Our Sub-Personalities???

Each of us has a lot of different selves within us according to the relationships with others for example a manager who works in a company, a mother who cherishes her children, and a student who study in a university; the list goes on. Put simply, we live our life playing a multiple roles every day. Regarding the characteristic of our sub-personalities, they are not unusual but normal. Also, Firman & Gila (2002) illustrate our sub-personalities in the following way: “Clearly, subpersonality formation seems a natural and healthy structuralization process of the human personality, a gift of the middle unconscious, the subsystems that make up the larger system of the personality as a whole” (p. 73). 

However, our sub-personalities sometimes become dysfunctional, and our wounded sub-personalities show up. When they come up within us, recognition-acceptance-inclusion-synthesis process (Firman & Gila, 2002) would be helpful to make our dysfunctional or wounded sub-personalities healthy and synthesize them in an appropriate way. (See the reference book in detail.)

Reference

Psychosynthesis: A Psychology of the Spirit (Suny Series in Transpersonal and Humanistic Psychology)

Integral Life Practice: Dream Journaling

Just after I wake up every morning, I keep a dream journaling. So, I’d like to introduce the effect of the dreamwork. Firstly, our dream has a not only biological effect but also psychological one. In other words, a dream functions as an indispensable role to maintain our biological conditions at a healthy level and an alternative pathway to meet the needs of our id (Frager & Fadiman, 2002). Furthermore, if we keep a dream journaling, we may notice a certain dream pattern to represent our unsatisfied desires repressed under unconsciousness. In that sense, keeping a dream journaling is helpful for both biological and psychological health.

                 Though just writing a dream on a notebook is effective, dialogue and interpretations based on the dream would be more effective. In fact, I sometimes practice “3-2-1 shadow process” based on my dream. (For details, see in Wilber, Patten, Leonard, & Morelli, 2008.)  

Reference:

1 Personality and Personal Growth (6th Edition)
2Integral Life Practice: A 21st-Century Blueprint for Physical Health, Emotional Balance, Mental Clarity, and Spiritual Awakening

Countertransference in a Therapy or Coaching

              As mentioned before, transference is the emotional involvement from a client to a therapist, on the contrary, countertransference is the emotional involvement from a therapist to a client. Regarding countertransference, Freud explained that countertransference “would break through the therapist’s professionalism and produce an inappropriate response” (Kahn, 2002, p.198). In other words, Freud regarded countertransference as a hindrance factor to be removed in a therapy session. However, it is not easy for a therapist to notice and exclude countertransference. In fact, after Freud proposed this concept, countertransference had been considered as an inevitable and ceaseless phenomenon. Nowadays, countertransference has been seen as inevitable and even useful because all empathy which has a positive impact on a therapy begins with it (Kahn, 2002), although Freud recognized that countertransference distorted the therapist’s perspective or a client relationship.

This phenomenon can occur in not only a therapy session but also in a coaching session. Therapeutic theories and practices are often helpful for a coaching because a therapy usually overlaps coaching through both of them are fundamentally different. That's why I read many books about a psychotherapy.

Reference

Basic Freud: Psychoanalytic Thought for the 21st Century

Mind, Brain, and Education: New Paradigm in the Education World?

In the education world, the research movement of integrating our mind, brain, and education (MBE) has received increasing attention nowadays. Educators and neuroscientists are now working together to understand how learning and the brain are related, and how this interconnectedness will better inform our educational policies and school systems.

This recent academic movement represents an integral or holistic perspective, because the research of our mind and brain had been investigated separately in the past. Many scientists and educators came to recognize the importance of seeking to understand the connections between our thinking (UL), brain (UR), and learning processes (UR). This academic trend stands for a kind of holistic movement in the education world in that educators and scientists begin to notice the importance of integrating various different academic fields such as cognitive science, neuroscience, developmental psychology, pedagogy, etc.

Furthermore, this academic movement has a positive impact on an education culture (LL), policy (LR), and curriculum (LR). In fact, a new finding in the field of neuroscience is incorporated into an education policy and curriculum to provide children with a better learning environment. 

          The above academic collaboration between mind, brain, and education is really fascinating for me. I believe mind, brain, and education program will be the key in the future to support children’s psychological growth (UL), enhance learning effect (UR), create a positive school culture (LL), and build an educational policy and practice. If educators and scientists come to consider not only quadrants but also other elements for instance levels, states, types, and lines in Integral Theory, this movement will be more integral. In that sense, current mind, body, and education endeavor might be still holistic rather than integral.

Transference in Coaching Session

I think that not only a therapist but also a coach should pay attention to "transference" between a client and coach in a session, so I capsulized the concept below.

             This psychological phenomenon between a client and therapist is one of the key concepts in a therapeutic setting. Freud categorized this concept into the following three ideas.

1 The positive transference, in which the patient’s feelings for the therapist are primarily affection and trust.

2 The negative transference, consisting primarily of hostility and suspicion.

3 The un-neutralized erotic transference, in which the patient experiences insistent desire for sexual intimacy with the analyst. (Kahn, 2002, pp.184-185)

About the positive transference, Freud regarded it as an unobjectionable phenomenon and insisted that it enabled a therapist to provide a client with a sense of trust or safety which built a preferable relationship between the client and therapist. On the other hand, Freud raised an alert over the negative transference. He argued that a therapist must intervene in and remove it if the transference comes up in the session. Otherwise the therapy session will not work for a client. Likewise the negative transference, Freud warned that the erotic transference had a negative impact on the therapy session. Although it is sometimes recognized as a kind of the positive transference, Freud explained that “if those feelings persisted in spite of the analyst’s best effort to convert them to analyzable material, there was nothing to do but refer the patient to another therapist” (Kahn, 2002, p.186). Thus, a therapist should have a competency to discern the type of transference. 

Reference

Basic Freud: Psychoanalytic Thought for the 21st Century

Primary Model of Pathology in Psychoanalytical Force

              Regarding the primary model of pathology in 2^nd force, I’d like to describe the Freudian view of pathology in the following.

              As for the key concept of a Freudian view of pathology, Munroe (1955) explicates that “the idea of the symptom as an adaptive mechanism has become a commonplace and that its cure is always envisaged as handling of the underlying (typically unconscious) dynamics rather than the symptom itself” (p. 280). In other words, Freudians regard a symptom of our mental illness as a kind of an adjustment mechanism to protect our “self” from the external world. Moreover, the characteristic of a Freudian view about treatment of pathology is that they often don’t focus on the symptom itself but our unconscious realm.

The Oedipus complex is one of the well-known pathological symptoms in Freudian views related to our unconsciousness. To explain the overview of this symptom, the Oedipus complex is that “all boys experience the unconscious wish to get rid of father and replace him as mother’s lover, and that all girls carry the unconscious wish to eliminate mother and replace her as father’s lover” (Kahn, 2002, p. 57). In this example, Freudians don’t pay attention to the superficial phenomenon (all boys and girls tend to have the desire to obliterate the existence of their father or mother.) but attempt to elucidate the mechanism by shedding light on our repressed unconsciousness. Although Freudians are likely to reduce our pathology into the issue of only our repressed unconsciousness, it is highly estimable for them to clarify the relationship between some pathologies and human unconscious realm.

Reference

1Basic Freud: Psychoanalytic Thought for the 21st Century

2Schools of psychoanalytic thought;: An exposition, critique, and attempt at integration

Psychoanalysis and Post Freudian in Wilber's Spectrum of Consciousness

             Ken Wilber’s spectrum of consciousness model comprises the following four levels: shadow, ego, existential, and mind. To come right to the point, the second force (psychoanalysis and post Freudian) is situated on the ego and shadow level. The first, Wilber (1975) explains that human beings tend to identify with his or her ego. While human beings in the existential level are regarded as organism which has a rational thought, human beings in the ego level are deemed to have a mental picture of his or her total psychophysical organism. The second, Wilber (1975) describes the shadow level in the following: “Under certain circumstances, man can alienate various aspects of his own psyche, dis-identify with them, and thus narrow his sphere of identity to only parts of the ego, which we may refer to as the persona” (p. 110). As mentioned above, human beings in the ego level are likely to identify with his or her whole ego. On the other hand, human beings in the shadow level become gradually able to dis-identify with some aspects in his or her ego.

As well as Wilber’s remarks, psychoanalysis addresses human ego and shadow realm. In psychoanalysis, human ego is defined as “the part of the psyche in contact with external reality” (Frager & Fadiman, 2002, p. 24), and human shadow is described as “an archetypal form that serves as the focus for material that has been repressed from consciousness” (p. 69). I think that the second force is categorized into the ego and shadow level in Wilber’s model in that both of them refer to the same aspects of human beings such as ego and shadow.  

Reference

1 The Spectrum of Consciousness  

2 Personality and Personal Growth (6th Edition)