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 The
idea for this essay was sparked off by a
frightening, comforting dream I had about 15 years
ago (1984). A woman from Swiss Radio came to
interview me about my views on psychotherapy. We
both sat on the floor. After a while she switched
off the tape and said: "You talk like Laing, I am
interested in your own work and theory. I want to
hear your voice." I asked: "Is this a threat, or a
warning?" She replied: "Again, epigrammatic". I
think, missed my chance, wake up disappointed and
sad. Like a Zen apprentice I had reached full
identification with the master and was now; invited
to use my own voice. Here was a chance to make my
own views known.
The
aim of this essay is to trace the process through
which I came to realise how my work was both
similar to, and different from, the work of Ronald
David Laing (1927-1989). It is an attempt to
situate myself as a psychotherapist within a
particular therapeutic tradition. The dreams are
both my own and my patients (someone who is in
waiting, who can wait patiently), and the links
between them will hopefully become clear as this
essay proceeds.
One's
therapeutic practice is always evolving, throwing
up questions and challenges, and for me dreams have
been a valuable means of raising questions about my
own practice and, on occasion, helping towards
formulating answers.
Dreams
of psychotherapy have led me into unknown parts of
myself as I have continued to discover my
psychology. These dreams revealed that the content
and context of my own therapeutic practice is in a
process of constant transformation. They have also
allowed me to voice different aspects of my
feelings towards the healing process in which I am
engaged.
Dreams
are dramas of the soul which can be treasured as a
means of shaping our imagination in daily life.
Each individual possesses this well- spring of
creativity and enlightenment. Dreams can help us to
reconcile our hopes and fears with the reality of
everyday existence. They weave being, feeling and
knowing together in a tapestry of iconographic
beauty.
Through
them we can study the supposedly domesticated
subterranean life we all carry around inside
ourselves. They allow us to connect events and
things which we would normally see from completely
different points of view. Dreams are a nightly
miracle which have, to borrow Francis Huxley's
phrase, "enough power over reality to contradict it
with advantage".
One
useful principle of clarifying our experiences,
both in dreams and in waking life, is to accept the
reality of being one-Self and some-one-else at the
same time. The Jungians call this the subjective
and the objective part of the dream, since we can
see a dream like a drama of the soul, a mythologem,
as well as the subjective presentation of different
aspects of one's present identity, a
psychologem.
Dreams
of therapy have a priceless gift in helping me
cultivate a sure sense of myself as a therapist.
The dreams helped me to compare my approach and
methods with those of Laing and Francis Huxley -
who are both teachers and friends of mine - and
make clear the differences of temper and talent
between us. By working with the dream material, it
is now much clearer to me where I come from, in who
s name I practice and what part dreams play in my
own psychotherapeutic practice. As I go on, I make
use of Francis Huxley's reminder, ''as long as you
keep your temper, you do not lose the game even by
drinking out of someone else's
teacup."2
Besides my own cup of tea - therapeutic approach -
I enjoyed tasting my teachers: Vera von der Heydt,
Ronald Laing and Francis Huxley. Nevertheless as
the following dreams will show, I have found and,
hopefully, am keeping my temper.
Huxley,
who has worked closely with Laing for over twenty
years, states that there is a close bond between
what we feel in our natural, biological body and
what we dream about. Psychotherapy, as a ritual of
initiation or rite of passage towards becoming
oneself (what C.G. Jung called "Individuation"),
does effect us as it affects our body-image. Only
through these means, can "It" free our
imaginations. Our self-image is the basis of our
creativity. The vision freed through our
imagination guides us through the field of myths
and mysteries, both of which are at the root of our
everyday habits and way of life.
Once
we allow our visions and dreams to be cultivated
and shared with . I fellow human beings, whether in
psychotherapy or in artistic practice, we become
concrete witnesses to personal and collective
imagination and experience the actuality of
transformation and re-enchantment. We are able to
integrate and unify what is often thought to be
opposed - inside- outside, male-female, life-death,
psyche-soma and so on.
"For
myth", writes Huxley," cannot be taken literally;
it must be taken metaphorically as well. It
describes an experience truthfully, but does so in
terms whose real significance you can realize only
when you have had the experience. Thus a myth is
like a dream; indeed, sometimes it is a
dream".3
The
dramas and comedies of the soul in the theatre of
our dream can be compared with, and read in the
light of, the myths of Gods and Goddesses: and the
effects and affects their actions and daimonic
stories had and are having on others. We sometimes
even recognise our own experience in a particular
myth. Such possibilities are an encouragement to
share our own experiences both by day and by night
in dreams and let others share theirs with us. Thus
we can all learn more about our Selfs and each
other. Francis Huxley's point on dreams, will be
remembered once we come to the last dream in this
paper featuring him personally as well.
Ronald
Laing has eloquently described some of these
experiences in his books Knots; Sonnets; Wisdom,
Madness and Folly; The Facts of Life and The
Voice of Experience, to name but a few. They
provide pointers for our thinking which I have made
use of in my own psychotherapeutic practice. They
are a good antidote to the psychology of blame,
where we make others the victim of our actions, and
ourselves victims of others' action.
Sometimes
patients bring dreams which feature Ronald Laing.
This is not surprising since they know from
conversation with me, that I come from a Laingian
tradition.
The
neurologist's dream
This
dream is a pleasant example of one of Laing's basic
premises or principles in action - that of
indecidability, or the 'mirroring' of the other,
the playing back and what is called' being alone in
one's present'. I include this dream since it shows
very well one side of the tradition and therapeutic
culture in which I work.
The
dream is from a 38 year old woman patient of mine.
She is both a neurologist and a
psychiatrist.
Ronald
Laing came to our therapy session. I was to have
one hour with him. I feel very tense
wondering what will happen. There he is,
slender, delicate and simply dressed. That's
him, the master. He speaks very little, he just
studies me, thinks about what he sees in me,
just as if he were asking himself "What's the
matter with her?" I am very aware of my history,
my prehistory and development. How I would like
to do things without making mistakes, do
everything completely right, and behave
perfectly.
I
try to treat him politely, in the way I think I
ought. I try with all my might, I do my utmost.
But he just mirrors me - everything I do,
all my compulsive behaviour. He tells me why I
am doing what I am doing He says that it's not
important that I have lived falsely, or that my
family upbringing was wrong. What matters is
that I have never valued the essential things in
life, and these are what I miss now. I think he
would have valued someone more spontaneous,
someone more artistic. I have become
superficial, nonessential. All that behavioural
psychology stuff is nonsense. All this became
clear. Now my parents appear. Laing stays in the
background, distancing himself yet still very
much present. The only way out is suicide.
Anxiety. What will happen now? Is Laing going to
sentence me, destroy me? No, he tolerates my
'being-so'. Life continues with a new experience
and a new insight.
In this
dream of meeting and being with Laing, he is
practising what he "deems appropriate to the
occasion" (Winnicott's phrase)4,
without verbalising her nascent consciousness of
what she transfers from her past relationships in
the family into her relationship with him.
"He
mirrors me", is one of the basic tenets of Laing's
psychotherapeutic method, which aims to allow the
other to experience his or her false and, true
selves and the discrepancies between the two. When
we talked about what the dream meant she said she
felt very strongly held in suspense by 'Laing's'
attention to her follies. She experienced the
transference as a hindrance, while at the same
time, helping her to realise what she was doing. In
other words, in the dream she experienced 'Laing's'
ability to mimic people - a very powerful
therapeutic tool. She was able to recognise that
'Laing' could be with her in that way without
condemning her true self. It gave her a chance to
move with 'Laing', bringing with her the fear,
anxiety and embarrassment she felt at being 'caught
out'. The open-heartedness with which it was done
allowed her to look at where her past experience
and all her learned 'good behaviour' had taken her.
(Suicide as the only way out here expresses the
struggle between the true self and the false self
staged vividly in the dream). Suicide would free
her from having to take further evasive action to
stay alive, and from the consciousness of and
despair about the faults that remained as she
attained greater self-awareness.
In
this dream, Laing's therapeutic capacity to be
open-heartedly available to the other is evident.
In reality she had seen him only once several years
before when he was giving a lecture. In the dream
she was sharing one hour in a room with him in
which, to quote Laing himself, "one human being
actually gets into the same place at the same time
to meet another human being, and as a
psychotherapist, to intervene in the hope that
intervention will in one way or another bring some
clarity to the situation, so that the confusion of
the people will be mitigated in some
way".5
Using harmless means, of course.
The
first dream of the therapist
I
had the following dream at a point (1985) when I
was reflecting upon my psychotherapeutic practice.
It centred on the question: 'Is this
'being-with-others', psychotherapy?
I
am in a therapeutic community for ex-heroin
addicts. I am there as therapist for our weekly
group-therapy session. We, three women and four
men, begin our morning sitting in a circle on
the floor. We try to make sense of what is going
on between the members of the group, sharing our
difficulties in living in a therapeutic
community especially in what we 'do' to each
other. Among us, which is unusual, sits a guest,
Hans-Dieter Leuenberger, a Bioenergetic Analyst,
who is also a theologian and a Jungian Analyst.
Suddenly, together with Roger and Ester, who are
lovers, I find myself at the edge of a swimming
pool in the middle of the room. Roger wants to
jump in headfirst. Ester and I struggle with him
and hold him back. I say to Roger, "I know where
the bottom of the pool is, and the water is
running in. At the moment it's only about
knee-deep. If you jump in headfirst you'll
break your neck".
The
water keeps running in, and I watch it rise
higher. "There's not even enough water in there
for a decent swim," I continue, "You'll scrape
your knees on the bottom and get fresh
injuries." Despite what I say, he
continues to struggle. Ester now talks to
him in a soothing, calming manner, trying to
stop his strenuous attempts while I hold him at
the edge. We wrestle endlessly. Finally, he sees
reason and gives up the idea of jumping. We turn
back to the circle of others on the floor who
have been watching us attentively. Roger and
Ester sit down in a relaxed way. As I am about
to sit down Leuenberger asks me, "Is this
therapy?" I am taken aback and hesitate to give
a reply. After thinking on my feet for a moment
I say, "Yes. You see something, someone moves.
We move. We get up or down, we hold each other,
we argue and are in touch with one another. We
look into the pool, hold our temper and face
each other in a situation which is dangerous for
Roger and for us. You sit and watch what is
going on, not knowing what might happen, what
might come of all this ". Then I sat
down.
This
dream also has a therapeutic setting and begins
with the therapeutic exchange of experiences. Then
there is a change, an unexpected, very physical and
strongly emotional event. The dream ends with the
question as to what was therapeutic about it and an
answer to that question.
Why
did Roger want to jump into the water? Difficult to
answer, since nobody ever knows everything
appropriate to a given situation. Water can be seen
as a longing to dissolve or to disperse and undo
bodily knots of twisted and dislocated attitudes
rooted in childhood experiences. Preventing Roger
from inflicting fresh injuries upon himself was in
itself therapeutic, as it avoided new problems
covering up primary ones. There is a similarity
between heroin addiction (the attempt to get rid of
problems, which are not in fact solved this way)
and his attempt to jump into the pool. He wanted a
quick way out of his difficulties, but this would
have harmed him more than it helped. He wanted to
jump into the water, but it was not yet deep enough
to carry him. By preventing him from doing what he
wanted, Esther and I were in communication with
each other and with him; what he wanted from the
water - emotional support - was obtained from us.
The question "Is this therapy?" came from a man
with a different therapeutic approach (Bioenergetic
Analysis) and a definite set of practical
guidelines. (He was in fact leading a therapeutic
workshop with my wife and colleague at the time).
The answer I gave in the dream was to give an
explanation by first describing a pattern
from a therapeutic practice - we move, are in
touch with one another: praxis descriptions
- and therapeutic process - face each other
in a situation which is bad and dangerous:
process description - and, following from
this, an overview of what might happen or be done,
or not be done, about what we had just experienced
in terms of therapeutic intervention and
goal.
When
I am involved as a therapist, I am not in the
position, as the guest therapist is, to reflect on
what is and has been going on, nevertheless I am
moving within a sovereign feeling of certainty -
whatever I am living through is therapeutically
valid, and need not be the only possible, or true,
deed or action.
It
dreamt me this dream in the autumn of 1985, at the
point when, after three years of being in that
community once a week, I began to reflect on the
therapeutic approach which I had been taught when
in apprenticeship with Laing and Huxley in the
Philadelphia Association.6
I realised there was a great difference between the
setting and the people there and in London. There
people were in a deeply distressed condition after
years of heroin addiction, and dealing with their
daily affairs, their emotional turmoil and chaotic
past took most of the day. The weekly therapy group
which I attended was just one of many structured
events in their therapeutic programme. Some were
there because they had to be; others, a minority,
were there by choice. Despite these difficulties,
it was possible to connect with one another's
thoughts and feelings and by doing so to relieve
and be relieved of much suffering and pain. It was
a therapeutic culture which allowed repressed
experience to surface so that they could be
acknowledged and accepted.
I
shared this dream with the therapeutic group,
together with other dreams concerning my
therapeutic method and my position as a therapist.
Cultivating dreams is one means I use - in
following the Anazazi custom at early morning
gatherings of telling dreams in company which helps
to allow the patterns of the daily activity to
unfold in common communality - allowing unconscious
realities to be communicated to both oneself and
those others sharing our company. By
"unconsciousness" I mean, with Laing, that which we
don't communicate to ourselves and to others. By
telling dreams I free my Self from that bondage of
silence.
The
addict's dream
Three
months after my first dream, Roger related his
first dream during a group therapy session. I
describe it here since it is linked to my own dream
and they each shed light upon the other. Roger
dreamed as follows:
I
was taking a tram to the 'Zentral' station in
Zurich. Among the passengers I recognised two
plain-clothes policemen from the drug squad. I
hurried to get off at the next stop and they
followed me. One called out "Hey Roger! Where
are you going?" "Ehm, I'm going to my weekly
therapy session just up the road. " I was
lying, and they knew it, and they knew I was on
the run. They tried to arrest me, but I got
away. I jumped on the next tram and they run
after it. I pulled the emergency handle, jumped
out of the open door and ran as fast as I could
up the hill in front of me. Looking back, I saw
them change into a woman with a dog. I reached
the top of the hill which turned out to be a
cliff by the sea. I jumped in headfirst, diving
deep into the water. I had an overwhelming sense
of relief at being saved. When I surfaced If
found myself dripping wet in the entrance hall
of a house in the red- light district of Zurich,
where I used to go for years when an addict. I
stripped and hung my clothes over a radiator. I
stood there naked and waited.
How
does this connect with my dream? In my dream Roger
had to wait, he could not jump into the water; in
his dream he did jump, but only ended up back at
square one, as an ex-addict, waiting. Waiting to be
delivered from being dictated to! When an addict
wants heroin, she or he will get it, whatever the
cost. Waiting also for an arm around his shoulder,
for someone who will 'dive' into his and his
ancestors' life, to find what the dictatorship - or
spell - is, under which he is living. Waiting is
chaos at rest, a breathing space, a chance to think
and feel about where to turn next.
Yet,
what Roger was waiting for - to get out of the
community - he did not elaborate upon
further.
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