A T H E R A P I S T ' S EXISTENTIAL SURVIVAL KIT

David G. Edwards

These are t imes when each day's mail brings the professional therapist at least one brochure promoting a training program tha t prom- ises to bestow '~life and prosperity" on its initiates. Reading the catalogues of course titles and the names of the redoubtable individuals who are re- cruiting for the apocalyptic struggle to establish the psychic City Foursquare, I have often envied the fecund minds who find the time, money, and hearers to fuel their orbits of my professional planet. To those others who reside on the shores of the ocean of growth, lacking a ferry ticket, I send this message in a bottle.

My commitment is to the client in front of me. He may have deserved Freud, but he got me. I may be more skillful next year, but he is here now. My commitment to him is to open to him the I in me which makes the assertion, "I am able to choose," and to allow him to respond to this pres- ence. This position is based on the belief that human being proceeds from a spiritual center identified only as I. This center is to be distinguished, as Erikson (1968, p. 216) states, from ego and self. The ego, as defined by Erikson, is the inner agency which guarantees our coherent existence without our being aware of its presence. The self, which the / re f l ec t s on, is all the properties which I can call mine, such as my job, my car, my wife-- my self. The counter-player of the ego, as Erikson goes on to point out, is environment. In terms of the currently accepted Cartesian mind-nature duality, environment is the social and material world; but in existential terms, which hark back to Plato's "cave," the ego's environment is its ex- perience of spontaneous, undifferentiated consciousness.

Book VII of Plato's Republic commences, " N o w . . . let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened." According to this allegory man has been chained since childhood facing the back of a cave so tha t he can only see shadows on the wall in front of h im cast by the l ight entering the mouth of the cave. "Suppose," says Plato, " tha t the pris- oners [men] be released so tha t they can turn around and indeed see the objects which produced the shadows. Will man then believe their reali ty? And suppose tha t [the prisoner] is further dragged up the steep, rugged ascent into the presence of the sun itself, so tha t he will see [himself] in his own proper place." In this allegory the shadows are man's images of the

309

310

CLINICAL SOCIAL WORK JOURNAL

world as mediated by the ego. In a choice fateful for 2500 years of Western thought, Plato "enlightens" man by making him the beneficiary of the light of the "reality" of natural phenomena rather than the light of his own consciousness. This denial of the primacy of the experience of spontaneous, undifferentiated consciousness is believed by Needleman (1968) to be the error of both behaviorist and humanistic psychology.

There is not space here to review the arguments for the existential basis of human being. They have been effectively presented by May (1958), Reinhardt (1960), and Ruitenbeek (1962). Their opinions, in concert with existential writers since Kierkegaard, is that the autonomous/ , sur- rounded by spontaneous, undifferentiated consciousness, is served by the apparatus of the ego. This apparatus is, one may wryly put it, like a bad- tempered, forgetful short-order waitress. She may not bring you what you order but you have to eat it anyway. Scientific practitioners of all schools of therapy are constantly devising new ways to educate the waitress; existen- tial therapy is pointing out that your mind is the whole restaurant im- mersed in the cosmos of your consciousness and that there are more fruitful things to do in the world than study restaurant management.

The goal of growth therapy is the unification of the whole mind-body system---ego, self, spontaneous consciousness, and I. This unification is experienced by the ego as autonomy and inwardness. The existential view of authentic human being is that the mind is/directed; that consciousness is not merely an impartial, uninvolved transmission medium for sensory input; and, that the world of the mind-body system is relative, not abso- lute, reality. To develop I direction by the mind the following are offered:

1) Work with I choices 2) Teach cognizance of attention 3) Accelerate the testing of ego predictions 4) Teach the ego to survive its fear of disaffirmation 5) Teach contact with spontaneous consciousness through relaxed

states 6) Be aware of potentiality 7) Be committed to empathic sharing

I Choices

A psychotherapy proceeding from an existential basis focuses on "acts, not facts." Therapy starts with directing attention to choices the client is making now in the interview, assuming of course the therapist is first at- tending to the choices he himself is making. Allowing, or encouraging, the client to attend to reporting events and "talking about" things is to ignore what is presently happening. When the client is willing to admit that he can direct his attention to his "now" actions he can then be expected to choose his therapeutic contract--that is, the changes he proposes to make

311

DAVID G. EDWARDS

which will modify the situation which brought him to therapy. Interest- ingly enough, even though the actions taken according to his contract may fail to material ly change his external situation, his mobilization of I choice alleviates his distress.

Cognizance of Attention

If left to its own devices, the ego will obsessively rehearse fantasies of object images; and, as Duval and Wicklund (1972) have demonstrated, comparison of predicted self-image with the idealized self-image generally produces feelings of low self-esteem. When the /d i rec t s the at tention of the mind to the flow of the sensory input of consciousness, the ego is l iberated from its burden of obsessive thinking. This is the basis for the familiar prescription for depressives: engage in physical activity. One of the most rewarding activities on which to focus attention is one's own breathing. Many manuals of breathing exercises are available and a good one is Ramacharaka 's Science of Breath (1905). A valuable eye contact exercise is uninterrupted looking into your own eyes as you are seated before a hand mirror at a distance of two to three feet. This exercise should be done for periods of at least a half hour's duration. The replacement of one monoto- nous obsession with another can be avoided by using the variety of aware- ness exercises described by Stevens (1971). What the ego will learn to do, with training, is to be aware of the direction and intensity of its attention. The ego will not learn to know how it does this but, as has been shown with control of other involuntary states, it will know that it can do it.

Ego Prediction

The ego is an inveterate predictor. The confirmation of its own predic- tions is a rich source of gratification for the ego, and this also amplifies its predictive activity. Man is the only animal having an ego with this capac- ity. Possibly he stumbled on this ability quite by accident but, once set in motion, its development via positive feedback was unavoidable. In every- day life the ego is like a radar scope constantly scanning the sensory input of consciousness. Preparing itself for meeting the unknown produces anx- iety. Meeting the unknown unprepared produces shock.

Imagine that you are a passenger in a car riding down a familiar road at night. At a s teady rate of speed familiar landmarks appear on the ego's radar screen with unobtrusive regularity. The ego-predictor clock is keep- ing perfect time. Without "knowing" it, i.e., being-responsible-for, you doze for a few minutes. Then you awaken to a dark unfamil iar s cene - - unfamiliar because your ego-predictor is programmed to see what you passed a few minutes ago without "knowing" it. The conflict of not recog- nizing where you are when you are supposed to know is experienced as shock. Psychically this discontinuity in time experience is experienced as a

312

CLINICAL SOCIAL WORK JOURNAL

"hole" in the environment of consciousnessmliterally a death experience. Thus the ego's future-predictive function is indeed its experience of life. The prospect of cessation of this experience originates its dread of death. The ego produces the dread because it believes that consciousness consists of ego images and that if it stops producing images it will die.

Seeking its own affirmation is the driving force of the ego. Self and memory consist of images which were ego-affirming. In its effort to be al- ways "right" the ego will even in some cases condition itself to produce defeat rather than success. The Walter Mitty's of this world are rare. Most ego fantasy thinking is a monotonous repetition of feeling impotently dis- appointed. As stated above, one way of stopping this is to direct attention to physical tasks. A second way is to accelerate the testing of ego predictions. Gestalt Therapy calls this "finishing unfinished business" (Fagen & Shepherd, 1970; Naranjo, 1973; Polster, 1973; Perls, 1973; Yontef, 1969). Briefly, the process is one of verbally dramatizing the fantasized encounter which the ego dreads and avoids because it feels unprepared. The pre- paredness and assurance which it seeks from outside support can only come from the experience of/responsibility. This is one of the major con- tributions of Gestalt Therapy.

Fear of Ego Disaffirmation The foundation of the ego's anxiety is its dread of nonbeing, that is, of

ceasing activity. As long as the ego can keep busy, and modem industrial- scientific culture has magnificently perfected ego-affirming activities, it need not deal wi th its own most i r remediable , unsurpassab le disaffirmation--death. All of its grandiose fantasies notwithstanding, the fact of its own death is the experience which the ego can never encompass and therefore must avoid at all costs (Becker, 1973). All other experiences of disaffirmation share the quality of this dread. The existential thesis is simply this: When the finite, contingent, culturally conditioned ego takes the dread of its own death into itself, the transcendent nonsubstantial I emerges to reveal authentic human being (Edwards, 1974). The accepted cultural institutionalizations of this transformation are without relevance here. Nor are there doctrinal formulas that can be found anywhere to re- pair this deficit. There are no lifeboats.

A therapeutic experience that actually encounters nonbeing is the Orpheus Experience. In this experiment the subject lists on separate slips of paper ten identities which he possesses and arranges them in order of importance to himself. After developing an attitude of meditative relaxa- tion he "says goodbye" to each of these in order, from one to ten. This should take about 15 to 20 minutes. After this he clears his mind for five to ten minutes, getting in touch with his spontaneous feelings. He then chooses the slips in the order of priority in which he wishes to take them back and takes them back in order from tenth priority to first priority. This is an experience of death and rebirth.

313

DAVID G. EDWARDS

Contact with Spontaneous Consciousness

Ego transcendence liberates the mind from the opaque thought imag- ery of the ego and reveals the t ransparent presence of spontaneous con- sciousness (Krishnamurti , 1972). Again it should be emphasized that achievement of a transcendental "state-of-consciousness" is not intended here. The meditation intended is the cessation of ego image production and the being receptive to nonreflexive (non-ego-labelled) sensory input. Au- togenic Training (Luthe, 1973) and self-hypnosis (LeCron, 1970) are two procedures for producing the necessary motor relaxation. In this s tate of relaxation, the mind is acutely aware of sensory input. The ego jus t doesn't respond to it or interfere with it. What the mind discovers from this posi- tion of deinvestment is that the authentic I is the observer and receiver of the flow of feeling and subjective support from spontaneous consciousness (Sartre, 1937). There are no rites of passage for initiation into the experi- ence of meditative relaxation. There are no mantras to chant or gods to be called on. All the consciousness tha t will ever be there is already the re - - without division, without substance, and without limit. It remains only to be discovered. To ask whether the individual can develop all the potential capacities of consciousness is a misunderstanding of the issue. The issue is what can fulfill human being: the ego and its world of frozen thought imag- ery or the I, the partner of Being. As a Tibetan teacher said to his Western hearers "Remember! No magic is happening!"

Awareness of potentiality

The goal of existential psychotherapy is the activation of the I which Erikson (1968, p. 220) has described in these words:

I is nothing less than the verbal assurance according to which I feel that I am the center of awareness in a universe of experience in which I have a coherent identity, and that I am in possession of my wits and able to say what I see and think. No quantifiable aspect of this experience can do justice to its subjective halo for it means nothing less than that I am alive, that I am life.

That the I distinguishes itself from the ego is routinely revealed in expressions such as"i t makes me angry" or as a public figure recently said to a crowd of supporters cheering his promise never to resign. "That cer- tainly makes you feel good." The anonymous it and the displaced you are expressions used by the I to differentiate ego from I. The meaning is then clear t h a t I does not make me angry and I does not make me feel good. It is the ego tha t produces the feelings of Rnger and pleasure. The I is the ex- perienceless observer and knower of human being The results of this rela- tionship are registered by the ego but the ego does not originate the rela- tionship, as the followers of the Platonic school have maintained.

314

CLINICAL SOCIAL WORK JOURNAL

But awareness conveys more than just the conviction of human being. The assertion t h a t / a m able to choose confers, as Frankl (1967) points out, a commitment to purpose and meaning- -a sense ofconnectedness to Being (Heidegger, 1972). The classical psychic alienation or neurotic split is, in existential terms, a lack of /d i rec t ion for the mind. T h e / i s thepath which unites the ego with consciousness of Being. This union, which is experi- enced by the ego as a "coming home," is in reality the discovery by the ego that it is already there (Heidegger's '~Dasein"). w h e n the center of the mind shifts from ego to I the misconception dissolves. From this center of being, the mind knows openness. The world is not crowding in as it does in the novels of Kafka. The ego is no longer being stifled and tormented by paradoxical contradictions. Ego says ~'Now I can think." The dimension of this openness is the dimension of Being--Time (Heidegger, 1962). Being comes to human being from the fu ture- - i t s own future. It's not tha t the mind now sees the future, but tha t the I now has a future. Now all the burden of ego contingency dissolves and the mind is free.

Empathic Sharing

What the mind can do in free relationship with Being has been most recently summarized by Pearce (1973). What Pearce is careful to say, how- ever, is tha t the inner sense of being free is paramout. The outward display of spiritual virtuosity is illusion. It's not that people do not walk on fire etc., but that it is an ego illusion that relationship to Being is verified by "miraculous" events, w h a t this means for the therapist and his client is tha t he does not need to interpose theories, models, diagnoses, and gim- micks into the therapeutic relationship. Nor does he need to walk on water to get the client's attention. The evidence that consciousnesses intercom- municate outside of accepted sensory paths is impressive. It is impressive and even start l ing for the therapist to hear the client verbalize an insight before the therapist 's ego has even formulated an interpretation. In em- pathic sharing the therapist discovers tha t the function of the therapeut ic interview is to open up Time for Being to bepresent. The ego recognizes this as the experience of love.

Ego Value Judgments

The emphasis in existential therapy on/direct ion and complementary ego partnership with consciousness does not mean that ego value judg- ments are ignored or denied. A therapy that fails to deal with the client's value conflicts and relieves his emotional distress by promoting him to a Utopian nowhere is at best trivial. And, if it robs the client, unawares , of the defenses by which he has been avoiding suicide or psychosis, it is poten- tially damaging (Goulding, 1974). The existential position is tha t ego value judgements can be handled from the perspective: I am able to

315

DAVID G. EDWARDS

choose--without depending on value judgments for emotional support. Gestalt therapy calls this "taking responsibility." Existential writers term this "faith." Albert Ellis is a most articulate and vigorous supporter of this position. Ellis has wri t ten prolifically about Rational-Emotive Therapy over the last 20 years and he has recently summarized his position (1973). Briefly, what Ellis says is: I can accept the consequences of living in an unpredictable world without either irrationally condemning or inflating myself. The existential approach to therapy is not in conflict with ego psy- chology and it is decidedly not anticognitive. It integrates both the cogni- tive and noncognitive functioning of the individual and directs his atten- tion to developing the decision-making power of his I center.

REFERENCES

Becker, E. The denial of death. New York: The Free Press, 1973. Duval, S., & Wicklund, R. A. A theory of objective self awareness. New York: Academic Press,

1972. Edwards, D. G. Transcendence: An issue in psychotherapy training. Clinical Social Work

Journal, 1974, 2 (2), 142-147. Ellis, A. My philosophy of psychotherapy. Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy, 1973, 6

(1), p. 13. Erikson, E. H. Identity, youth and crisis. New York: Norton, 1968. Fagen, J., & Shepard, I. L. Gestalt therapy now. Palo Alto, California: Science and Behavior

Books, Inc., 1972. Frankl, V. F. Psychotherapy and existentialism. New York: Washington Square Press, Inc.,

1967. Goulding, R. L. Thinking and feeling in transactional analysis: Three impasses. Voices, 1974,

10 (1), p. 11. Heidegger, M. Being and time. New York: Harper and Row, 1962. Heidegger, M. What is called thinking? New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1972. Krishnamurti, J. The impossible question. New York: Harper and Row, 1972. Le Cron, L. Self hypnotism: The technique and its use in daily living. New York: Signet, 1970. Luthe, W. Autogenic therapy. {6 vols.). New York: Grune and Stratton, 1973. May, R., Angel, E., & Ellenberger, H. (Eds.). Existence. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1958. Naranjo, C. The techniques of Gestalt therapy. Berkeley, California: S.A.T. Press, 1973. Needleman, J. (Ed.). Being in the world. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1968. Pearce, J. C. The crack in the cosmic egg. New York: Pocket Books, 1973. Perls, F. S. The Gestalt approach and eyewitness to therapy. Ben Lomond, California: Science

and Behavior Books, Inc., 1973. Polster, E., & Polster, M. Gestalt therapy integrated. New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1973. Ramacharaka. Science of breath. Chicago: Yogi Publication Society, 1905. Reinhardt, K. F. The existentialist revolt. New York: Fredrick Ungar Publishing Co., 1960. Ruitenbeek, H. M. (Ed.). Psychoanalysis and existential philosophy. New York: E. P. Dutton

and Co., 1962. Sartre, J. The transcendence of the ego. New York: Noonday Press, 1957. Stevens, J. O. Awareness: exploring, experimenting, experiencing. Moab, Utah: Real People

Press, 1971. Yontef, G. A review of the practice of Gestalt therapy. Los Angeles, California 90032: Califor-

nia State University, 5133 College Drive, 1969.

San Benito County Health Department Clinical Social Work Journal Hollister, Ca. 95023 Vol. 3, No. 4, 1975