Comments (4)

• This seems to ring true today for me Wilum...Thank you for writing it and sharing it with our mutual friends...it’s been helpful for me to read....Blessings and Balance <3 Iris

  — Iris, 6/3/2010

• I-It and I-Thou in therapy

  I absolutely love that you talk about I-It and I-Thou in the therapeutic context. You write about it here in terms of the relational aspects of the couple. I wonder if you might talk about it in terms of the relational aspect between therapist and patient.

  On another blog, I posted the following comment. I wonder if you could take the time to respond? It had to do with the nature of psychotherapy — whether the relationship is “real” or “artificial.” I posited that it’s fairly artificial. The author of the original piece wrote that he was quite convinced it was real. So here’s my comment, below the asterisks...

  ***

  Where I think our disagreement lies is in the definition of the word r-e-a-l.

  There’s no doubt that the therapeutic relationship is not imaginary. Ditto to the validity of your point that the room can be a laboratory for real life, with the additional advantage of being able to go “meta” at any time. (Avoidant or conflict rupture between client and therapist? Step back and go meta about the nature of the rupture as well as the subject at hand.) Those are typically things you can’t do in real — pardon the choice of words! — life.

  That said, I look at relationships as the great philosopher and thinker Martin Buber did. That is, the relationship can be either I-It or I-Thou. Buber had pretty strict criteria for what constituted the deepest form of a Real relationship between people — that is, an I-Thou relationship.

  You’re most likely aware of Buber’s critique of psychotherapy, particularly as you’d read it in his extraordinary dialogues with Carl Rogers. The guts of the critique is this: you can’t have an I-Thou relationship without mutuality. By design, there’s no mutuality in psychotherapy. Factor in the economic basis of the relationship — a relationship that will end ipso facto when the client stops paying — and what you’ve got left is a special kind of I-It relationship...but one which is not I-Thou, even if there are occasional moments of I-Thou connection.

  Yes, it’s real. But it isn’t Real. It is absolutely not a relationship that involves, as Buber would put it, a dialogue involving the other’s entire being.

  ***

  Yours is absolutely one of the smartest therapy blogs I’ve ever found. (Your series on Givers-Takers deserves much wider dissemination, especially the last installment, with its discussion of clinical outcomes.) I’d love to read your take on this. Whether you agree or disagree is not so important. I’ve found in life that agreement can be highly overrated!

  — TK, 6/24/2010

• I-Thou in Therapy

  I-Thou in Therapy – a response to TK (June 24, 2010)

  First I thank you for your kind words, and for posing such a great question.

  Yes, for me therapy does have a strong I-Thou reality. And you have nicely set these terms up in order to explore what they are and where they fit in that special human relationship known as psychotherapy.

  Psychotherapy itself is real. It is a process involving two engaging parties, contained within a structure of time which has both a beginning and an end on both a micro and macro level. It is an intentional and structured relationship with a specific task and purpose. A general consensus would use the word “healing” to represent this task and purpose. But then semantics necessitates the exploration of healing from or for what? And it easily becomes captive to the medical model of ‘fixing’ something. I’ll not pursue this now because it’s not the focus of your question.

  My interest and exploration into rites of initiation, especially among indigenous peoples, provides me one of the more satisfying models for psychotherapy. And Jung’s exploration of the alchemical tradition is amazingly close to the mark for me as well.

  The purpose and process of psychotherapy is to provide a transition from one essential state to another, as for example the initiatory transition from adolescence to adulthood. This is a transition that is not provided by nature, but must come from the culture. (And psychotherapy is a gift of the culture, not just an encouragement of natural process, as for example chiropractic and many other healing arts. It’s not one of those “leave it alone or just help it along it will happen naturally” steps of normal human development.) However, I do observe that women, with the ‘natural’ experiences of their bodies, involving menstruation and childbirth, do have a one-up on men, for whom nature provides no such bridge to maturity.

  Psychotherapy at its center is a rite of passage from one state of development to another. In more traditional societies, this is called “initiation” of the “vision quest.” There was a time (a more mythic comment actually) in our own culture when this might be accomplished by a mature drill sergeant who took a young recruit, and unmade him in order to remake him into a man. And so with psychotherapy, it is a very real (specific) process.

  But let me speak further of its structure. I will often say to my clients, I give you something of value (my expertise, my time and my energy) and you give me something of value (your money and your attention to the process). One benefit of this balance of value is that it allows the I-Thou mutuality of which Buber speaks to enter. This I-Thou mutuality is itself not a value, but is a different order, an other place within the psychotherapeutic relationship. An analog is that with a married couple, the phenomenon of trust is a value, as is the value of honesty and (for lack of a better word) continence. However, the love that grows within a marriage is not a marital value, it is a different order of the marital reality, which is that other place, the place where the I-Thou mutuality lives.

  It would be next in order here for me to pursue my thesis that psychotherapy needs or is fed from the wisdom of a mature culture. I’ll comment only briefly. Nature itself does not have an antidote for the peculiar ability of human nature to divide (split) things. The rest of the natural order does not have have this dividing quality. And it seems most of the world’s creation stories pay homage to this particular human trait, such as the account of the “Fall of man” from the Garden of Eden. Good psychotherapy at least at some level, purposefully re-charts that ancient path so each individual can personally redeem it. The specific tools for this ‘work’ are relationship and consciousness.

  As I stated in the Newsletter, most (perhaps all) psychopathology can be seen as involving an injury or difficulty in relationship, or in the capacity for relationship. And perhaps it is worthy of consideration that all problems of consciousness have the same root.

  The world of relationships (where this present conversation actually began), involves the very essence of life, relationship being (as I posited) the central reality (that word again) of all things. Psychotherapy is also centered in relationship, but one which is purposefully circumscribed in time, and also has a contractual element of relationship, in which the exchange of value (money) serves to keep the relationship functionally balanced (you support me so I can maintain these skills which benefit you). Within this time and relationship, a specific depth of consciousness grows, the purpose of which is to ultimately release (as with the breaking of the alchemical vessel or ‘cooker’) the individual as more highly self-differentiated (one of my favorite $10 terms) into the world. I, as the therapist, have accomplished and finished (sealed) my work – as has the parent who raises the child for the purpose of effectively leaving home.

  One reason I don’t burn out from my work is that I have the great joy of helping fill my world, one by one, with the type of people I want out there.

  Now let me return to I-Thou, and note two of its pathways, psychotherapy and love. The former is the primary subject of this essay, but the latter, love, is its ever-unfolding gift. [Good psychotherapy makes good lovers.]

  I would consider that Buber (though I’ve not studied him extensively), from his foundation in the Hebrew Scriptures found implicit within the created order the I-Thou intentionality of God. Only human nature seems to lack (or can reject) that implicit function, as the old stories elucidate. It is the struggle of humankind to achieve that “blessing and balance” (to use an Ojibwa phrase). Perhaps it can be said that there are two pathways to this goal. One is specifically singular in time, and the other is ongoing or regular. (A Christian parallel is the once-for-all initiatory Sacrament of Baptism, and the constantly renewing regular Sacrament of love, the Holy Eucharist, the Mass.)

  The specifically singular is the ritual ordeal, the initiation, the vision quest, the baptism. And in our culture, one of the few relics remaining is the great structured work of psychotherapy. On the other hand, the specifically regular, is the experience and practice of love, in its various manifestations throughout our life. The high accomplishment of the latter is the I-Thou relationship, which in turn may become generalized throughout the fullness of a well-lived life.

  But in the same vein, the I-Thou relationship is inherent in the initiatory work of psychotherapy. A good therapist or analyst knows this, and within (ancient) guidelines, gives him or herself with an intense fullness into the inherently vulnerable life of the client for the sake of ‘making’ a fully conscious and self-defined human being. This intense fullness is not specifically that of a lover, but can have a lover’s intensity. It involves the therapist being fully there, in that specific circumscribed time, without reserve, with the ‘client.’ To answer one of your questions, this circumscription does not negate the presence of I-Thou relationship, but rather it gives place for it in this specific form which is the core genius of psychotherapy. In that place that emerges, there is (or at least can be) Buber’s “dialogue involving (each) other’s entire being.” And for me, both of these channels of human development involve that central secret of the universe, the intensity of the full relationship within all creation, inherent in the knowledge of I-Thou. It is the knowledge of Love.

  Perhaps I’ve stretched the point to fit my thesis. But with all my being I want it to be true. The passion of psychotherapy, though specifically circumscribed, is still the passionate dialogue of two fully engaged human beings. That is I-Thou. And the outcome of this great work is the full ability of each of us afterward to live “I-Thou” with all of life. That’s a life fully lived “in” love. The process becomes the result. We’ve both accomplished our work.

  An additional note.
  Within just a few days after I published the newsletter on Relationship, I realized I’ve presented only the first part of a necessarily larger frame. Deep within me there is forming another writing, which perhaps will be called “Beyond Relationship.” At this time I’m not sure what it will be saying, except to know what I’ve already written is only part of the story. I guess I can best say ‘stay tuned.’ WKM

  — Bill McDonald, 6/26/2010

• Anxiety

  Just found your site. What do you mean “To live in an effective marriage is also to be able to live with anxiety”?

  It sounds true to me but I’d love if you’d expand upon it.

  Thanks for your work!

  — Jennifer, 7/19/2010