In recent years, a great deal of emphasis has been placed on what are called "brief psychotherapies" by the therapeutic profession.
The emphasis has been on providing very short courses of psychotherapy to individuals, with an eye to providing concrete definable "results" with respect to narrowly defined issues. In large part, the movement to this type of therapy has been driven by pressure from insurance providers, who have sought to keep costs down by focusing on achieving measurable progress on specific, very focused issues. By keeping therapy short, the inscos hoped to return people who are off work back to the workplace in the shortest feasible time that is compatible with the safety of the client.
It may well be that the brief therapies and "solution-focused" therapies are quite successful in acheiving their defined goals. However, that is not the point that I want to pick up in this particular post. Rather, I want to ask a bigger and more fundamental question, which is implicit in the following quotation from Jungian analyst Mario Jacoby:
...any psychotherapy founded on depth psychology should focus above all on the question of who we really are above and beyond the distortions provoked by the way we were brought up or by the society we live in. Becoming conscious ultimately involves an unbiased experience of the 'true self'. The self in the Jungian sense is rooted in the unfathomable domain that has rightly been termed the unconscious.
Mario Jacobi, Individuation and Narcissism,
(London; Routledge, 1990), p. 96
The type of psychotherapy Jacobi is describing is rooted in fundamental questions of depth. The question that forms its basis is, quite simply, "Who are you?" It does not accept any glib or shallow answer. It also recognizes that who we fundamentally are is something that we will never be able to just size up intellectually. It's much deeper than that -- a matter that we can only experience, and never exhaust.
While brief therapies may provide concrete value, there is a whole other level upon which we need to encounter ourselves, and there be healed. For many people, it is that deeper level where the need is urgent.
I'd welcome comments from any readers on experiences of their own depth, in therapy or outside of it. Are there moments when you feel that you have really experienced yourself?
My very best wishes to you on your individual journey to wholeness,
Brian Collinson
Website for Brian's Oakville and Mississauga Practice: www.briancollinson.ca
Email: brian@briancollinson.ca
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© 2010 Brian Collinson
