Introduction
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Have you ever heard any of these questions or
statements?
• |
“Why do
I keep picking friends who abuse me and abandon me?” |
• |
“Why do
I get so angry with the children? I really love them.” |
•
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“When I
do really horrible things, it’s like an impulse. There doesn’t
seem to be much thought prior to the action.” |
• |
“I’m
always bumping into things and injuring myself—I don’t understand
it.” |
• |
“I’ve
been working on my dissertation for 10 years now and can’t seem to finish
it. What’s wrong with me?” |
These are the
sorts of things you might hear friends or relatives say. You might even find
yourself saying something similar. These are also the sorts of things clinical
psychologists hear all the time.
And it’s
all because we have an unconscious.
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You might wonder,
’What is the relevance of psychology to everyday life?” Well, here
is the answer. Like it or not, the unconscious affects every aspect of our
daily functioning, both personal and interpersonal.
And, to be honest,
of all the pages on this website, this page is the most painful and the most
sad, for three reasons:
1.
|
Many persons
either don’t believe in the unconscious or don’t think it’s
“relevant.” |
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2. |
Many persons
who do believe in the unconscious don’t really understand it. |
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3. |
Those who do
understand the unconscious know that they usually cannot do anything to help
others who are trapped in it, and who refuse to listen to good advice, until
things get very, very bad. |
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My goal on this
page is not to provide a detailed theory of human unconscious functioning;
I will instead offer some easily understood information that might make the
subject of unconscious functioning—and its relation to the practice
of psychology—a bit more understandable to the average
person. |
Belief
in
the
Unconscious
|
The
first problem with the unconscious is that it
is . . . well, unconscious. That is, by definition the
unconscious represents all that is unknown about ourselves. So how in the
world can we talk about something unknown? One solution to the problem is
to deny its existence or to not talk about it.
To a perfectly
logical and rational mind, therefore, the unconscious is just a lot of nonsense.
Persons of this persuasion can often be found telling others to “stop
crying—just pull yourself up by your own bootstraps and get on with
life.”
In psychological
practice, this attitude is most reflected in behavioral
therapy. To be crass, curing a phobia with a purely behavioral treatment
isn’t much different than teaching a dog not to pee on the floor.
 Yet, to be honest, just as most dogs who live indoors
eventually get housebroken, individuals with phobias can be cured with behavioral
treatment. Many persons might not find it dignified to be trained like animals,
but remember that B. F. Skinner, the originator of a form of behavioral treatment
called operant conditioning, wrote a book called Beyond Freedom
and Dignity in which he argued that autonomous human freedom and dignity
were interfering with social progress and should be replaced with a
“technology of behavior.”
Still, there
are those who prefer to think a bit more deeply about life, and in the field
of psychology they have been largely influenced by Freud. |
To
Understand
the
Unconscious
|
Although Sigmund Freud did not originate the idea of an unconscious, he
made extensive use of the concept in his treatment philosophy of
psychoanalysis.
 Freud conceived of the unconscious as a sort of garbage
dump for wishful impulses that we would rather not admit to
ourselves.
In contrast,
Carl Jung, who began as Freud’s student, then became a colleague, and
ultimately became an estranged rival,
 distinguished a “personal unconscious” from a
“collective unconscious.” For Jung, the personal unconscious was
similar to the totality of Freud’s concept of the unconscious. But in
the collective unconscious Jung saw images—which he called
archetypes—that were, he claimed, related to personal, cultural, and
spiritual growth. In fact, Jung’s followers have made a sort of
pseudo-religion out of unconscious functioning.
I studied Jung
in depth for almost a decade, but ultimately I discovered that another
psychoanalyst,
 Jacques Lacan, understood
the unconscious better than anyone. Lacan, a brilliant French psychoanalyst,
emphasized the relation of language to unconscious functioning. Language,
being metaphoric and symbolic, is one step—one large step—removed
from “reality,” and in the gap between the symbolic and
the real is all the deception,
lies, and fraud of
human social existence.
Although it might
seem, on the surface, that our lives are structured simply by conscious thought
and speech, we are really more influenced by that gap between the
symbolic and the real—or, in other words, by what is “missing”
from our lives simply because we filter all our experience through our social
dependence on language and the realm of the symbolic. Therefore, the unconscious
is a side-effect, so to speak, of our separation from raw reality because
of our use of language. Lacan saw clearly that, because separation and lack
lead to desire, the unconscious is primarily governed by “the desire
of the Other”—that is, by the social world (the “Other”)
around us. Thus desire could be thought of as the unspoken—and
hidden—aspect of our speaking lives.
Now, as I said
earlier, “How in the world can we talk about something hidden and
unknown?” Well, what is missing—or hidden in desire—can be
“mapped out,” so to speak, through a keen analysis of how a person
speaks about his or her life and problems. As a result of talking about
dreams, for example, or of mental associations of
one thing to another, an image can be formed of the hidden desires that may
be motivating a person’s behavior.
A Metaphor
and a Case Example
Imagine, for
example, someone writing on a note pad. The sheet of paper with the writing
is then removed. But if you rub across the surface of the next blank sheet
with the side of a charcoal crayon, the writing—impressed into the second
sheet from the pressure of the pen on the top sheet—appears as empty
strokes amid the charcoal blackness on the surface of the paper. In a
similar way, the language of unconscious motivation can be discovered indirectly
through the associations that surround it.
In a clinical case, I saw a person who had been suffering for three months
from daily cramps and vomiting at two hour intervals. His physician and a
gastroenterologist were baffled. Medication had little effect. Eventually
this person was referred to me for psychological treatment.
I told him we weren’t going to “get rid” of the vomiting;
we were going to listen with compassion to what it had to tell him. So we
explored his associations to the vomiting. From the violence in the neighborhood
that seemed to trigger the vomiting, to the physical beatings and sexual
abuse from his childhood, to the numerous rejections and refusals to give
help that he encountered throughout his life, to his anger that he had to
achieve his college education without family support, and on to his recent
acceptance in graduate school, we “mapped out” his associations.
In the end, after three sessions of intense psychological exploration, he
was able to recognize that he was terrified of beginning graduate school.
Through his tears, he put that terror—all the terror of his life—into
words for the first time.
“So what will you tell the part of you that wants to vomit?” I
asked.
“I’ll say: OK guys, you can relax. I get the message. I’m
terrified of starting school.”
Three days later he woke to these words of a dream: “The dictator has
stepped down.” Not killed, not assassinated—but willingly
resigned.
And the vomiting stopped.
Thus, a string of encounters with rejection “told” this man that
he didn’t have the right to exist, but ultimately this particular
desire—the unconscious desire to fulfill the Other’s voice and
sabotage his education—was dissolved. |
Unconscious
Defense
Mechanisms
|
We
are all constantly being “assaulted” by others around us in their
desires to get from us what will most benefit their self-interests.
And so the unconscious motive to satisfy others will often conflict with
our basic need for self-preservation. Moreover, in addition to these social
demands, the physical world around us often assaults us through accidents
and natural disasters. Therefore we all must deal with emotional conflict
or internal or external “assaults” on our
well-being.
Common
ways of protecting ourselves emotionally were called mechanisms by
Sigmund Freud. When seen in pathological settings, these mechanisms can
technically be called defense mechanisms; when seen in everyday life,
they can be more properly called dynamic mechanisms. Modern psychiatry,
however, uses the term defense mechanism in both pathological and
everyday
settings.[1]
Unhealthy defenses
often become a focus of psychotherapy in the quest
to overcome inhibitions to emotional genuineness. Through the hard work of
psychotherapy you can learn to bring into conscious awareness all the threatening
thoughts, feelings, memories, wishes, and fears pushed out of consciousness
by your defenses. Once these inner experiences are properly understood
consciously, you can begin to live an emotionally open and
honest life, and your unhealthy defenses will dissolve
because they will no longer have any useful function.
Healthy
Defenses
It’s important
to understand right from the beginning that not all defense mechanisms are
“bad” or unhealthy. Some defense mechanisms allow for self-protection
while maintaining a full awareness of the thoughts and feelings involved
in dealing with the challenge facing you.
Anticipation. You think ahead to events that might occur in the future
and consider realistic responses or solutions.
Affiliation. You seek out others for emotional support or physical
help.
Altruism. You do good and kind things for others, rather than worry
about your own immediate satisfaction or fears.
Humor. You notice the amusing or ironic aspects of
something.
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Some individuals,
however, use humor as an unhealthy way to hide aggressive impulses. From
the way they speak, you might get the impression that these persons are always
good-natured and happy, because they are always laughing. But if you listen
closely to that laughter, you can hear either of two things.
1. |
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You might hear
a “ha-ha-ha” sort of giggle at the end of every sentence. This
giggle has the subliminal psychological effect of telling the listener,
“I’m really frightened of conflict, so please
don’t take seriously anything I say, lest you be offended by it and
want to challenge me.” |
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2. |
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Or, you might
hear a person say something such as, “Oops, I almost spilled the coffee
all over you. Tee-hee-hee.” In this case, the laughter is used to disguise
an aggressive impulse. For example, this person could be carrying so much
residual childhood resentment in her heart for the way her parents mistreated
her that the thought of her now causing someone else to suffer provides an
unconscious satisfaction for the injustices she had to suffer as a
child. |
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Self-assertion. You act toward others in a way that is emotionally genuine
and honest and that is not coercive or
manipulative.
Self-observation. You reflect upon and consider your
emotions and thoughts,
so as to act responsibly.
Sublimation. You direct socially harmful impulses into socially acceptable
forms of behavior.
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Keep in mind,
though, that some forms of sublimation, such as playing violent video games,
can still be psychologically unhealthy even though the behavior may be socially
acceptable. |
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Suppression. You avoid thinking about disturbing experiences or
feelings.
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Done in moderation,
and in the proper circumstances, this can be healthy and protective. But
in excess it becomes avoidance, one of the characteristic symptoms
of post-traumatic stress disorder. |
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Inhibitory
Defenses
This sort of
defensive functioning serves to keep threatening thoughts, feelings, memories,
wishes, or fears out of conscious awareness.
Displacement. You transfer your feelings about one object to another,
less threatening object. For example, a man angry
at his boss comes home and yells at his children.
Dissociation. You separate yourself from reality by a breakdown of normal
conscious functions of memory or
identity. For example, in a car crash you don’t
feel like you’re experiencing it yourself, or you don’t feel like
you’re experiencing it in your body, or you develop amnesia about the
final moments of the crash.
Identification. As a normal childhood developmental process of taking in
of experience symbolically in order to identify with other persons (especially
parents), this is often called introjection. But identification can
also have a defensive function, as in identification
with the aggressor.
Intellectualization. You focus on abstract logic or philosophy and minimize feelings
about an event. For example, after an earthquake damages your home, you talk
to others primarily about the structural engineering factors of the
damage.
Isolation
of Affect. You remain aware of the descriptive
details of an event but lose connection with the feelings about the event
itself.
Reaction
Formation. Your behaviors, thoughts, or
feelings are the complete opposite of your actual (unconscious) desires.
For example, you dislike your job and yet you tell everyone how wonderful
it is.
Repression. You lose all conscious memory
of an event (in contrast to dissociative amnesia, in which selective elements
of an event are “forgotten”). Also, in repression you may retain
certain emotional components of the event even though you have no conscious
memory of the event. For example, a woman who as a child was sexually abused
by her father may feel anxious and uneasy whenever finding herself alone
in a room with an older man, even though she cannot remember the childhood
abuse itself. (Note, however, that this emotional component in itself does
not prove that any abuse ever happened; a woman might feel anxiety
around older men for unconscious reasons other than abuse. For example, she
might be trying to ward off her anger at her father for being intellectually
critical of her as a child, and not being present to her as a compassionate
teacher.)
Undoing. You use symbolic means to negate or make amends for unacceptable
thoughts or feelings. For example, you repetitively wash your hands as an
unconscious gesture of “washing away” the
guilt of feeling angry at someone you depend
upon.
Distorting Defenses
(minor)
This sort of
defensive functioning serves to distort images of self or body or others
in order to regulate self-esteem.
Devaluation. You tell yourself that something desirable but immediately
unattainable is somehow defective. For example, the fox in Aesop’s fable
tells himself that the grapes out of his reach are probably sour. Hence the
expression “sour grapes.”
Idealization. You attribute exaggerated positive qualities to an
other.
Omnipotence. You feel or act as if you possessed special powers or abilities
superior to others. For example, a child left alone in the house every day
after school by working parents fantasizes that he is a comic book
superhero.
Defenses Involving
Disavowal
This sort of
defensive functioning serves to keep unpleasant or unacceptable thoughts
or feelings out of conscious awareness. In contrast to inhibitory defenses
(see above), which attempt to hide unpleasant thoughts or feelings,
defenses involving disavowal attempt to negate reality in some
way.
Denial. You refuse to acknowledge what is readily apparent to others.
The classic example here is an alcoholic who will dispute any
suggestion that he is dependent on
the use of alcohol.
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When you’re
in denial, the truth is your enemy and your accuser. |
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Projection. You falsely attribute to others your own unacceptable feelings.
For example, a woman complains that a friend is insulting her because he
hates women, when actually she harbors a secret hatred for men because she
was sexually abused as a child.
Rationalization. You conceal your true motives by making incorrect, self-serving
explanations. For example, a parent beats a child, saying that it is not
abuse because “That’s how my father
disciplined me.”
Distorting Defenses
(major)
This sort of
defensive functioning involves gross distortion in images of self or
others.
Autistic
Fantasy. You withdraw into excessive daydreaming
rather than take effective
action.
Projective
Identification. As in projection,
you falsely attribute to others your own unacceptable feelings, but here
you remain aware of the feelings yet believe they are justifiable reactions
to another person. For example, you feel angry that
you have been assigned to work on a project, but instead of recognizing your
resentment, you start to feel angry with a co-worker, believing that
she lacks commitment to the project.
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This sort of
behavior can lead to what is called a
self-fulfilling prophecy. For example,
an insecure person who is intensely afraid of abandonment can so often impute
feelings of infidelity into others that they eventually get sick of such
suspicion and criticism and end up actually abandoning him or her.
This whole process
gets started when you are mistreated as a child in your family. Not being
able to make sense of this irrational abuse, you tell yourself, “It’s
all my fault.” Then, firmly and repetitively
believing that everything is your fault, you begin to expect abuse—and,
sure enough, that expectation draws hurt to you like iron to a
magnet.
Stopping
Self-fulfilling Prophecies |
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1. |
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Force yourself
to accept the fact that, when you were a child, others inflicted their own
internal unconscious conflicts on you and that you were not to blame for
their hostility. Then you can . . . |
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2. |
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. . . stop believing
that you “deserved it.” Then you
can . . . |
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3. |
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. . . stop
hating. You can stop hating others for being
so mean to you; you can do this by having compassion for their suffering
in their own unhealed emotional pain, and you can
forgive them for their blindness and failures.
And you can stop hating yourself for being unable to fix things. Then you
can . . . |
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4. |
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. . . stop letting
your own emotional resentments unconsciously contribute to the emotional
chaos of the world around you. You can say, “From now on, I will do
everything I can to seek to understand others, to seek their good, and to
help them heal from their emotional pain.” Then you
can . . . |
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5. |
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. . . stop
unconsciously wishing to punish yourself. |
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Splitting. You see everything as either all good or all bad, sometimes
alternating between the two in regard to one person.
Defenses Involving
Action
This sort of
defensive functioning involves action or withdrawal.
Acting
Out. You use physical actions instead of
dealing with challenges directly by reflecting on and speaking about your
feelings. For example, a man has an extramarital affair because he cannot
verbalize his feelings of frustration or helplessness within the
marriage.
Apathetic
Withdrawal. You simply withdraw from interaction
with the world rather than deal with its assaults and and challenges by taking
effective action through loving service to others.
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This dynamic
is a key component of all addictions. Feeling the lack of
real love from your parents, you turn to
your own self-satisfaction through substances (e.g., alcohol, nicotine,
marijuana, cocaine, etc.), through behaviors (e.g., gambling), or through
your own body (e.g., sexual pleasure) as a way to avoid giving real
love to others. |
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Help-rejecting
Complaining. You make a show of asking for
help, yet because of hidden feelings of hostility you reject all help or
advice that is offered. For example, a woman suffering from bereavement begins
to lose weight. A neighbor brings some yogurt, and the woman complains that
she only eats goat’s milk yogurt. A physician prescribes medication,
and the woman stops taking it because she doesn’t like the way it makes
her feel. A psychologist offers psychotherapy and she complains that the
office is too far away. And so
on.
Passive
Aggression. You present a façade
of compliance, yet, because of hidden resentment—that is, unconscious
anger (often anger at your
father)—something always happens: you
get sick, the bus is late, your car breaks down, etc., so that you ultimately
obstruct, rather than complete, the task.
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“Wait a
minute,” you say. “It’s not my fault that the bus was late.”
Well, that may be true in some circumstances, but we’re talking here
about things—one thing or another—that happen over and over again
to frustrate the plans of someone else. And this frustration is a sort of
veiled retaliation, a quiet unconscious revenge for something someone has
done that hurt you. It could be very possible that you “knew”
unconsciously just how much of a delay it would take to miss that bus, and
you “knew” that you could be late. Thus, rather than catching the
bus before the bus that will get you there on time, so as to guarantee
not being late, you ignore the warning signs, “knowing” with a
secret satisfaction what will happen. In fact, the satisfaction may be so
secret that even you don’t recognize it. It may sound weird, but as
is often said, “Life is stranger than fiction.” |
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Health
Problems
and
the
Unconscious
|
It
can make many persons feel uncomfortable to hear it said, but many health
problems derive from unconscious conflicts. “Wait a minute,” they
say, “This is not how I want to think of myself—so repressed that
I brought myself a great deal of pain and
aggravation.”
Repression, however,
is not really something to be embarrassed about; it’s simply a fact
of life. We have an unconscious because we use language; that is, because
we can never speak our experiences completely, something always remains unsaid
and unconscious. And then, whatever feelings and experiences we are afraid
to express openly and honestly are added to the
reservoir of the unconscious. Ultimately, though, this repressed experience
will
“leak
out” in one way or another:
slips of the tongue; procrastination; repetitive self-sabotage;
hostile comments to others that just blurt out of
our mouths; aggressive actions—and health
problems.
But, if we have
some curiosity about the unconscious and seek to
understand it, rather than treat it with indifference
and contempt, we can improve the quality of our lives—mentally, spiritually,
and physically. |
Working
with
the
Unconscious
to
Facilitate
Psychological
Change
|
A MAN goes to his physician and says,
“Doc, I think I’m losing my memory.”
“Hmm. How long has that been going on?” the physician
asks.
“I don’t know,” the man replies. “I can’t
remember.”
This joke illustrates
the fact that many aspects of our lives are simply not accessible to conscious
thought processes.
And so it is
with the psychology of the unconscious. If most persons were asked, “Do
you have any unconscious anger at your parents?” they would likely respond,
“That’s ridiculous!”
Therefore, the
unconscious can be examined only indirectly, through linguistic associations,
dreams, and behavioral clues. Any attempt to approach
the unconscious directly will be met with fear and
denial.
Nevertheless,
many beginning psychotherapists, as well as most persons in the general public,
share a common misconception. They believe that since we appear to be such
rational creatures, if we are just told what is wrong with us the problem
will be solved.
The
problem with unconscious conflicts is that you can’t cure someone just
by telling him or her what’s happening
unconsciously. An attempt to do this can
have some dramatic and ironic effects.
There you go;
they prove the point by trying to deny it. But it does them no good.
They’re caught in the closed circle of unconscious
repetition.
Unless a person
asks for help and is willing to listen to it, there’s nothing you can
do. This is the pain felt by family members watching an alcoholic, for example,
on the path to slow suicide. You can only pray
that such persons eventually hit bottom—and that the force of the impact
won’t be fatal, but that it will be sufficient to crack open their hardened,
angry hearts to let in the light of truth.
And when that
hard heart does crack, the first thing it feels is sorrow—sorrow for
all the injury and pain it has inflicted on others while stuck in its own
blindness. It no longer blames others for its own misery; instead, it sees
the ugliness of its own behavior for what it is.
And so it can
be said that the only basis for lasting psychological change is
sorrow.
Here is a comparison
of sorrow with blame:
|
Sorrow |
Blame |
An acceptance of responsibility for
how your behavior affects others. |
A frustrated focus on how others’
behavior affects you. |
An honest
openness to all the facts of the moment. |
A defensive clinging to old, illusory
images of identity. |
A charitable focus on
hope and growth. |
A helpless focus on stagnation. |
Based in
forgiveness. |
Based in
hatred, anger, and
revenge. |
|
Once you do feel
sorrow for past behavior, there are several steps to psychological
change:
•
|
Recognize
the injurious act and admit it
openly. The specific meaning of
“openly,” of course, will vary with circumstances. It might mean
“coming clean” to a spouse or friend; it might mean confessing
in prayer; it might mean being honest with a
psychotherapist. |
• |
Recognize
your personal “lack” that contributed to the injurious act in the
first place. Again, the specific meaning
of this lack will vary from circumstance to circumstance. It’s often
a matter of fear: fear of saying “No,” fear of setting limits,
fear of appearing foolish or ignorant, and so on. But it could be based in
pride and arrogance, or it could be a matter of habit derived from family
dysfunction in childhood. |
• |
Promise
to remedy your lack. Note that this
is not a promise that you will “never do such a thing again,” because
that would be a wild promise that could easily be broken. No, you must go
deeper; you must promise that you will do whatever it takes to get to the
roots of the behavior itself and alter things for the
better. |
• |
Learn
from the past. “You can’t
bring the dead back to life. You can’t change the past.” These
are both true and accurate psychological statements. But with true sorrow
you can learn from the past and change your behavior in the present so that
you don’t “kill” again. No matter what “evil” you
have done in the past, the heaviest penalty you can pay for all that damage
is to make a true psychological change and dedicate yourself to doing good
from now on.
Some persons
choose suicide as a penalty for a confused and
injurious life. But really, suicide is a psychological “crime”
unto itself. Why? First, because it cuts you off from any healing you might
attain because of psychological change. Second, it cuts you off from all
the good that you could do, for the rest of your life, as true payment for
your past mistakes. Third, it is in essence an act of
hatred, by which you throw evidence of your failure
into the faces of those who failed you, as proof of their
failures. |
Some final points
about working with the Unconscious
The
psychotherapist’s proper job is to facilitate things so that the problem
emerges from within the client’s own experience in the client’s
own unconscious language. Being told,
for example, that you unconsciously resent your children, is one thing—and
it’s easily denied; dreaming that you try to
kill one of your children is shocking, and, if properly interpreted, is
undeniable evidence of a resentment that needs to be verbalized. Even waking
actions which seem to be nothing but “mistakes” can reveal some
dark secrets.
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A woman stands
in her kitchen, chopping onions. Her son rushes in. He has been “bad”
again. His mother glares at him. Angrily, she shakes her hand at him as she
accuses him—not even aware that she still holds a long, sharp knife.
What does the boy “see”? He sees his mother threatening him with
a knife. And he will be psychologically wounded for the rest of his life
by that horrible realization that his mother could be so displeased with
him as to threaten to kill him.
What was the mother really thinking? No one knows. Maybe she was primarily
angry at her husband for having an affair with another woman, and her son
found this anger transferred to him. And maybe the son was “bad”
because of an unconscious identification with his father’s betrayal
of the family. We can never know exactly how unconscious conflicts will entangle
an entire family. We just know that in this case the mother’s anger
and hostility showed themselves more clearly to her son than she would
have been willing to admit consciously.
She might claim it was all a mistake. But it was really an
encounter with something very
real.
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|
Even
though a rational explanation for a symptom may be discovered, there can
still be another unconscious “cause” for the
symptom. In his philosophy, Aristotle
(Physics, ii, 3) described several different types of causes that
are relevant even today.
•
|
The
material cause refers to “that out of which a thing comes to
be and persists.” In this sense, for example, the steel and concrete
and glass—the materials—are the cause of a building. |
• |
The formal
cause refers to the form—or plan, or pattern—by which the essence
of something is stated. In this sense, the design and blueprints are the
cause of a building. |
• |
The
efficient cause refers to “the primary source of the change or
coming to rest.” In this sense, the construction company is the cause
of a building. |
• |
The final
cause refers to “that for the sake of which” a thing is done. In
this sense, corporate business profit is the cause of a building. |
Now, as Aristotle
himself said, “it follows that there are several causes of the same
thing.” In psychological practice this means that symptoms of
depression, for example, which might be caused
by a chemical imbalance in the brain (material cause), can, at the same time,
be caused by repressed anger (final
cause).
Psychologically,
locating and treating this unconscious final cause of the symptoms can be
the most critical aspect of the treatment because it can have a curative
effect on the other causes as well. Treating only the material cause,
however—as if it were the rational and only cause—will leave
the final cause untreated and free to exert its influence through
repetition.
The
more you feel convinced that something is not a problem, the greater
the likelihood that it is an unconscious
problem. You might say, “What
do you mean, anger? I’m not angry with my parents!
I’m certain of that!” Well, watch out—you’re fooling
only yourself. And, while we’re on the subject, you might say,
“I’m not lying to myself! That’s
ridiculous!” Well, you have a bit to learn about
psychology . . .
Ego
states are not an explanation of the unconscious; they are simply a symptom
of it. But ego
states can be useful in working with the unconscious.
No
unconscious problem deserves to be gotten rid
of. All problems need to be treated
with compassion and respect. In fact, the part of you caught up in today’s
problem probably served to keep you alive in the past. Once you come to terms
with its unconscious “message” it can quietly retire, or it can
find a new, healthy protective role in your life. But if it is “killed
off” its wisdom is lost with it. |
No
advertising—no sponsor—just the simple truth . . .
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Additional
Resources
References:
1. American
Psychiatric Association: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders, Fourth Edition. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association,
1994. See Appendix B: Criteria Sets and Axes Provided for Further Study,
Defensive Functioning Scale (pp. 751–757).
Cognitive-Behavioral
Therapy:
Albert Ellis Institute
provides information about Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy:
self-help, therapist referrals, workshops, lectures, training, and
publications.
Beck Institute for
Cognitive Therapy and Research provides information about
Cognitive Therapy: workshops, lectures, training, and publications.
The National Association
of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapists provides current information
concerning cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy, including a searchable National
Referral Database of certified cognitive-behavioral therapists.
REBT FAQ
— Questions and Answers about Rational Emotive Behavioral
Therapy from the Albert Ellis Institute.
Questions
& Answers about Cognitive Therapy from the Beck
Institute.
Control-Mastery:
San
Francisco Psychotherapy Research Group provides information about
Control-Mastery therapy, which emphasizes an individual’s attempts to
master and overcome unconscious conflicts.
Hypnosis:
Milton
H. Erickson Foundation provides information and training in the
style of hypnosis used by Dr. Erickson, who was a master at healing unconscious
conflicts.
Society of
Psychological Hypnosis
Jungian Analytical
Psychology:
C. G. Jung Home
Page provides information about Jungian training and treatment.
Psychoanalysis:
Academy
for the Study of the Psychoanalytic Arts —“To advance
the study of psychoanalytic epistemology, theory, practice, ethics, and education
within a psychological framework consisting of philosophy, the arts, and
the anthropic sciences as opposed to biology, medicine, and the natural
sciences.”
The American Psychoanalytic
Association represents all member psychoanalysts.
The Lacanian School
of Psychoanalysis in the San Francisco Bay area, offers training
in Lacanian psychoanalysis.
Psychoanalysis
by Wolfgang Albrecht, in Berlin; provides links to pages with information
related to Psychoanalysis.
The Psychoanalytic Institute
of Northern California offers psychoanalytic training.
The San Francisco Psychoanalytic
Institute is a psychoanalytic training institute in San
Francisco.
The San Francisco
Society for Lacanian Studies provides lectures and information
about Lacanian psychoanalysis.
Lacan Related Papers provides links to numerous
Lacan-related papers.
Lacanian
Links provides links to Lacanian sites and is an extensive resource
for Lacanian articles and papers.
Related pages within A Guide to Psychology
and its Practice:
Anger: Insult,
Revenge, and Forgiveness
Death—and the Seduction
of Despair
Dream
Interpretation
Identity and
Loneliness
Personality
Psychology and
Psychiatry—and Psychoanalysis
Questions and Answers
about Psychotherapy
Reasons to Consult
a Psychologist
Repressed
Memories
Terrorism and
Psychology
Trauma and PTSD
Treatment
Philosophy
Types of Psychological
Treatment
CONTACT ME
INDEX of all subjects
on this website
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website |
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