Marseilles Talk: The Therapist’s Purpose
The Marseilles Talk[1]
by Ron Kurtz
The Therapist’s Purpose.
I want to talk about the therapist’s purpose. The image many people hold of the therapist is that he or she is a scientific expert who trades his or her expertise for some form of currency. That currency could be the excitement of exercising the skills involved or the personal satisfaction of helping others, or the money, or the identity, and so on.
I’m offering another image. In this image, the therapist provides a context for healing by being a certain kind of person, beyond anything we mean by scientist. In this image, the therapist’s own spiritual growth could be his or her main purpose for being a therapist. The practice of psychotherapy would then be a spiritual discipline and each therapy session, from the therapist’s point of view, his or her spiritual practice. I believe this re-visioning of what therapy is would be very good for the growth and healing of both the client and the therapist.
If, as so many people have stated, psychotherapy is a modern day version of religion and that therapists are effectively modern day priests, then it makes sense to examine the spiritual aspect of the therapist’s role. I believe the therapist is more than a scientist and therapy more than a scientific discipline. In the following, I want to talk about how this could be. First a quote from a book called Human Change Processes by Michael J. Mahoney:
“After their extensive review of the existing literature over a decade ago, Allen Bergin and Michael Lambert concluded that “the largest variation in therapy is accounted for by preexisting client factors, such as motivation…. Therapist personal factors account for the second largest proportion of change, with technique variables coming in a distant third….” In Lambert’s more recent (1989) review of research on this question, even more striking results were obtained. In four major research projects at the University of Pittsburgh, Johns Hopkins University, the Veterans Administration in Pennsylvania, and McGill University, for example, the therapeutic impact attributable to the psychotherapist was eight times greater than that associated with the treatment techniques. The ‘person’ of the therapist, and the ‘therapeutic alliances’ she or he is capable of encouraging and co-creating, are much more central to the quality and effectiveness of professional services than are the specific techniques, explicit interpretations, and theoretical scaffoldings for structuring and enacting the experience of psychotherapy….”
The therapist as person has a greater impact, eight times greater, than method or technique. The efficacy of therapy depends primarily upon who the therapist is and less so on what the therapist does. How can that be? How does “personhood” influence the course of therapy?
Here’s my image of that: the personality, the personhood of the therapist pervades the entire process of therapy and provides its basic context. The way he or she looks, sounds, sits and moves, his or her attitudes, feelings and state of mind are all part of that context. The therapist’s state of mind is particularly important, because it gives rise to all the others. The state of mind that best creates the context for therapy, the one I call loving presence, is a deep, natural expression of such qualities as compassion, awareness, empathy, clarity, humor and sensitivity. These qualities create a context of safety, kindness and attention for the client. That in turn invites openness and signals the client’s unconscious that this is a place where his or her healing process will be supported. The development of these qualities and this state of mind is part of all spiritual traditions.
So, the therapist’s state of mind finds expression in how the therapist does everything and that how is the context for the client’s unfolding. The therapist, not the method or technique, is the primary context for the client’s healing, change or growth. What sorts of things create and support this state of mind of the therapist? Experience, maturity, knowledge, integrity are some of it. But clearly, for these particular qualities and this particular state of mind, the most important is spiritual development. My claim is that the therapist’s spiritual development can be part of every session the therapist does. I have a simple method for doing that and a way to teach it.
Here’s a quote from Chogyam Trungpa Rimpoche from an article called Full Human Beingness, in a book called Awakening the Heart, edited by John Welwood:
“The basic work of health professionals in general, and of psychotherapists in particular, is to become full human beings and to inspire full human-beingness in other people who feel starved about their lives”
Full human-beingness surely means spiritual development here. So, what is the method that creates full human-beingness? Let’s look at that.
I believe that in the forming of a self, any self, the healthiest background—from conception to enlightenment—is a safe, peaceful environment filled with people who love us and are present for us. People who can recognize who we are at our very core and who know what we are experiencing at any given moment act as an “empathic mirrors” for us. In those mirrors we recognize ourselves, and we can experiment with developing healthier, more awake and happy selves, until we eventually discover the full human being we have potentially always been.
For the therapist to be part of this, he or she must be able to provide the kind of presence, safety, understanding and skills that can evoke healing and growth in the other. That kind of therapist must be able to cultivate and sustain a calm, present, loving state of mind, a state of mind that embraces the same qualities that all spiritual disciplines embrace. Buddha was called The Awakened One.
Okay then, let’s everybody wake the fuck up!
One last time, let’s examine what makes this approach spiritual. First, it involves the practice of the therapist entering and sustaining a particular state of mind, the purpose being to create a context for healing and growth for both client and therapist. Second, developing and practicing this state of mind aligns perfectly with traditional spiritual goals, such as presence, awareness, seeing through to the spiritual in the other, compassion, love, peace, calm, and a sense of lightness, including a good sense of humor. When this state of mind is present, the context for healing is created. To paraphrase: Loving presence does not create healing. It is an invitation for healing to happen.[2]
An attitude of “non-doing” is part of the healing state of mind. It is a recognition that something else does the healing, something within the client and something beyond both the client and the therapist. Often, it is called, The Tao.[3]
Third, this model requires a certain vision of what kind of world it is and who we are in that world. It is not just abstract and intellectual; it is our operative belief system. It expresses itself through our everyday actions and inactions. It organizes what we experience and what we do with our experience. Or, at least it can. Four, it is a different vision of reality, different from ordinary scientific materialism. In includes a spiritual realm, a transcendental realm above and beyond this “too, too solid flesh”. I can see many reasons why this might be difficult for some therapists to accept. They will wish to follow accepted scientific canon and be solid members of the scientific community. I, myself prefer to see science as operating within the spiritual realm not as an alternative to it, that is recognizing the mysteries that have not yet been made clear. It’s not that science won’t come around eventually. It is coming around. Think of quantum theory and the concept of entanglement. Last, practicing the method this way requires a devotion to ones own spiritual path. It is a practice and it takes practice. It takes study and self-study. It can sometimes be hard work and painful, too. At the same time, it is also full of love and joy. It is its own reward.
[1] Given at the European Association of Body Psychotherapy, Marseilles, France, June, 2003.
[2] “Ritual is not sacred. It is an invitation for the sacred to happen.” — from Tending the Fire: The Ritual Men’s Group by Wayne Liebman.
[3] The wise prefers non-doing and lives in quietness. Everything happens around such a person as if by itself. www.swami-center.org/en/text/Tao_Te_Ching.pdf