by Halko Weiss
During this developmental stage, another kind of wounding and strategy can happen as well. In this situation, rather than striving to excel and prove her worthiness, the child becomes ambivalent about growing up and taking her place as an equal in society. Typically, the child comes to feel that to embrace fully the transition to equality will mean the loss of the closeness that being immature allows, as well as the delights of being little and less responsible. Maturity seems to come at the expense of caring and affection. A typical scenario might be that the child is now regarded as too old to be cuddled; or the child might be seen as being old or mature enough now not to need much parental support. Instead of playing freely, the child may now be required to do chores.
In any case, the child ends up feeling rejected in her essence, and valued now only for her emerging more mature self. The full range of her being—the maturity and the vulnerability, the competence and the neediness—is not validated, and the child struggles to have these elements of her being recognized.
Strategically, then, the child may both achieve and also regress to a more helpless state, alternately producing some creative marvel and begging for help with the simplest tasks. She will try not to achieve recognition (as with the industrious strategy above), but to get attention. She desires to be included like the industrious child, but one of her thoughts is that the reason she is not embraced as before is not that she is not yet good enough, but not quite interesting enough. To counter her fear of rejection, the child will develop a dramatic flair—expressing great emotions or having serial problems or crises. The person with this pattern will remember how she was so adored or protected or held close when she was younger, helpless, and interesting enough to be delighted in, and will cling to this image and behavior from the past, unwilling to grow all the way up.
Such a dramatic orientation will show up in adults as the need for attention and the amplification of small things into epic events (“Oh my God!” “What is it?” “We’re out of mayonnaise!”). Because the strategy is adept at seeking or capturing attention, others may often feel attracted to the drama generated, and to the person generating it. After a while, however, the drama becomes routine. When interest from others subsides, the person again feels rejected, and so begins another cycle of hurt and drama.
Both industrious/overfocused and expressive/clinging persons express great energy. Both patterns tend to be well socialized and functional, with opposite digressions: the industrious becoming overfocused and the expressive becoming diffuse.
On the resource side, people in these patterns are often competent, high achievers with good social skills who accomplish a great deal. Responsible, grounded people, they tend to interact maturely with others, are attractive with high energy, are generally very cooperative and dependable, and are often admired by others for their functionality. Their respective strategies lead them to have good initiative, to be action or people oriented, and to be good at problem solving. They are typically easy to inspire and mobilize, and can be good leaders who proceed with determination, or team players who perform well under pressure.
Comparison Chart of Characterological Terminologies
Table 8.1 is provided to compare a few characterological languages among many for those interested in how the various systems go together, even when they are not precise matchups. Many clinicians deal with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Notice that the DSM does not even have a categorical equivalent to rigid, conscientious, industrious/overfocused dispositions because unrelenting doing and achieving are valued as virtues in American culture. A good deal of research is related to Loevinger’s (1976) characterology. Like Kurtz, Loevinger chooses to use words descriptive of a particular predicament, as opposed to pathological labels. She also has a couple of characterological dispositions that go beyond character as normally understood.
In the theory behind the presentation of Table 8.1, the starred (*) conditions are thought to be disorders of self-leadership. Instead of having the consistency and stability to take a position on a particular end of a basic conflict, such as Kurtz’s sensitive/withdrawn people choosing existence over need, they flip-flop between positions. The borderline disposition may be seen as flip-flopping back and forth between withdrawal and longing-dependent needs, not settling on one particular solution. Narcissism can be understood as flip-flopping between the longing needs of the dependent position and self-protective independence. Those who present as compulsives seem to shuttle between the conforming of the burdened/enduring position and the conscientiousness of the industrious/overfocused.
Table 8.1 Character Terminology
*Conditions thought to be disorders of self-leadership.
Character in the Real World
In Western culture, almost everyone has at least some of these various patterns, hurts, and strategies, simply because we all have gone through the same basic developmental stages. We’ve all had more or less success with the particular learning tasks of our era, and therefore rely on and exhibit varying degrees of these strategies. The presentation of those raised in different cultures would certainly vary among many variables (Paniagua & Yamada, 2013).
At different times, depending on the demands of a situation, different neural patterns may be triggered, and we will shift into a certain habitually wired, experiential network to respond to that particular moment. We may then shift out of the strategy when the situation is resolved, and later be triggered into some other wound that generates a second, third, or tenth kind of strategic response. As complex adaptive systems, we embody a multiplicity of attractor states that organize us in a variety of ways given our immediate circumstances (see Chapter 5).
Furthermore, as we grow and learn, we discover that we can blend strategies, adapting certain ones in new ways to support different kinds of needs. For example, we may learn that we are more successful in confrontations of power when we withdraw slightly, rather than when we try to dominate. Or to protect a sense of not belonging, we may find that staying busy and focused—industriousness—keeps us safer than withdrawing.
As a result, we develop all sorts of hybrid wound and strategy arrangements: tough/withdrawn, sensitive/overfocused, dependent/seductive, and so forth. Like a tradesman with his box of tools, the malleable self has assessed the particular nuances of a problem and has learned to choose the strategies that best seem to address the momentary need. Also, most standard characterologies deal with one’s early years of development, while Erikson (1963) has taught us that human development embraces stages throughout life. What happens when we send someone who has had a decent childhood off to a messy, ambiguous war at age 18 and in the stage of identity consolidation? While a disposition to withdraw classically happens during the early tactile time of development, it can also be evoked at 32 when one becomes a refugee or prisoner of war.
Clinically, then, we need to remain open to the specifics of the client’s unique, internal organization and not be coerced by the linear descriptions of the character patterns. We need to respond moment by moment to the actual experiences of the client, allowing the character map to serve as a consulting framework for the possible meanings of the various presenting elements of the client’s body, perceptions, and behaviors. In this way, the Hakomi practitioner remains congruent with his or her highest mandate—to allow the client’s inner wisdom to unfold.
It is always acceptable for practitioners to have a hunch about what is going on and propose an intervention based on that hunch informed by character theory (see Chapter 23), but as with all Hakomi interventions, the Chinese proverb remains true that the way is easy for those who go forward with no preferences. Practitioners must not be attached to their hunches. Perhaps the character-based intuition is that someone is not going forward in his life because he is afraid of falling on his face and being embarrassed for incompetence. But then it turns out that the person has been in military service and has embodied a fear based on experience that if he leads the way, so
meone might literally be killed.
Both Lowen and Kurtz, in their later years, claimed to no longer use character theory in their work, but simply contacted and followed the unique experience of every client (Greg Johanson, personal communication). This was a bit disingenuous, since they had both integrated the lessons of character work so deeply that they could afford to not think about them, but concentrate instead on fine-tuned variations. The Hakomi Institute faculty still consider learning the character basics of commonly negotiated, developmental conflicts like learning the scales on a keyboard so that later one can do jazz variations. Every practitioner does not need to reinvent the wheel and ignore the hard-earned wisdom of those who have gone before. It does remain paramount, of course, to resist the temptation to consider any person pathologically as an “it,” a “type,” a “character,” ignoring the person’s creativity, organic wisdom, capacity for emergent properties, and ability to relate from a larger self-state (Almaas, 1988; Eisman, 2006; Monda, 2000; Schwartz, 1995).
Section III
Methodology and
Therapeutic Strategy
CHAPTER 9
The Therapeutic Relationship in Hakomi Therapy
Julie Murphy
The basic work of health professionals in general, and of psychotherapists in particular, is to become full human beings and to inspire full human-beingness in other people who feel starved about their lives.
CHOGYAM TRUNGPA, Becoming a Full Human Being, 1980
The Therapeutic Relationship
THERAPY NORMALLY REQUIRES a living, conscious, trusting relationship. As each therapist-client relationship is unique and creates a particular outcome (Cozolino, 2010), it is the therapeutic relationship that provides the container in which healing takes place. Kurtz (1990a) has maintained that the therapist’s first job is to create and sustain the healing relationship. For him, the client’s sense of safety, the “cooperation of the unconscious,” and the general unfolding of the therapeutic process all depend on the alliance between therapist and client no matter what method the therapist follows.
Researchers describe the personhood of the therapist as more central to the success of the therapy than any particular technique or theoretical background (Cozolino, 2002; Lambert & Ogles, 2013; Mahoney, 1991; Orlinsky & Howard, 1986). As interpersonal neurobiology becomes better understood, so does its role in the therapeutic process. When a limbic episode establishes itself within a neural pattern, it takes a limbic occurrence to reverse it (Lewis et al., 2000). “A safe and empathic relationship establishes an emotional and neurobiological context conducive to the work of neural reorganization” (Cozolino, 2002, p. 291). Thus, the attitudes and qualities of the therapist are vital to the success of therapy.
Different approaches and theories emphasize different relational styles and modes of participation for the therapist. In order to elucidate the Hakomi understanding of how the therapeutic relationship is built, it is useful to compare it to other, more traditional psychodynamic approaches. Traditionally, the psychoanalytic therapist was a “blank slate” and the emphasis rested solely on the inner drives and conflicts of the patient. As the field has developed, so has the role of the therapist and the therapeutic relationship.
Classical Analysis
In traditional psychoanalytic theory, the analyst participates in a relationship focused on the client’s inner structures. She purposely tries to give as few hints about herself as possible for the sake of the client’s unadulterated projections. Because she views the psychopathology of the client as the result of inner conflicts and tensions (Stark, 1999), making the unconscious known becomes her work. The analyst makes interpretations, particularly of the transference, providing insight into the client’s motives and the understanding of his internal structures to promote his healing.
In contrast, rather than offering interpretations, the Hakomi therapist might employ analytic theories and interpretations to understand the client, and then use those intuitions to create little experiments in mindfulness that enable the client to study his experience (Marks-Tarlow, 2012). However, she would not base the relationship on this dynamic or lead the exchange with her client in an analytic mode, agreeing with others that silence is not a neutral act (Stolorow et al., 1987). In Hakomi, insight is never enough. An insight cannot counteract transference based on experience. It takes an experience to moderate another experience (Greenberg et al., 1998).
Self-Psychology
The self-psychology therapist seeks to provide the client an experience of goodness that was lacking in the client’s early childhood by empathically validating the client’s experience. Healing comes through the client’s experience of this goodness and his growing ability to come to terms with the imperfection and fallibility of the therapist (Stark, 1999). The therapist focuses on the affective, present experience of the client, not on making interpretations of the client’s internal structures or the actual relationship between the therapist and client. Self-psychology emphasizes the client’s experience of goodness in the face of disappointment and the therapist’s empathic recognition of the client’s experience. When the client has accepted the initial goodness and mastered the frustration and grief resulting from inevitable disappointment in the therapist, then the goodness has been internalized.
These transmuting internalizations (Kohut, 1966) theoretically build the internal structures (archaic, validating, self-object ties) that were missing in the client, and the client successfully learns to deal with the impossibility of perfection in self or others. While the Hakomi therapist may address early deficit reflected in a client’s present experience, he looks for the opportunity to do so as a collaborative experiment within the actual relationship between therapist and client. He also seeks to engage the compassionate witness of the client in relation to the internal organization of experience, so there are both intrapsychic and parallel interpersonal aspects to the therapy (Germer, 2006).
Object Relations
The object relations therapist also engages in the therapeutic relationship in order to fill early childhood deficits. The id’s needs for instinctual gratification can be frustrated, whereas the ego’s needs for connection and understanding cannot (Winnicott, 1965). Using the present relationship (with the therapist), the therapist gives the client the goodness that was missing and assists him to feel his rage at early frustrations. Because the therapist creates space and understanding for the client’s experience, the client can feel the therapist respond. He can have the corrective experience of feeling important in the context of an actual connection. The therapist’s active participation is critical—she is the object (that is, good mother) that fills the deficit.
While the Hakomi therapist may deal with the provision of needs or missing experiences, she does not consider her role as defined or limited by such. Certainly, the discernment between authentic needs and instinctual wants would become a joint venture of study, rather than an interpretive activity of the therapist. In addition—as stated above—encouraging a supportive internal relationship between the client and his organic self (Eisman, 2006) that brings compassionate awareness to bear on hurting parts is as crucial to overall growth as a nourishing therapist-client relationship.
Though Hakomi recognizes the importance of historical object relations on the fragmentation of the ego (Eisman, 1989; Schmidt, 1994), it does not accept that poor object relations leads to a poor self in terms of the human capacity to be mindful and compassionate (Fosha, 2000, 2005; Panksepp & Northoff, 2008; Russell & Fosha, 2008; Schwartz, 1995). In object relations and self-psychology schools, the object is nearly absolutized and the subject minimized—implying pathology, a lack of responsibility, and a possibly interminable therapeutic process.
In terms of reformulating the psychodynamic theory of building an egoic level self through introjecting “self-object ties” from interpersonal relationships, Bons-Storm suggests alternatively that the basic building blocks of personality might be thought of as “self
-narratives using stories about experienced events” (1996, p. 47). This is a more satisfying formulation for Hakomi therapy. It suggests that what is introjected is not blind, random units of pleasure or pain, but intelligible, intellectual-emotional events—events that the imagination transforms in meaningful ways according to core organizing beliefs, and then integrates into one’s ongoing story according to Piaget’s processes of assimilation and accommodation (Gendlin, 1992; Horner, 1974).
Contemporary Relational Psychoanalysis
The relational therapist engages in an authentic two-way relationship with the client. Unlike client-centered empathy, the analyst stays centered in herself, and responds to the concrete relational dynamics that the client actually plays out in the therapeutic relationship (Stark, 1999). Both therapist and client actively participate, moment by moment, and cocreate all meaning and experience. The therapist is mutually impacted by the relationship.
This approach to therapeutic relationships is more akin to Hakomi. The client experiences the therapist through the lens of his past (subjective transference) as well as his real-time interactions with the therapist (objective transference) (Stark, 1999). The client heals through understanding these dynamics and through participating in the relationship. While the relational therapist still relies on interpretations, she engages in the intersubjective field as fully as the client does (Stolorow et al., 1987). The mutual sharing of impact between client and therapist has a profound healing influence. The client must know that just as the therapist changes him, he changes the therapist (Stark, 1999).