Hearing Voices and Psychotherapeutic Position (or How Socrates Was Right)
Not long ago I participated in a seminar about hearing voices and other unusual human experiences. In an atmosphere of openness and acceptance we together -relatives, supporters, volunteers and professionals –were listening to different stories by voice hearers, who painted a completely different landscape from the one we are used to in our lives. With mouth and eyes wide open, I tried to understand their narratives of voices they hear every day, of telepathic thoughts, extra-physical experiences, of the world filled with Jungian archetypes and higher planes of existence…and each moment I was closer to my inglorious conclusion: if the width and variety of my experiences were weighed up against theirs, mine wouldn’t be “worth a hill of beans” as my friend Mina would call this particular feeling.
For quite some time psychotherapists have been trying to push our way into health-care system to work side by side next to clinical psychologists. That would make psychotherapy free of charge for our clients, plus there would be, at last, some prospect of continuous employment for psychotherapists. However, working outside the system has also advantages, since we do not have to accept concepts and standpoints (which are sometimes “a bit non-sense” standpoints) of the system. One of their “a bit-non-sense” standpoints is this: A professional, a psychiatrist or psychologist is “The One who Knows”, the one who is in position of knowledge against his patient or client respectively. Undoubtedly, a psychiatrist has a vast knowledge of mental disorders, diagnosis and medicaments; a psychologist and psychotherapist, on the other hand, know a lot about emotional, behavioural and mental patterns, traumas, non-functional beliefs and different styles of attachment.
However, in spite of all the knowledge, we have no right to think that we know more than a client himself. For example, if someone is diagnosed for personality disorder, and if we know that he has ambivalent attachment style, we are quite ignorant against the client. It is the client himself, who has a true knowledge of himself, of the phenomenology of his own experience. Only he himself knows and feels how it is to dwell inside himself. All experts, however wise and experienced, can just watch from outside and try to feel and understand.
Lacan, a French psychoanalyst, has already talked about this topic: “It is absolutely clear we are lost, if we start with an idea, that a psychoanalyst is the one who knows more than any other.” (Seminar XV). If we want to help somebody when we are in a position of power, which is also a position of superiority (predominance) we will stay on THE OHER SIDE forever.
The psychotherapist’s task is neither to give labels, nor to make a diagnosis, nor to treat with medicaments, nor to analyse, but to create a space where client will feel safe and accepted enough to tell his own story. Therefore, we must not allow ourselves to be trapped by a belief that we truly understand a person if we get to know his psychiatric diagnosis.
Each individual is different, everyone has his own unique experience of himself and the world, therefore each psychotherapy should be a new creation, built together by the client and the therapist. Therapist contributes his knowledge and experience, which represents a tool needed in their mutual exploration; he deepens the relationship with his presence and empathy; and makes a promise that he will ALWAYS be the client’s ALLY. At his work he must again and anew take a radical and humble Socratic stand: I KNOW THAT I KNOW NOTHING, although the “throne of superior knowledge” is sometimes so comfortable.
“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.” George Bernard Shaw
I believe there are only a few, who haven’t watched the epic war film Braveheart (1995) and whose arms didn’t break out in gooseflesh at William Wallace’s (Mel Gibson) cheer: “They can take our lives, but they will never take our freedom!” The film, which is based on a true story (probably not exact to the letter) about a Scottish knight who leads his rebels against the English dominance in Scotland, has left no one undisturbed. Show me the one who hasn’t shivered with fear for William’s fate, or the one who hasn’t shed a tear during the film. William Wallace is no doubt a hero, easy to identify with: proud and brave, with a tremendous charisma which inspired the men to fight for a true cause. Freedom is of such importance to him that he is ready to sacrifice his life.
In the history, individuals, groups or nations had many an ordeal when their freedom was limited, broken or taken – they fought for freedom in wars and rose in resistance in revolutions. But modern western society has the ordeal of a different kind – to face the opposite: the abundance of freedom.
Capitalism and freedom
In the book Fear of Freedom (Escape from Freedom) Erich Fromm, a German psychoanalyst, explores how man’s attitude to freedom has been changing through history.
In the past socioeconomic systems the individual’s freedom has been limited by different authorities such as the Church, the class society system, monarchs and tradition. Capitalism is the first system to place freedom to its final position, for there are no tyrants in power anymore. And furthermore, traditional values have been marginalized and the Church has lost its predominant political influence. The individual is no longer supervised by a vindictive god or merciless absolutist, and his status is no longer defined by tradition. Every man has become the architect of his own fortune. Human freedom has therefore expanded: not only the negative one – “freedom from”, but also the positive one – “freedom of”.
One of the fundamental premises of capitalist economy is active citizenship individualism: the individual is expected to exercise critical thinking and to be a responsible and active member of society. Unlike Medieval feudalism, where the individual’s position was clearly defined in an orderly and transparent social system, the capitalist economy forces the individual to stand on his own feet. He is responsible for everything, therefore his success or his failure is nobody else’s business but his own. (Fear of Freedom p.94). Together with growing individualism (freedom from) another phenomenon has occurred – loosening of human bonding, which consequently makes the “capitalist” individual feel isolated and lonesome.
In his anxiety and helplessness, resulting from the loss of authorities, the individual can either escape to other forms of submission (religious sects, the far-right political movements) or he takes responsibility for his freedom and fulfils his own authenticity and creativity.
(Super)abundance of freedom
Since 1941, when Fromm’s book was published, western society and its attitude to freedom haven’t changed much. All spheres of life are tightly connected with freedom: we have freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of conscience and religion, artistic freedom, political freedom. We are free to choose our job, our career, our life partner, where to live, to have a family or not. We are free to believe in god or not. We are free to choose our own clothes, what diet to take, what free time activities we will join and who our friends will be.
And as consumers we assert our positive freedom every day.
A member of modern society must be free (even if he doesn’t want to be): he is not free to not be free. Positive freedom – the freedom of choice has become a kind of imperative and every man’s life is irrevocably entangled with it. Psychologist Barry Schwarz in his TED speech Paradox of Choice analyses the contradictoriness of choice that we are faced with in the capitalist world. He establishes that more choice does not bring more pleasure. In the speech (See video below) he states an example from his own life showing how the formal premise that “more choice – more freedom – more benefit” brings us to a false conclusion.
This is how the story goes: For many years Barry wore the same pair of jeans. He had bought them a long time ago, when there had only been one brand of jeans in shops (similarly as in the time of socialism in ex-Yugoslavia). Those jeans suited nobody, they were uncomfortable, plain, but if you wore them long enough, you started to feel comfortable in them. After all these years Barry decided to buy a new pair of jeans. The salesman asked him what type of jeans he wanted. Barry answered that he wanted the ones they used to be the only type in the past. Of course, the salesman had no idea what the customer wanted, so he began to enumerate all sorts and styles of jeans available in modern stores: slim-fit, bootcut, bottom-bells, tight, straight, ankle-length, low-rise, mid-rise, high-rise, flare jeans, wide-leg jeans, with a zip, with buttons, light-washed, monochromatic, ripped… After the first shock and dismay at all the choice, Barry finally managed to find a pair that became him much more than any other before. But as he was leaving the store, he felt worse than before. The abundance of choice made him raise his criterion to meet his expectations of what a good pair of jeans should be like. Now he was haunted by a feeling that the jeans he had chosen were quite alright, but not as perfect as they could have been.
But the paradox of choice does not lie only in the fact that our expectations become higher but also in the fact that we have to choose one item from a vast number of alternatives. When we have picked out one pair of jeans, it means that we have refused 136 other pairs. It also means, that we have missed and rejected all other options.
This wouldn’t be a problem in itself if it weren’t for our brain’s ability (frontal lobe) to simulate possible realities. This ability allows us to imagine how it would feel to have a pair of jeans we haven’t chosen. And since our reality simulator is prone to exaggeration the best jeans are those we have left in the store, and if we had that very pair, we would be truly happy. Therefore, we can’t find contentment in owning the new pair of jeans, but we feel uncomfortable for having missed so many better options due to our choice.
The problem of choice does not end up with consumers’ freedom, but it often causes “paralysis”, stresses and anxieties of decisions, which are important for our future, success and happiness. We all know that the sun will not extinguish because we have chosen cheese with nuts instead cheese with green peppers, or that there will be no Great Flood if we haven’t explored all the options and have bought a telephone with only 289 functions. However, decisions about which study to take, what job to choose, what career to pursue, which partner to pick out to be the best choice for us, or whether to have kids or not – may have consequences of apocalyptic proportions. After all, everything depends on truly important life decisions of the individual: his life course, his happiness and the worth of his life itself.
Freedom and responsibility
Freedom of choice, nonetheless free, is, one way or the other, conditioned. Our decisions are always conditioned by our personality (which is again conditioned by genes, by the environment we were brought up in, and the zeitgeist we live in), by expectations of important other individuals, by public opinion (at one time it was ‘in’ to have a family and children and at another time it is ‘out’), by personal endowment and limitations (most likely you will not become a professional sportsperson if your favourite activity is watching TV and eating fried onion rings).
Although the individual’s choice is never entirely free, the choice itself as well as its consequences are entirely the individual’s responsibility. When facing an important life decision, our head is swarming with different doubts and second thoughts, which make our decision even more painful than it is in itself: Have I made the right choice? How will my choice affect my life? What if the choice I have made will make me miserable? What better options will I miss because of my choice? What will other people think of my choice? What if I’m not capable enough? What if I don’t succeed?
In such a situation we wish we didn’t have to choose at all, or that, like in Greek tragedies, a handy deus ex machina (or at least a semi-god) would come down on a rope and lift us out of trouble. Our burdens of freedom and responsibility cannot be laid on god, neither our destiny, nor parents, but we must carry them by ourselves.
Free choice and choice of freedom
Fromm suggests that anxiety over freedom cannot be solved by escaping, but we have to plunge into freedom even deeper. Our ‘freedom from’ can be solved by freeing from psychological patterns that disable our authenticity. And our ‘freedom of’ can be accomplished by creativity and presence.
We can decide to follow somebody else and go their way, a guru, for example or a priest, a personality advisor, a coach. We can also find help in recipes-for-life books with shining covers, such as “Be What You Are”, or “Ten Steps to Success”, or “Twelve Pieces of Advice on How to Reach the Happiness and Inner Peace.”
But we can choose our own way, the one that was chosen by Zarathustra: “This – is now my way: where is yours?’ Thus I answered those who asked me ‘the way’. For THE way – does not exist!” (Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra)
For the way of freedom is for each and every one of us – once again and anew- one’s own choice.
