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 Mick
Cooper has done an impressive job in writing a much
needed, current and user friendly survey of the
field of existential therapies. If I were to teach
this course, I would use his book.
Starting
from an initial disclaimer on being able to define
"what existential therapy is" since existential
theories and practices are so diverse Cooper
states: "The primary aim of this book is to
introduce readers to the rich tapestry of
existential therapeutic approaches. It aims to map
out the different existential therapies, such that
readers can learn to distinguish their Binswanger
from their Bugental and are able to identify the
key dimensions along which these existential
approaches differ" (p2). And this is exactly what
Cooper does in a comprehensive, accurate, clear and
journalistic fashion.
A
brief introductory chapter on existential
philosophy with thumbnail sketches of major figures
and some of their key terms is the springboard for
chapters on each of the significant existential
therapy schools. I only make one small caveat on
one point in this chapter since existential
philosophy is not Cooper’s focus. When Cooper
introduces the term "existence" Heidegger’s
term Dasein is cited: "Indeed, Heidegger
uses the term Dasein – literally
translated as ‘being there’ – to
refer to the specifically human form of
being;"(p18). It should be noted that Heidegger
objected to this translation.
Heidegger
"In French Dasein is translated by
être-
là
[being there], for example by Sartre. But
with this, everything that was gained as a new
position in Being and Time is lost. Human
beings are not present like tables and chairs."
(Heraclitus Seminar, p126) Consciousness is
grounded in the Da or clearing which enables
things present to meet human beings. Setting out
from this openness or ‘ek’-sistence is
the major historical step that Heidegger takes to
move thinking to a new level beyond traditional
philosophies of presence.
In
Chapter 3, "Daseinsanalysis: Foundations for an
Existential Therapy," Cooper does capture something
of the sense of Dasein as "a
world-disclosing openness" (p37) in his detailed
discussion of Medard Boss. Still, it is worth
mentioning that we cannot properly speak of "human
Dasein" since this gives the impression that
Dasein is a property of the human, whereas
for Heidegger, Dasein is an aspect of Sein,
a part of the Being-process from which the
possibility of the human being emerges. Heidegger
is an Ontologist, not an Anthropologist.
Following
Heidegger, Boss attempts to give Freudian
Psychoanalysis an ontological foundation in order
to overcome Freud’s psychologistic and
constricted vocabulary as well as his
phantasmagorical meta-psychological speculations.
Cooper does well in rehearsing the Bossian
catechism, Boss’ transposition of
psychoanalytic concepts into a Daseinsanalytic
framework and his translation of psychoanalytic
terminology into Daseinsanalytic terms.
I
take issue with only one term in Cooper’s
exposition: his use of the term illumination rather
then attunement in Box 3.1, "Illuminating your
world." When Boss transposes Freudian projection
into the register of Heideggarian attunement, we
are able to see that a client’s supposed
parental replays are much more constricted ways of
"tuning in."
This
means that we as therapists are seen as parental
figures, not because we remind clients of their
parents, but rather because such clients are only
able to regard other adults as authoritarians. To
speak of the "psychologically healthy individual"
in terms of "a light that can shine across the full
terrain of its world" and to offer the exercise
"imagine that you are a light with the potential to
illuminate all different aspects of your world"
skews the notion of attunement (gestimmen)
in the direction of projection. Perhaps the
metaphor of imagining you are a radio receiver able
to tune into all stations rather than being stuck
on one would be a better illustration of Boss’
notion of full as opposed to constricted world
relatedness?
Cooper
goes on to characterize the aim of the
Daseinsanalytic therapist, quoting Boss, as "to
enable the patient to unfold all his
world-disclosing possibilities of relating toward
the particular beings which he encounters" (p41). A
minor hesitation at this point: Does the therapist,
as Cooper suggests, "create a ‘trial
world’ in which clients can begin to
experience a more open way of being" and must the
therapist "create an atmosphere of permissiveness
and openness"? I doubt that Boss regarded therapy
as a sort of "dress rehearsal" or that he felt
permissiveness and openness were always appropriate
responses or that he thought it was up to the
therapist to "create an atmosphere."
I
pose one last question in regard to Cooper’s
discussion of Daseinsanalytic dreamwork. Cooper
writes, "A dream no more points to meanings in
waking life than waking life points to meanings in
dream: they are two forms of experiencing of equal
validity and legitimacy" (p45). True, however in
his It Dreamt Me Last Night, Boss does seem
to suggest that dreams do give us priviledge access
to our modes of attunement, hence, to our
constricted ways of relating to the world and also
that dreams are harbingers of our increasing
world-openness and more healthy relating and as
such are signposts of therapeutic progress.
Before
moving on, I’ll make a suggestion that I think
would enhance this chapter on Boss. I would propose
that Cooper include (in the next edition) some
exposition of the remarkable Zillikon Seminars
given by Heidegger and Boss to Boss’ students.
Mention is made of these seminars in connection
with Hans Cohn.
Cooper
moves into his stride with an excellent exposition
of Frankl’s logotherapy in Chapter 4 and a
fine review of the American Existential Humanistic
movement, giving cameo appearances to May,
Bugental, Yalom, and Schneider.
Chapter
6, "R.D. Laing: Meeting without Masks" is the
chapter for which Cooper deserves the most credit
and praise for his perceptive and balanced reading
of Laing. No doubt this chapter will be of most
interest to readers of this review and it is to a
discussion of Cooper’s Laing that I now turn.
Cooper reports that Laing’s disposition has
been variously described as mercurial, enigmatic,
arrogant, iconoclastic and brilliant (p91) and he
not surprisingly finds in Laing’s writings a
display of all these characteristics. Cooper then
admits that "of all the existential therapies
examined in this book, Laing’s approach is the
most difficult to characterize." This of course is
no accident. We’re well aware that Laing had a
horror of institutions and that the last thing he
wanted was to inaugurate a Laing Institute with a
set of orthodox Laing created, inspired and
approved theories and practices to be followed by a
band of proselytes (although to his bemusement this
sort of thing did develop around him). Hence, Laing
did not attempt to construct a Laingian system of
therapy nor did he give many examples of his
practice in his writings. So Cooper concludes that
"it is only through brief passages in his writings
and the accounts of his clients that one can begin
to build up a picture of [Laing’s]
work" (p92).
In
addition, following Mullan, Cooper remarks that
Laing feared that writing about his approach would
not only be misunderstood but would inevitably be
unable to convey a sense of the spontaneity and
rapport at the core of his therapeutic outlook. I
could add a very long list of what Laing would have
thought writing about therapeutic work must by its
very nature leave out, but I won’t.
In
a section titled "Influences" Cooper gives a brief
account of the influences on Laing’s
development (p92). He highlights readings in the
existential philosophic tradition, European
existential psychiatry, the British Psychoanalytic
greats, Interpersonal psychiatry, Bateson and the
Palo Alto group, Marx and the influences of his
childhood, especially his relationship with his
mystifying mother.
In
the section "Finding meaning in madness" Cooper
chronicles Laing’s perduring contribution to
psychiatry. As he puts it, "For therapists, the
Laingian edict is perhaps ‘assume
intelligibility unless proved otherwise’ as
opposed to standard psychiatrics ‘assume
unintelligibility unless proved otherwise.’"
He amplifies "in other words, therapists should try
to engage with their clients holding a basic trust
that the client’s behaviors and experiences
are meaningful attempts to deal with their world,
rather then pathological or irrational errors of
functioning" (p95).
Sections
on "Ontological insecurity" and "The social context
of mental misery," follow and demonstrate a genuine
appreciation of Laing’s canonical works. The
most vivid and memorable moments in Cooper’s
chapter on Laing come from vignettes of therapeutic
work with Laing given by two clients Mina Semyon
and Jan Resnick. For more wonderful firsthand
accounts of meetings with Laing read R.D.Laing
Creative Destroyer, edited by Bob Mullan, if
you have not already done so.
In
a short note on Post Laing, Cooper sees therapists
developing from Laing’s work as falling into
two overlapping camps, the existential and the
psychoanalytic and some of the more psychoanalytic
as moving toward the Post-Modern writings of
Wittgenstein, Derrida, Lacan and Levinas. To quote
Cooper, "In terms of therapeutic practice, this
means that there is something of a move away from
Laing’s attempts to establish a relationship
of ‘pure presence’ (Oakley, 1989) –
in which all masks, defenses and pretences have
been stripped away – and instead an
acknowledgment that all relationships are
ultimately mediated through language, discourses
and narratives." To read more on one such
Post-Laingian movement, see Just Listening:
Ethics and Therapy by Redler and Gans (Please
excuse this shameless bit of self
promotion).
I’ll
pass on taking up Cooper’s last sections on
Laing, "Critical perspectives" and "Conclusions" as
this would require a more extended discussion then
a review allows. Suffice to say that I could not
agree more with Cooper’s sentiment that
"Within Laing’s work, there are also a whole
host of ideas whose therapeutic and psychological
potential has yet to be tapped"(p106).
In
Chapters 7 and 8, Cooper outlines the contributions
of the so-called British School of Existential
Analysis. He includes sections on van Deurzen,
Spinelli, Cohn, and Strasser and Strasser. His
account is fair and nuanced and gives a good
comparison of the strengths and weaknesses of the
major players within his own school of
therapy.
Chapter
9 is an overview of the similarities and
differences between the existential therapies
summarized in this book. Cooper begins with a
useful list of the shared characteristics of
existential therapeutic practices and then he goes
on to chart the polarities of their differences.
His Chart 9.1 (p145) shows how schools agree and
disagree on a variety of fundamental issues
relating to therapy theory and practice, for
instance, to be directive or non-directive, to
pathologize or not to pathologize, to be
spontaneous or to use techniques and so on. Cooper
concludes that these polarities represent the
pushes and pulls that are the constant dilemmas of
therapeutic practice and of human experience in
general. Hence polarities must be managed on a case
by case basis in order for each therapist to
respond appropriately to each client at each moment
in the therapeutic process. Implicit in
Coopers’ resolution of the conflicts that
exist between schools and individuals within the
existential field, his plea for polarity management
is a tacit understanding that it is necessary to
move beyond the phenomenological and existential
language with its grid of fixed polarities of
meanings toward a more dynamic and deconstructive
understanding of the oppositional structures of
language and the "meanings" language purports to
convey. To pursue this "beyond" would take us back
to the not yet existential, for example, to the
interpenetration of opposites in the logos
of Heraclitus or forward to the no longer
existential, to our infinite responsibility for the
Other or to Goodness in Levinas, if it were any
longer possible to speak of back and forth at this
point.
For
Cooper, there are more than enough challenges
within the orbit of the Existential Therapy
Movement to address, especially in terms of its
future direction. It is with this open question
that he concludes his book and this review comes to
a close.
It
only remains for me to say that I applaud Mick
Cooper for having admirably achieved the aims he
set out to achieve, in his words: "The aims are
fourfould, First, to introduce readers to the rich
tapestry of existential therapies, Second, to
provide readers with ideas and practices they can
incorporate into their own work, Third, to help
readers identify – and follow up – areas
of existential therapy that are of particular
interest to them, and Fourth, to contribute to the
range of debate within the existential therapy
field." All this makes Cooper’s book a
must-read for anyone wishing to explore the topic
of existential therapy.
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