Psychotherapy As The Pursuit Of Truth

 

PSYCHOTHERAPY AS THE PURSUIT OF TRUTH

Christopher Ebbe, Ph.D.     11-11

 

ABSTRACT:  Explorative psychotherapy can be understood as the overt pursuit of truth about ourselves, others, life, and the world, and even behavioral therapies can be viewed as seeking a better alignment with reality for the client.
 
KEY WORDS:  psychotherapy, truth

Human beings have in common a basic assumption that knowing the truth or knowing the nature of reality accurately will help them to function better in the world.  Knowing how to fix a car helps one to shorten lapses in having desired transportation.  Knowing when to plant crops makes for a better harvest.  Sizing up people accurately helps us to avoid being harmed by those who seek advantage over us or seek to harm us.

Explorative psychotherapies all seek to improve the client’s condition (symptoms, emotions, and/or functionality) partly by helping the client to know himself better.  Given the human penchant for deceiving ourselves, this usually involves uncovering things that we could know but have denied or repressed, and assisting clients to discover and to accurately understand things not previously known out of ignorance.  These discovered or uncovered matters include aspects of ourselves that we dislike, aspects of others that we dislike, our feelings about ourselves and others, and our false opinions and assumptions about ourselves, others, life, and the external world.  The discovery of unpleasant things and inaccurate beliefs and assumptions is resisted, of course, and much of the psychotherapist’s skill lies in being able to encourage and support clients in facing unpleasantness.

The goals of facing this unpleasantness are to better accept and love ourselves and others and to function better in the world as a result of having a more accurate understanding of ourselves, our goals, our abilities, and the world around us in which we must choose behavioral pathways to our goals.

Insight in Various Psychotherapies

Psychoanalysis is perhaps the example par excellence of a therapy that promotes insight.  The analyst interprets aspects of the client (behavior, dreams, transference, emotions) in order to help the client to gain insight and understanding.  Every detail of the client’s life and experience is open to potential interpretation.  It is believed that gaining insight will help the client to tolerate life with more grace and to make better choices in life because she knows herself better.  Psychoanalysis in its earliest form has been criticized for not focusing more on changing the client’s behavior and subjective state or happiness, but analysts believe that after gaining insight, the client will be better able to resolve inner conflicts, make better choices, and relate to others more comfortably and deeply and therefore will be happier.

Psychodynamic therapies follow the lead of psychoanalysis in exploring the client’s self and life in order to offer insights about the client’s inner workings, but they depart from psychoanalysis in allowing more and more varied interactions between therapist and client.

Existential-humanistic therapies also explore but with a focus on pervasive experiential commonalities among people as well as pervasive dynamics common to all people (e.g., the anxiety of just being as opposed to the anxiety residues of specific traumas).

Relationship therapies focus primarily on uncovering the client’s misapprehensions and maladaptive beliefs regarding others and regarding relating to them.

Practitioners of behavioral and conditioning therapies as a rule do not believe that conscious insight is necessary in treatment (i.e., that it is not necessary for the client to “understand” anything differently), but the maladaptive conditioning that they seek to correct can be understood as evidence of misunderstanding by the client (or at least of the client’s inability to interpret events and emotions more correctly for herself) which leads to the maladaptive behaviors.  These therapists try to recondition the client so that her behavior is more in line with reality (e.g., being able to have an intimate relationship partly by realizing and coming to truly believe that there are some good people in the world and that not everyone will mistreat her).

Departures from Truth-Seeking

Therapists of any school may depart from the seeking of accurate insight or alignment with reality whenever they steer the client toward adaptation rather than understanding.  Here are three examples.

     The therapist suggests that the client understand her

     mother as “well-meaning” in order to minimize overt
     conflict between the two, even though much of the mother’s
     behavior is clearly toxic.

     The therapist reframes the client’s expressed desire for a

     divorce as energy seeking change in general and focuses on
     changes in the marriage.  (“Reframing” can be either useful
     or not useful, depending on the therapist’s accuracy of
     understanding the client and the impact of the reframe.)

     The therapist delegitimizes the client’s reasons for

     thinking about suicide by chiding her about what will
     happen to her children if she were to die, in order to
     prevent her from killing herself.

Consequences of Insight and Understanding

Of course, there are negative as well as positive consequences of gaining a more realistic view of things.  It can be painful to realize and accept that one’s mother was toxic, that one’s spouse has never really loved one, or that one’s obsession with football is the result of feeling inadequate as a male.  If children reacted to seeing the realities of their parents by running away from home or using drugs, we might wonder if knowing the truth was worth the cost.  The most common of the feelings resulting from gaining insight are chagrin, disappointment (at others or oneself), anger (at others or oneself), shame or embarrassment, guilt (for not doing better, or for seeing a truth that one is not supposed to see), and fear of one’s inability to handle or make the best of one’s new opportunities.

Most therapists believe that coming to these understandings will result in better outcomes overall than continuing to believe otherwise (not blaming oneself any more for one’s supposed faults in the eyes of one’s mother; finding a more gratifying spouse and marriage; discovering one’s male energy and using it in the world).  Tolerating the emotional pain of these discoveries, until it subsides through the passage of time or through achieving the more gratifying positive outcomes that are now possible, requires some “ego strength” and resolve.  If people react to knowing the truth with appropriate coping efforts, trying to make the best of the situation and find ways to incorporate this new information into what is still a good life, then we can argue that knowing the truth is worth the price.  It is part of being emotionally healthy to be able to manage our painful feelings and feelings of insecurity. 

Some keys to dealing with these feelings (and feelings in general) are (1) to not blame oneself for one’s previous obtuseness but rather see the insight as an opportunity for a better life; (2) to “let the feeling be” instead of insisting too quickly on resolution; (3) to not distort reality in order to not feel or to nullify the feeling; (4) to gather the useful information implied in the feeling (how self-critical one is, even for having this feeling; realizing how one has fooled oneself about this state of affairs; realizing that even without the love one wanted one has managed reasonably well in life); (5) to accept the information in the insight, without contesting or fighting it (even if one doesn’t necessarily agree with it all); (6) to use the information in the emotion and in the insight to correct and refine one’s false beliefs and assumptions about oneself, others, life, and the world;  (7) to express the emotion, adaptively, if desired; (8) to attend to self-support while processing the emotion (taking good care of oneself); (9) to get support from others while processing the emotion, if needed (including one’s therapist); (10) to grieve one’s loss of innocence or the loss of the illusions that have sustained one prior to the insight; and (11) to forgive oneself (for not handling things better, not being more perceptive, being angry at significant others, or for changing one’s relationships with others (appropriately) in response to the insight).

The adjustment process to seeing things differently, especially seeing oneself and significant others differently, takes some time, since one needs to figure out how to do many things in a new way.  One should not feel embarrassed about this process but should simply let it run its course, while doing one’s best to take advantage of this opportunity to have a new and better life.

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