Whenever I sit down with a new client in our first session,
I explain that
psychotherapy
is not like a
legal
process to discover some mysterious truth that lies buried in the
unconscious like a hidden treasure. The process of
psychotherapy really involves learning to be honest, and through that honesty
you will come to discover “truth” as a living grace, not as an
intellectual abstraction. This means that the psychotherapist and the client
must both learn to be honest with each other; it also means that the client
must learn to be honest with himself or herself.
Honesty in
Professional Practice
This
honesty involves learning how to express openly to another person
the fullness of your immediate inner experience, by setting aside all your
characteristic psychological defenses. And to do that,
you have to come to terms with the emotional pain that caused those defenses
to come into being in the first place. Of course, that pain originated through
parental and other social interactions in your childhood, but, just as you
continue to encounter these same sorts of painful feelings through social
interactions in your adult life, you will also encounter these feelings as
a result of interactions between you and your psychotherapist. This is the
essence of the therapeutic relationship. You confront your pain directly
in psychotherapy, without running from it, so that you can heal it and transform
it.
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Most people come
to psychotherapy with some part of their inner lives wrapped in dark secrecy.
And, consciously or
unconsciously,
they do their best to hide this reality from the psychotherapist and to present
themselves in the best possible light.
Usually, it
doesn’t even occur to them that they should be talking about the
embarrassing fantasies that lurk in the dark corners of the mind. Nor does
it occur to them to speak about their emotional reactions to the psychotherapist
and to the psychotherapy process itself.
But eventually
some chance event within the psychotherapy—some frustration or
obstacle—will cause such a profound
encounter
with hidden secrets that everything breaks out into the light. And if the
psychotherapist knows his or her job it will be a time for the real therapeutic
work to begin. But if the encounter is missed, or if the client
runs
from it, then everything will just sink back into the mire of unconscious
fears and secrets. |
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All of us, in
fact, have grown up with denied experiences. The classic case is the alcoholic
and/or abusive family that pretends brutality and incest are not occurring.
Even in family systems with lesser levels of dysfunction, the process of
“keeping secrets”—from others, and from yourself—can
soon enough lead to mental distress or illness.
The sad thing
is that this denial of experience gets carried on into professional practice
as well.
I have had many
clients—some in residential or day treatment settings, some temporarily
in hospital settings—confide to me, “The people here are crazy,
and I’m not talking about the patients.” Because I have worked
in most mental health settings—crisis, inpatient, outpatient, and
residential—at one time or another during the course of my training,
and because I have seen with my own eyes the same things my clients complain
of, I can acknowledge an unpleasant fact of the mental health system: there
are counselors, nurses, and doctors who make mistakes and won’t admit
it, who don’t keep promises, who lie to clients, and who are even afraid
of their clients.
 Read Three Short Tales
from the Psych Ward
So I tell my
clients, “Don’t let the staff wear you down.” Recognize dishonesty
when you see it, and name it as dishonesty.
Lying
Once, I was called
to serve on a jury. Noting that I was a psychologist, the defense attorney
asked me about the “black box” of the mind. So I explained my views
of the
unconscious
and said that because we are all motivated by unconscious desires, no one
can “tell the truth” as our legal system defines it. And then I
said that I could never accept the testimony of a police officer at face
value because even police officers will lie in order to protect themselves.
A hush fell over the courtroom.
I continued,
staring at the prosecuting attorney, “Even lawyers will lie to further
their careers.” Nervous giggles broke out.
I looked at the
judge. “Even judges will lie if it serves their interests.” The
court fell silent.
But the defense
attorney smiled as he caught on to what I was saying. Still smiling, he asked
me, “And so, even you are lying?”
“Yes,”
I admitted, “Even I am lying.”
Of course, the
prosecuting attorney threw me off the case.
And that’s
the point. We are all liars and hypocrites, and we all make excuses for
ourselves. In our legal and political systems, “truth” is nothing
more than what we choose to believe in the moment. Our culture is all a
fraud. But hardly anyone wants to admit
it.
Now, if you call
someone a liar, you will get one of two responses. If the person is wise,
he or she will say, “Yes, I know.” Being aware of the extent of
his or her unconscious motivations, this person has the healing option of
emptying
the self of pride in order to find honesty and truth that surpasses social
game-playing. But persons who are psychologically unaware and bristling with
defenses will angrily blurt out, “How dare you!
Take that back or else!” And the sad thing is that in defending themselves
against the reality of their lies and hypocrisy, these persons become liars
and hypocrites all the more.
Telling
Lies
As far as the
psychology of the unconscious is concerned, lying is a fact of life. But
the act of telling lies is something else entirely. When you tell
a lie you make a deliberate, conscious effort to deceive someone, and that
deception, at its psychological core, is an act of aggression.
This aggression
derives from two interrelated unconscious motivations, one about not
knowing, and the other about something you do know.
The first motive
is a desire to cover up lack—that is, when others, especially
your parents, consistently fail to teach you, in a wise and compassionate
way, about how the world “works”
(both mechanically and emotionally), you can easily develop a feeling of
inadequacy. Shamed by what you
don’t know, you will want to hide this painful
feeling somehow.
The second motive
is a response to knowing that someone has failed you in some way. Do you
tell lies to your parents? Then you know, deep in your heart, that they
won’t, or can’t, care enough about you
to give you the family security that you need.
Do you tell lies to your teachers or boss? Then you know that they won’t,
or can’t, give you the promotion or recognition you desire. Do you tell
lies to your friends? Then you know that they won’t, or can’t,
give you what you want, whether it be sympathy, or affection, or anything
else. Knowing these things, you will want to get
satisfaction somehow.
Therefore, your
lies become cunning weapons of revenge in a psychological
battle to inflict pain on those who hurt you. That is, when someone treats
you critically, you feel hurt, shamed, and afraid; and then, as an angry
response to that hurt, you will tell lies in a fabricated sense of
invulnerability to hide your painful shame while causing injury to that
person.
Even a pathological
liar carries deep in his heart a desire for goodness and honesty and yet,
because of painful emotional wounds, he knows that the world never has, and
believes that the world never will, recognize his pain. And so, to hide that
pain from himself, he uses all the lies he can concoct to hurl at the world
as he runs in fear from his own goodness. Sadly, his lies end up hurting
himself as much as they hurt others.
The only solution
to all these lies is to face up to the bitter pain of feeling misunderstood
and inadequate. Track that pain back to its origins in childhood and see
it honestly for what it was. Understand just how you were ignored or neglected.
Understand how much you feared—and still
fear—“not
knowing” and being abandoned. Understand how you can blame yourself
for not knowing. Understand the anger simmering in
your unconscious. Understand how you can hurt yourself
in the process of giving others what they “deserve.” The truth
is bitter, and it can be terrifying, but when you encounter it honestly and
without weapons you will discover a courage you can never learn in
battle.
Fear of
Honesty
Many persons
balk at the idea of emotional honesty for fear of its social consequences.
“But if I’m honest with others, they will reject me and I will
lose their love,” you might say. Well, there is really only one answer
to this concern: If others reject you because you are honest, then you
never had their love in the first place. All you risk losing by being
honest is the illusion of someone’s love.
In this sense, you have nothing to lose in being honest because you may have
already lost it anyway. Think about that.
Being
Judgmental
Throughout this
website I speak about various truths of the
unconscious. These truths are rarely popular, and they
are not necessarily politically correct—but they are true just the same.
Nowhere, though, do I say that anyone who dislikes these truths is
“bad.” Similarly, if you speak the truth to someone, and you are
careful not to say that anyone is bad, then you are not being judgmental.
Now, if someone disagrees with you, he can just turn around, walk away, and
not look back. But if he accuses you of being judgmental and hurls insults
and threats of lawsuits at you, then he is the one being judgmental,
and he has fallen into the very trap he claims to be above.
Four Steps to
Psychological Honesty
The psychological
process necessary to attain a state of honesty consists more-or-less of about
four steps:
1. |
You must learn
that you have emotions—both pleasant and unpleasant—and how to
recognize and name them.
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2. |
You must learn
that you have been using some very clever unconscious psychological
defenses to push out of awareness all the unpleasant
and frightening emotions which traumatized you as a child.
|
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3. |
You must learn
that the past essentially continues to live in the present; that is, when
you experience emotional stimulation in the present you will be unconsciously
driven into responding to those emotions according to your old psychological
defenses.
Thus you can see that all the unpleasant and frightening emotions which you
have been pushing out of awareness all your life have been secret causes
for all the problems and conflicts you have been
experiencing all your life.
Therefore, you must examine your past very carefully so as to make a conscious,
enlightened connection between your suppressed emotions and your current
behavioral problems. (If you look carefully, you will find
fantasies of grandiosity, revenge, and sexuality
frequently running through your mind, and these fantasies can prod you into
acting in ways that are, well, unbecoming to psychologically healthy conduct.)
This scrutiny will show you how your life, up to now, has been largely controlled
by the unconscious repetition of old emotional
conflicts.
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4. |
Having mastered
the previous step so that you can easily recognize how the past essentially
continues to live in the present, you must make a conscious effort to resist
the temptation to fall into old defensive patterns, and you must train yourself
to act with new and different behaviors.
Make no mistake here: this is hard work.
But it’s essential that you train yourself to make a conscious decision
in the moment to bear your emotional pain gracefully, without
anger or victimization, but
instead with forgiveness. In every moment of difficulty
you will, like a frightened child, think first of protecting your
pride, but you must now, with a deliberate act
of will, set aside that pride.
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Note carefully
that unless you work through all these stages it is nearly impossible to
live a genuinely honest life. You cannot have meaningful and honest interactions
with others if you persist in clinging, deep in your heart, to psychological
defense mechanisms that shield you from that very pain.
How can you be genuine with another person if you’re always protecting
yourself with your own wits? In the past, particularly as a child,
blame, resentment, and anger
may have served to ensure your survival by masking your hurt and vulnerability,
but in reality these things are totally opposed to integrity and true
love.
Conclusion
So, once you
can name dishonesty you can work to be free of its destructive
power.
Remember: it
was unnamed dishonesty—perhaps in your own family—that made you
suicidal
or
self-destructive
in the first place. Many children who have been wounded by this dishonesty
often reach a point in their lives at which they resolve that they will never
allow themselves to be deceived by anyone ever again. And then, sadly, for
the rest of their lives they are deceived by their own pride. |
Now, however,
if you choose, you can
challenge
others when they are being dishonest, and you won’t have to feel that
you are a
“bad”
person for seeing what no one else will admit. And this integrity might save
you from becoming a psychological
“terrorist”
in your community.
But remember
also that, in order to give a name to dishonesty, you, like me, have to endure
the pain of seeing it in yourself. You have to be honest enough to
face
up to your own emotional experiences and to communicate them to others.
Then you can begin to put honesty in practice every moment of your
life.
No
advertising—no sponsor—just the simple truth . . .
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DID MY WORK help you? Have you found
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Additional
Resources
Related pages within this
site:
Legal
Issues
Death—and the Seduction
of Despair
Depression and
Suicide
Family Therapy
Personality
Questions and Answers
about Psychotherapy
Spiritual
Healing
Spirituality and
Psychology
The Psychology of
Terrorism
The Unconscious
Treatment
Philosophy
CONTACT ME
INDEX of all subjects
on this website
SEARCH this
website
A Guide to Psychology
and its Practice
www.GuideToPsychology.com
Copyright © 1997-2008 Raymond Lloyd Richmond, Ph.D. All rights
reserved.
San Francisco, California USA
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