Unlocking the Unconscious: Exploring the Goals of Therapy
Given that most people enter therapy
to either solve a dilemma, feel better, or get rid of something unwanted; feeling good and having clarity are often common goals of therapy.
Freud's Perspective: Shedding Light on the Hidden Self
For Freud, the goal of therapy was simply (Hah, simply!) “to make the unconscious conscious”. Once unconscious desires, beliefs, thoughts, compulsion, came out into the light, like with Shrodinger’s cat, exposure to light changed things, altered them. Where once we were chained, lacked self expression, were blocked or stopped, the potential for freedom, for Freud, lay in the knowledge of what previously lay hidden.
Jung's Vision: Individuation and the Collective Unconscious
For Jung, the fundamental goal of analysis was individuation of the Self. He began where Freud ended, agreeing that making the unconscious conscious was paramount, but for Jung, the experience was much bigger than the individual. Jung explored individuation as a transformative process that was spiritual and mystical as much as psychological, and the unconscious he focuses on was not only that of the individual, but of the collective. Integration of these three aspects were central to individuation - and this, for Jung, was the goal.
Confronting the Fear Within: Embracing Self-Exploration
We often sit in fear of the unconscious, wondering what lurks beneath the veneer of our persona, that sculpted creature - carved by a mix of nature, circumstance and history - the self we know.
Isn’t it incredible that the thing we actually fear the most, the thing that we live with and don’t discuss, the thing that is there behind the chocolate cake that we eat too much of, that third glass (or bottle) of wine that we know we don’t need, the sharp comment to our spouse or children, the reason that we sit at our desk long after we know we can no longer get any real work done; all of those, elements of ‘self harm’; what we are running from, quickly, breath panting, as though we are in a thriller or horror film - is ourselves? The thing that we hide from is the Self that we don’t know.
Welcome to humanity.
Humans don’t like the unpredictable. Unless they are in horror films, which makes them totally acceptable. We can enjoy surprises as long as we are prepared for them. As long as we have decided that we understand the rules of being terrified. That hardly applies when it comes to knowing ourselves. Because with as much as we know, about so so much. We often know very little about ourselves. And what we don’t know, often scares the pants off us.
The next time you find yourself having eaten far too much without noticing the taste, or waking up hating yourself for the shame that is worse than the hangover, or something similar, remember that you are human. Strong and frail, brave and terrified. The dark will always be there in this human life.
Night always comes. And if you have the courage, and the support in your life, to sit with yourself and ask questions, be silent and wait for the answers, and rail at the Gods, and have your knees knock, and yet still keep going, then as you are walking in the dark you will start to realise that you are walking your own path, unlike anyone else’s and utterly the same as every one that has come before you, and every one who will come after.
And sometimes, just sometimes, knowing the truth and reality of that, lights a tiny little spark so you can see until the dawn breaks through.
