The Story of Mary

What is the difference between those that choose the road to overcoming and those that feel defeated?

Mary’s father, having lost his body, needing care for even the most personal and potentially embarrassing bodily functions, unable to move…locked into an iron lung in one room, chose. He became one of the most prolific lobbyists for all forms of disabilities, and inspired countless legislation and reforms and raised America’s consciousness regarding the needs of the disabled.

The stress, the hopelessness, that tragedies and disappointments in life produce, affect individuals who are both physically and mentally well developed, differently. If we are only a body and a brain/mind then the answers and solutions lie in those 2 areas, the only areas open for investigation and research. Focusing on body and mind/brain has led to answers by the science to prescribing drugs that numb feelings, or drugs that induce a sense of euphoria (well being). They both affect the body’s and brain’s functioning.

While they may assist the individual to function better day to day, they in no way assist in dealing with the rage, anger, sadness, hopelessness caused by a tragedy like this.

Looking for and trying to deal with underlying causes is the province of psychotherapeutic interventions and psychiatry. Psychiatry is depending more and more on drugs. It has no other model for effective intervention. The time taken by psychiatrists for conversation/talk is becoming less and less, according to the Journal of Medicine. This is because what they are finding is that simply understanding the background of a client doesn’t lead to having the client feel better about themselves or better about the future. The results of talk are meager. In Mary’s father’s case we can understand becoming depressed better than we can explain the opposite. We call it having a fighting spirit. Just what is this spirit that chooses to fight on?

What part of a human being with a healthy, well developed body, and a healthy, well developed brain, which can continue to function in the same way they used to before a failure, a disappointment, a tragedy occurred, becomes depressed and non-functioning? After all it is the same body and same brain! What part seems to be in control of this body and brain?

My belief is that without having something real to work with, something that we know must be at the root of emotional distress, we cannot approach healing effectively. Having in our scientific model a real self and knowing right out of the gate that it is this real self that has been damaged in childhood and now has to be rehabilitated makes the diagnosis and prognosis and treatment more likely to achieve success.

Without needing to do tests we know that the self’s 4 areas of development have been damaged and need to be the focus of attention. Teaching clients awareness so they can be aware of their pain, rather than numbing their awareness of pain with drugs, is the start. Teaching clients about creating a new vision is the next step. Once clients understand that they are beings that are able to create the future they become more hopeful. Even if they don’t believe in it, their focus of attention becomes the future with positive possibilities (Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz discusses the Brain’s Plasticity). Teaching individuals about communicating their vision begins the manifesting process. Once we communicate to the people in our universe, the Universe begins to respond to our communications. The communication creates a future with possibilities. Finally we teach people to become aware of their loving and unloving behaviors. Of others loving and unloving behaviors. How to behave lovingly and to ask for loving behavior, in a way that people can respond positively. Becoming self-sufficient, loving oneself unconditionally is the final piece of the self-actualization puzzle. That nourishment gives people the energy they need to persist. Instead of drugs what people need is to learn to feed themselves. Exactly the way they learned how to feed their bodies and brains with air-food-water, they can learn to feed themselves with love. The most hopeful, energizing thing in life is to have a vision that is fed by love.

At this time mainstream therapeutic interventions do not address love as a real tangible energy. Harville Hendrix has written about getting, keeping and giving love. His program, Imago Couples Therapy has been highly successful, although it lacks the theoretical underpinnings of what love is. Its success can be directly related to an approach that emphasizes behavior that my theory clearly shows as being loving behavior. Empathy, respect, validation, consideration, patience, conscious communication are all different forms of love, different ways of transmitting loving energy. They all nourish that part of us that is not the body or brain but the Self which is in control of both body and brain. Recently, Dr. Barbara Fredrickson published Love 2.0, in which she claims that her research shows that love is a nutrient. We go a step further and claim it is a nourishment.

My therapeutic training is in Gestalt therapy, which is highly awareness oriented, and the connection between therapist and client often will include the touching of hands, and hug, cradling the client as an infant, and many other loving acts, that are not encouraged in most other therapeutic interventions. Yet, Gestalt Theory never mentions love and insists that the self is merely a process of ebb and flow – not very useful for either the therapist or the client. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is goal oriented, yet leaves out communication and love.

The issue isn’t or shouldn’t be, whether the ‘Self’ is real or not. The issue is or should be what explains human behavior in a way that is consistent with our experience, is more useful in positively altering human behavior and thereby assisting individuals in satisfying their needs. Also which explanation is more easily understood by the layman and clinician alike, and can more easily be used by all for the betterment of society. Imagine having ‘scientific ideas’ of human development and the development of the ‘Self’ that inspires every layperson and one that they can learn and effectively use themselves, just like they could use the lever for the body, and use arithmetic, and reading and writing for the mind.

A theory of who we are and how we can create a better life, one that is easily learned and easily used by everyone, was my mission. First, I spent over 20 years devising a new theory of life-span/human development. Then, I spent the next 10 years researching the many applications of the theory, all of which turned out to support its efficacy. So, for me the debate, whether ‘self’ is an entity or not has been over for quite a while. For you perhaps, the debate is just starting. I am more than happy to take on your skepticism, your questions and your objections. Self is an entity, albeit not defined in the way philosophy and psychology often try to define an entity as separate, solid, visible, taking up space, etc.

I believe that the reason we are still embroiled in the debate of whether ‘self’ is real or not, beside the fact that I have not yet made my theory or findings public, is that we keep starting the debate by going all the way back to the Cartesian theatre and before, continually asking the same theoretical questions, rather than new practical ones. Actually the questions and answers haven’t changed much, only the vocabulary for expressing them, much of it now coming from clinical psychology.