me is the operative phrase here which relates wholly to the distinction I place on intuition. Realising that a lot of the work would not necessarily lead to any certainties was a relief and had me reconsider the role of psychotherapy; what my theoretical approach was; what my practical approach was and would be.
...we cannot as therapists look for solutions; not least of all because so many times there aren’t any answers to be known. With uncertainty looming over the work this to me leads to questioning. This is a spur to a wider viewpoint that doesn’t simply shut its eyes when a single theory proffers a single (potential) answer. I am not looking for answers but I will ask questions; of the theory, of my practice, of myself, of my client in order to find what I am looking for and what clients will most benefit from - understanding. Knowing, being aware that you racketeer in transactions is only part of the work. Understanding this can lead to self-compassion and to growth. Answers can often be found in the back of school textbooks. What good is the answer without the workings - without the understanding? When you’re dealing with an unknown I find intuition is the best means of traversing it because intuition is more an innate process of shared understanding. A participant in a workshop called ‘Jung and TA’ remarked ‘Intuition is the language of the collective’ (2020).
Allowing yourself to be open to the unknown can lead to endless possibilities. A good deal of this will always be interpretation, which ‘in the sense relevant to hermeneutics, is an attempt to make clear, to make sense of an object of study. This object…in some way is confused, incomplete, cloudy, seemingly contradictory - in some way or another, unclear’ (Taylor, 1971: 3). I, of course, do not wish to sound crude in referring to the client’s internal world as an ‘object’ but what I find in the client work is a need to interpret the unclear and often contradictory in the people who I counsel.
This is my approach, which in the context of this post I guess would be considered primarily Continental. As I state above, I want to understand my clients, not (to paraphrase Beatrice Han-Pile again) dissolve them through logical analysis or provide causal explanations.
In this way I am in alignment with the Continental stance of challenging the idea that the methods of the natural sciences is the best means to approach these particular problems (and indeed, I am a Psychotherapeutic Counsellor, not a Psychiatrist). For example, to work with a depressed client, having neurophysiological science regarding the brain to call upon may very well help, but on its own it will never ever reveal to me what it feels like to be depressed or what it means to a person to be depressed.
I recognise that this is some tangential writing but I am unapologetic. I am at peace with my divergent mind! Next time we will move on from the dominant (and opposing) Schools of Analytic and Continental Philosophy to discuss Ferdinand de Saussure (you might remember him from such youtube videos as one I previously posted) - which I promise will lead us to Barthes!
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