Vibrant Jung Thing: Jungian Images and Reflections

Beyond Cookie-Cutter Psychotherapy

In recent years, there have been certain strong and notable trends emerging in the field of psychotherapy.  Some have been very valuable, but some, unfortunately, have not been for the better.

In many cases what's on offer doesn't seem to be anything that really helps people deal with their own personal uniqueness, or the individuality of their lives.  Nothing that really helps people to truly feel at home and alive within their own skin. 

For instance, cognitive behavioural therapy [CBT] undoubtedly has some aspects that render it useful.  By attempting to change peoples' thought patterns, it does offer a very valid tool for people caught in obsessive thought patterns, or patterns of behaviour, for instance.  The relief that it provides in this way can be of great benefit to many people.  Yet, in my clinical experience, many people who go through a course of such therapy are left with the feeling that, at the end of it, there is something important missing.

I believe that this is because of the emphasis in CBT on purely rational thinking.  There is an underlying belief in CBT that all that is really significant is the conscious mind, and that, if only the individual can be trained to think about their life situations in a reasonable, rational way, then everything will be OK.

But not everything in human life is purely rational.  In fact, if rationality were all that we had in human life, our lives would seem dramatically impoverished.  For instance, consider the following.  

If you have ever been in love with someone, is the manner in which you look at them and think about them purely rational?  If you did look at them that way, thinking about that person as just a purely biological entity, for instance, a primate of the species homo sapiens composed of various amounts of certain organic compounds, which interact in various complex ways, would you still be able to love them?  I think that it is likely that you would not.

Similarly, are you really capable of looking at yourself that way?  As a bundle of chemicals, and metabolic and neural impulses?  Or as something that is like a variant of your laptop computer?  I think that it is much more likely that you look at yourself as a person, as a whole.  

Attempts to reduce human persons to bundles of physical processes are nothing new in philosophy and psychology, or for that matter in medicine.  They have been going on for hundreds of years.  A famous example, which many people find quite chilling is found in the 1971 book Beyond Freedom and Dignity by B.F. Skinner. 

Skinner advocates that decision-makers move beyond "outmoded" ideas of human personhood to govern the world with a sophisticated combination of classical and operant conditioning that would supersede such "obsolete" notions as viewing humans as free and autonomous agents and as having human dignity.  Thinkers like Skinner are very often trying to reduce human persons to something more understandable and manageable, but they never quite seem to be able to capture the essence of what it is to be human.

In addition, please consider the whole added dimension of the human unconscious.  Here is an entire realm of human existence that is never going to be reduced to simplistic notions of goal-directed rationality.  And it is in the symbolic material that emerges from the unconscious, found in the realms of art, literature, mythology, and religious expression that the deepest and profoundest expressions of what it is to be human are found.  Can these dimensions of life be reduced to causal and rational explanations?  Not really.  You can try, of course, but only at a terrible cost: the price to be paid is that our very humanity goes missing.

In the words of the famous poet of the self, Walt Whitman, "Re-examine all that you have been told... dismiss that which insults your soul."  When it comes to therapy, it's essential to find a mode of therapy that honours the richness and intricacy of your own deepest being...

I'd gratefully welcome comments and reflections from readers.  Have you had experiences of therapy that really honoured your uniqueness, your freedom and your dignity?  On the other hand, have you experienced forms of therapy that have not done so?  I'd be very interested to dialogue with you about this important subject.

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

Between Childrens' and Parents' Needs: the Generational Anxiety Sandwich

In this post, I would like to write about something that may have a sense of "taboo" about it.

 For many of us in the present day world, a powerful struggle goes on in our middle years.  There are greater and greater demands on our personal reserves of compassion, empathy, time, energy and money.  These resources are streaming out in two directions, both towards our children, and also towards our parents, and possibly other aging relatives, who are living to a greater age than ever they have in the past.

As many people in their middle years try to meet the needs of the younger and older generations, they find themselves nearly impossibly stretched.

In such a climate, it can feel almost impossible to meet the needs of others.  In addition, many people end up feeling like callous ingrates if they give any consideration to their own needs as people.  "How can I consider myself?" one often hears people in this position say, "My parents gave me so much.  I owe them so much--everything!" 

The really difficult thing is when the inner complex gives such guilting messages to an adult child, when the parents have actually not been kind or supportive to their children.  I experience this as a very frequent occurrence in my practice.  Many times, people who have been seriously emotionally or physically neglected by their parents -- or worse -- are the very people who respond in the most dutiful and self sacrificing manner.

And then again, it is often those same people, dutiful to their parents, who turn around and are completely self-sacrificing to their children.  And sometimes those children can be every bit as demanding unreasonable and narcissistic toward their parents as their grandparents are toward them.  And often that same mass of guilt and obligation that whips these people into unreasonably self-denying behaviour toward their parents will do the same when it comes to their children.

The particular psychological forces that bring this about are as individual as the people involved in the situation.  Very often, in dealing with these situations, healthy ordinary people need therapy to get to the root of the problem, and to free themselves from the crushing guilt.  Guilt can be an extremely powerful emotion and motivator, and it is often necessary to confront it in the safe environment of therapy to be able to remove its power.

The other hugely difficult component of these intergenerational binds is that they often lead to enormous amounts of anxiety.  This can prove as difficult, if not more so, than the guilt.  However, what I am going to say next about that guilt may prove surprising, even shocking!

Which is, that it may actually be quite a good thing that the individual is experiencing the guilt!  "Wow, Brian" you might be thinking, "what a horrible thing to say!  ...Speaking of callous!...  How can you possibly wish anxiety on already-burdened people?"

Now, I don't wish anyone unnecessary pain, and, all other things being equal, I would wish that no one would have to deal with excessive anxiety.  But in a situation like this, I believe that it is often the case that the anxiety has a psychological purpose.  Simply put, the intense anxiety makes us aware that there is a conflict, and that the status quo is simply untenable for the individual. 

It may be that the guilt is intense for such a person, but the anxiety shows us that there is tension, that the needs of the self are not willing to just continue being put on the shelf and denied.  The complex of guilt and obligation within us may spur us on to utterly altruistic self-destruction...but that complex is not all that there is to us.  There is the part of us that recognizes that the purpose of human life is to become the person who is latent within us, that that is why we are here in this life.  That part will allow us to make some compromises, but it will not allow us to completely sell ourselves out -- not without our paying a very dire, wrenching psychological price.  

It's easy for many people to feel a strong impetus to self-sacrifice, but, psychologically speaking, it's important to realize that there may be very real limits to the degree to which we can put our own needs on one side to care for and meet the needs of others.

This awareness might lead us to face an even more fundamental questions like, "How do I begin to live my own real life?" and "What is meaningful to me?"  These questions takes us to the very heart of Jungian analysis, and true depth psychotherapy.

I'd gratefully welcome comments from readers on these issues, which affect very many of us.  How have you experienced the "generational sandwich"?.

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

Identity and Anxiety in the Film, "Up In the Air"

Make no mistake, moving is living.  -Ryan Bingham

"Up in the Air", directed by Jason Reitman, stars George Clooney, Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick.  Clooney's character Ryan Bingham is a full-time corporate down-sizer whose life consists of an endless stream of business travel ("322 days last year").  He moves from place to place, letting people go from corporate roles when their employers cannot stomach doing it.  He has no permanent attachments to people, a desolate and hollow single bedroom apartment he never sleeps in, and he has accumulated 10,000,000 airmiles...

Up In the Air Official Website

Ryan Bingham's life is in airports and hotel rooms and is filled with constant movement.  The stability and security in his life, his secure base, is found precisely in those things that others find impermanent and impersonal.  His finely orchestrated and choreographed travel routine, his mechanized method of moving constantly from place to place gives him re-assurance, and in an odd way a sense of belonging.  Which is good, because Ryan has no permanent connections to anyone in his life. 

Ryan also has a budding career as an motivational speaker.  His message: "Make no mistake: your relationships are the heaviest components in your life....  The slower we move, the faster we die."

Ryan is completely identified with his corporate role.   His aircraft-bound life is an appropriate symbol of his existence on a deeper level.  In the terms of Jungian psychology, Ryan, like Christopher McCandless, the subject of Into the Wild is a true puer aeternus ("eternal boy").  He floats above life in his social self, and never puts down roots into the deep soil of his genuine self.  And he is danger of discovering that his life is tragic because there he has no remaining way to turn back.

In its own way, this is a very disturbing and provocative film, but it's a very good one.  It raises the question for each of us about how connected we're willing to be to the real substance of our lives.

I'd welcome comments below from readers on anxiety, identity and work.

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

 

Seeking for Depth

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

Job, Identity, Anxiety

I don't know what might motivate an employer to choose to lay people off 3 weeks before Christmas.  However, judging from the calls I received from clients and potential clients prior to the New Year, there were quite a few employers who took such action this year.

Having been on the receiving end of such news myself in prior times, my thoughts and very best wishes are with anyone who had to confront that reality this holiday season.  Here's to better times and a better job market for all. 

This is difficult for people all on its own -- just dealing with the economics of job loss.  However, when it's compounded by issues of identity and self-worth, it can become incredibly painful, to the point where it is almost unbearable.

It's all too easy for all of us to allow our identity to become completely bound up with our social role and with others' expectations of us, especially where work is concerned.  In his writings, Jung warned incessantly of the dangers of becoming over-identified with the social self, the "persona" as he called it. 

Today, for many people, the pace of work simply increases and increases as organizations make new demands on their employees.  More and more consideration, energy and time is demanded by the workplace, and, for many, there is intense and endless anxiety about work, about whether one's job is stable and sustainable, about relentless change, and often about the endless political complexities of workplaces where resources are scarce and communication and leadership are inadequate for the task at hand.

You might think that these factors would lead individuals to be less and less identified with work, but in an odd way, the effect seems often to be just the reverse.  Even though work is fraught with anxiety, people become strangely identified with their work role.  Perhaps it's precisely because so much effort has to be put into keeping working life on an even keel, and so much worry and anxiety keep pulling individuals back to confronting their work. 

However, it's essential for each of us to hold on to the realization that I am not identical with my work role.  Don't allow work to consume the substance of your life.

Easy to say, but doing it is often not as simple as that.  Often it is not just the identity at work that confines us.  It can be just as much about the way that we are perceived in various social settings, and in the community at large, through our work roles, as it were.  Very many of us are powerfully addicted to the drug of success.  Or, perhaps more accurately, we are highly invested in being seen as a success, perhaps to such an extent that all of our self-esteem and self-respect is riding upon it.

This gives rise to some fundamental questions:

• What really is it for me to be a success?  How will I know when I get there?
• Who gets to say whether I'm a success?  Me, or some outside authority to which I've given the power to say whether I've made it or not?
• Is it what I own that makes me a success, or is it what I am?
• And simply, am I over-identified with my work role?  How do I understand myself independent of it? 

Don't let your work keep you from your life.  Don't let it persuade you that it is your life.  Don't let it keep you from your vocation, what it is that you are really meant to be and do.

I'd be interested in your comments about how you experience work, and how you understand yourself and your identity independent of your job, and, as always, any other comments that you might have.

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

The Holly and the Ivy

Once again the Holidays have rushed to be upon us.  It often seems that, once we hit the first day of December, the calendar somehow catapults us forward through the month of December and into Hanukkah, Christmas and then the New Year. 

It's a busy time, full of a combination of demands upon us, social times, and a tidal wave of various and sometimes conflicting emotions.

It's a season that emphasizes joy.  Consequently, people who are going through a range of very common difficult human experiences can find this season particularly hard.    

For the recently divorced, separated or bereaved, the holidays, with their emphasis on family togetherness, can be a brutally difficult time.  Living with the reality that a relationship that once promised love and acceptance is no longer there, and often, dealing with limited access to children at a time of the year that may have had particularly intense connections with children in the past can be a particularly difficult emotional experience.

For many people, even encounters with relatives at this time of year can also be ambivalent or difficult.  It can be painful to realize that relationships with family members, that should be filled with closeness and trust are in fact much more tentative and superficial.  Where in earlier times, connections with relatives may have been much closer and warmer, now geographical distance and time constraints keep us much more nearly at arm's length.

Yet there is another character to this time of year, when the days grow short, and we long for the return of light and warmth.  This is a season which possesses an archetypal character and which has held significance for people probably just about as long as there have been people and they have been noticing their environment.  I think here of the words of an old carol of the season:

The holly and the ivy, when they are both full grown,

Of all the trees that are in the wood, the holly bears the crown.

Refrain:

Oh, the rising of the sun and the running of the deer,

The playing of the merry organ, sweet singing in the choir.

These are lines well known to many who come from the Christian tradition, as they come from a famous carol, "The Holly and the Ivy".  This carol actually has pre-Christian origins and may well date back over 1000 years. I believe that this carol points to some of the transpersonal meaning and significance of this season. 

For many centuries, people have always taken the evergreen holly and ivy indoors during the winter in the hope that the occupants of the house would survive difficult conditions just like the hardy holly and the ivy. The colours of the Holly and Ivy, green and red are traditionally associated with the winter solstice.

From very ancient days, people have always met the solstice with courage and hope, and faith in the return of the sun.  For us, too, these holidays call us to recognize that within ourselves which is evergreen, perpetually living and growing, even in those seasons and times when the warmth and light of life can seem very far away indeed.  In Jungian terms, to find this evergreen part of ourselves is to find the permanent and indestructible core of our unique personhood, the Self.  It is at that place within us that we touch the divine. 

I'd be very interested in your comments about how you approach the Holiday season. Are there symbols in this season that bring you life joy and hope?

My very best wishes to each of you on your individual journey to wholeness, especially in this Holiday season,

Brian Collinson

Website for Brian's Oakville and Mississauga Practice: www.briancollinson.ca

Email: brian@briancollinson.ca

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© 2009 Brian Collinson

Can I Get a Witness?

Some of you will recognize this phrase from R and B music; some of you may recognize it as a phrase used in the black church.  But it's a phrase that has an awful lot to do with psychotherapy!

A lot of people come into therapy because they need someone else to simply see and acknowledge the reality of their lives.  This is a very basic human need.  We all need someone, at some point, to see us, really see us, the way that we actually are, rather than the way that we might seem in all our social roles, and amidst all the pressures that we find in our lives to be what it is that others want us to be.

To have someone to whom we can actually tell our story.  Just as importantly, maybe more importantly, to tell our story with someone to witness it...  To finally have the chance to do that can be one of the most important and precious things in human life.  I certainly know that is the gift that my therapists gave to me.  I know that it is a precious thing for many who come into therapy.

I invite you to tell your story, to someone who really knows how to listen and who is not burdened with a lot of preconceptions about who you are.  You way well surprise yourself with who it is that you really are!

I'd be interested in your comments about the times in your life when you have felt really seen, heard ... witnessed.  

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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© 2009 Brian Collinson    

Is Attending to Your Dreams "Worth It"?

There are some people who might look a bit oddly at you if you tell them you pay close attention to your dreams.  To some people, in fact, it seems like an incredibly "flaky" thing to do.

Often, these people subscribe to the "daily regurgitation" theory of dreaming.  Their understanding of where dreams come from is that the mind sort of seeps up all the impressions and images from the day, and then at the end of the day has to wring itself out, or clear itself from all the accumulated daily grunge.  This "grunge disposal", on their view, is what dreaming is.  "After all" they say, "I had a dream that involved Harry Potter last night, and I just went to see the Harry Potter movie two days ago.  So surely seeing the Harry Potter movie made me dream about it!"

However, dreaming is really not that psychologically simple a process.  It's unquestionably true that the dream will use imagery or ideas from a person's recent life.  So if you went to the Harry Potter movie yesterday, it might very well appear in your dreams.  But does that mean that the Harry Potter movie caused your dream?  There are lots of things that you experienced in, say, the last 48 hours.  So why would the dream focus specifically on this?  As opposed to, say, the time you spent stuck in traffic on the QEW or the scrumptious BBQed ribs you had for dinner?

To determine the answer to that question may take some real inner exploration.  But it can reveal a great deal to you about your unconscious and your inner life.  The answer will depend very much on what Harry Potter or the Harry Potter movie symbolizes for you.  That will depend on both your personal associations (e.g., if your brother is the biggest Harry Potter fan ever, the dream may have something to do with him, one way or another) and also on the more objective or archetypal meaning of the symbol (e.g., Harry Potter is very much an archetypal hero, and the dream may have something to do with the heroic aspect of yourself).

Conscious, careful recording and examination of your dreams will be "worth it".  There is a great deal of your self contained within them, and they offer the chance to know your psyche and the hitherto unknown aspects of who you are.

What do you think about your dreams?  I'd be interested to talk with you about them, and to hear how they've been meaningful or important in your life.  

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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© 2009 Brian Collinson    

When You Hit a Brick Wall

Often people get to the point in life where they reach an impasse, and they don't know how to solve a particular situation in their lives.

There doesn't seem to be a way forward and there doesn't seem to be a solution.  Although this can happen at any point in life, it seems particularly prevalent at mid-life.

Often, the way one becomes aware of this is that you just realize that the way that you have been trying to solve a particular problem or deal with a particular life situation just isn't opening anything up.  What this tells you, at least in part, is that your attitude is no longer adapted to the realities of your life.

Now, please don't misunderstand me.  I'm not saying something along the lines of "If you want it enough, and you're unfailingly positive about it, what you want in your life will come" -- the kind of message that you find in books like The Secret.  I think that approach to life is quite naive, and I have seen a fair number of people come to real harm as a result of trying to live like that.  Such an attitude can be really unadapted, and can lead you into a major collision in reality.  I know of one person who left home and found herself absolutely destitute and friendless in Dubai as a result of that kind of thinking.  From all that I hear, Dubai is not a great place to be penniless, and to try and get by on just a sunny smile.

Having an adapted attitude may well mean that there are certain realities that I have to let in and acknowledge.  That may even mean that there are things that I have to grieve.  What it may mean, above all, is that I have to change.

Let's say that I'm a true died-in-the-wool "thinking type" person.  So I try to approach all the problems and situations in my life in very rational, thought-out, dispassionate ways.  Then perhaps one day I find myself deep in the grip of a depression that I simply can't shake.  It might well be that the only way that I'm going be able to come through the depression and feel alive again is by acknowledging my feeling side -- all those years of unacknowledged and suppressed feelings.  This is going to require a big change in the way that I see myself, and a lot of open-ness to dimensions of my life that I've previously done my very best to cut off.  It isn't going to be easy.  Parts of me are really going to resist.  But it may well be that it's the only way that I'm going to get my real, meaningful life back.

Similarly, a person who is all about willpower and control may well have to acknowledge the parts of him- or herself in the unconscious that they can't control.  They may have to admit that the ego is going to have to acknowledge that it is "second banana" to the Self, and let things emerge from their dreams and from other parts of the unconscious, and take those things into account in the way that they live their lives.  This might be quite difficult, but it might just give them a meaningful life again.

Many times "hitting the wall" has to do with coming up against the things that I really refuse to admit to myself.  The key to the lock that I need to open, I hide from myself, because there is some truth about myself or my situation that I really don't want to look at.

The only way past the wall is to be open to something new: the undiscovered self.

Please keep sending me your comments and your thoughts!  I would welcome any of your reflections on the "walls" in your life, past or present.  

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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© 2009 Brian Collinson    

Purpose in Your Life

The Toronto Globe and Mail in an article this morning cited research by Dr. Patricia A. Boyle and her colleagues at the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, and published in Psychosomatic Medicine, tending to empirically confirm something that psychotherapists and counsellors have known from their practices for a very long time:   Greater purpose in life is associated with a reduced risk of mortality among older persons.

Almost needless to say, the insight that meaning and purpose in life are tied to greater vitality in life is not something that is confined to the old.  In some important ways, depression can often be related to a particular crisis of meaning in a person's life.  Jung has written on the theme of meaning with great frequency in his writings.  He particularly emphasizes its importance at mid-life and all points thereafter in life, but it is a theme that he would readily acknowledge throughout the life journey, as does psychiatrist Dr. Viktor Frankl in his classic work Man's Search for Meaning.

That's all good, but where does one get this meaning?  Most fundamentally, something is meaningful to a person when the meaning emerges from deep in the self, and is connected with the very core values and life experience of the individual.  The depth of the Self is not nearly the same thing as the reality of the ego and its particular projects: it has to do with the whole dimension of us that is seeking to find unity and wholeness.  The work of psychotherapy at its deepest and most valid is to assist the individual in getting to know these undiscovered aspects of the whole psyche.

How does the issue of what is meaningful touch your life?  WHere have you found meaning that is vital and important to you?  What parts of you continue to look for meaning?

Thank you to those of you who suggest possible topics for my posts either on-line or face-to-face.  This post came about as the result of a personal conversation with someone.  As always I welcome your comments, and I look forward to dialoguing with each of you.  

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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© 2009 Brian Collinson