Full transcript
0:13All right.
0:14So...
0:16We're going to leap out of the psycoanalytic
0:19domain,
0:20now.
0:22and start talking about a form of
0:25approach to personality and its transformations
0:28that's predicated on
0:31a different...
0:32a set of different philosophical assumptions.
0:36And...it's a bit tricky to navigate this because...
0:41it requires the adoption of a different frame
0:43of mind and, of course,
0:45that's the case with all the theorists that we're going to be
0:48discussing.
0:49Uh...
0:54Phenomenology probably had its most
0:58thorough
1:00explication
1:02in the philosophy of
1:04Martin Heidegger.
1:08And Heidegger was actually trying to
1:12reconstruct western philosophy
1:15from the bottom up.
1:18He tought that
1:20we had been pursuing an improper
1:23pathway conceptually really ever since the time of the
1:26Ancient Greeks.
1:33Back around the turn of the century
1:35-- the previous century, that's from the 19th
1:38to the 20th century --
1:41a new form of geometry was invented
1:44and that geometry was predicated on different axioms
1:47than Euclidian geometry. Now,
1:49people had thought for thousand of years that
1:52the world was properly described by Euclidian geometry.
1:55and, you know,
1:56when you employ a system like
1:59Euclidian geometry you have...there's axioms that you have to
2:02accept and they're like the rules of the game and, once you accept
2:04the axioms then you can go ahead and play the game.
2:08But there are other forms of geometry invented
2:11and...in the...in the later part of the..
2:1519th century and it turned out that those
2:18forms with different axioms actually described the world
2:21better than the Euclidian forms, sort of like
2:24the transformation from Newton
2:26to Einstein...this was the..
2:29transformation from Euclide to, say,
2:32-- I think I"ve got his name right -- Rie...Riemannn, R, I, E, M,
2:34A, N, N., who developed a new form of geometry and turned out to be
2:38just the geometry that Einstein needed when he was putting his
2:41theories forward. And, the reason I'm teling you that is because
2:46you can think of systems that have different axioms as...
2:49as different tools
2:51Same idea that Piaget was trying to express
2:53when he talked about how children's
2:56cognitive representations underwent
3:00stage transformations so that they were starting to apply
3:03new principles. Not only a new way
3:06of looking at the world but they were
3:08fundamentally retooling their presumptions about how the world operated.
3:12And Heidegger tried to do the same
3:14thing with philosophy. And so...
3:18And it's tricky to figure out exactly what he was talking about
3:21but I'll give it a shot and then, we can move
3:24forward with Rogers
3:26So...
3:27Since the dawn of the scientific world and, likely, before
3:30that, we have tended to believe
3:33that we are subjects in a world of objects.
3:36And that 's obvioulsy a
3:38very useful way to view the world and you can
3:41tell that because, formalizing that in the form of
3:44science, has enabled us to extend
3:47control over the world
3:49in ways that we were not able to before.
3:52Uh...To formulate the idea of
3:55an objective truth has been an extraordinarily useful maneuver
3:58and so, the idea, roughly, is that
4:01everyone's perceptions can be contaminated by
4:04their own biases and their own fantasies, that subjective
4:07biases and fantasies and you can overcome that by
4:11stringently specifying
4:13the conditions under which an observation takes place
4:16-- so that would be an experimental method --
4:19Having multiple people view the consequences
4:21separately, have them detail out what the consequences are
4:25and then look for commonalities across them. And, you think, well,
4:28the commonalities across a set of observations
4:30constitute a description of the objective world.
4:34And that's been insanely powerful.
4:37..uh....crazily powerful. I mean that's not all there is
4:39to the scientific method but
4:42it's a big part of it.
4:45Now...
4:46there is an emergent problem with that
4:48perhaps,
4:50It's complicated but one of the emergent problem
4:53with that is...
4:55maybe, a consequence of
4:57stripping the subjectivity out of the world
5:00So...
5:01What science does is..consider
5:05anything subjective as a form of bias or
5:08error in the observation and then, get rid of it and so
5:11what you're left with, when you...
5:13formulate the scientific world, is a world that's stripped of
5:16subjectivity. Now, the problem with that
5:19is that you're a subject and so, when you strip
5:21the world of its subjectivity, that sort of leaves you
5:24isolated, like an isolated being
5:27with no necessary connections to
5:30objective reality, in the midst of a set of
5:32impersonal facts.
5:35And, that seems to have psychological consequences
5:38and the psychological consequences
5:41are that, well, for example,
5:43I think it's easier to develop a nihilistic sense
5:46of being, for example, if you believe that the
5:49world is nothing but objects and that you're,...
5:53fundamentally, an object among many
5:55and not a particularly important one, at that.
5:59So...there are psychological
6:02consequences to adopting the
6:05scientific worldview.
6:07Prior to the emergence of the
6:09scientific worldview, people were more embedded in what
6:12you might think about as a mythological landscape, you know, where
6:16every element of being had its place in something that
6:19approximated a master plan or, at least, a meaningful plan.
6:22And so...the idea of ...
6:25the meaningfulness of life was not necessarily
6:28such a pressing intellectual concern.
6:34And then...
6:36well, and so, we don't know the full extent of that
6:39...I mean...
6:40I've talked to you a little bit about Nietzsche's
6:42idea that's expressed at the end of the 19th century about
6:45the death of God and his prognostication that
6:48the collapse of...
6:50classic systems of meaning
6:53open up people to posession by
6:55nihilism and also by potentially totalitarian
6:59political systems and that seems to have been what happened
7:02Now, Heidegger was very concerned about that,
7:05among other things. And so, he decided to
7:09reconsider
7:11reality from the bottom up.
7:13And so, what he did was generate an alternative set
7:16of axioms. He said something like "what if we
7:19decide
7:21to make reality everything that we
7:24experience? Forget about the subject/object divide.
7:28And...One of the other problems with
7:30the subject/object divide
7:32for example, is accounting for consciousness, right? because
7:34it's a problem that science really hasn't got any distance with
7:37at all, as far as I can tell. I mean, people have been trying to crack
7:40the secret of counsciousness, obviously, for a very long time
7:44but they've been trying to do it formally
7:46and using scientific methods, at least for the last
7:4950 years and my sense of that is that they've
7:52got absolutely nowhere.
7:54Maybe, that's a bit unfair. We're better at
7:57representing how conscious experiences
7:59manifest themselves in the brain but we're
8:02but we're certainly no better at understanding
8:05how it is that we experience things. And that's the problem of
8:08"qualia".
8:09That's how the philosophers describe it. And qualia is
8:12the quality of your experience, like the fact that pain,
8:15for example...A pain you feel
8:19is by no means identical, at least, as far as your concerned,
8:22to some pattern of neurological activity, right?
8:25It's pain. It seems to be a fundamental
8:28reality of some... In fact, I think pain is THE fundamental
8:30reality. I think it's the only thing that people will never
8:33deny.
8:35But...
8:37So, there's these aspects of your
8:39existence that are subjective, like your experience of
8:41colour and your experience of beauty and just your experience
8:44of things or, maybe, just your experience.
8:47Your eperience plays an
8:49indeterminate role
8:51in the structure of being itself. 'Cause you might ask, well,
8:55what would there be if there was nothing conscious?
8:58and you could say, well...
9:01what would there be if there was nothing conscious of being?
9:04Well, it's a tricky question, because
9:06it depends on your a priori
9:08axioms but...it's not obvious what
9:11there would be in the absence of a conscious oberver.
9:14There wouldn't obviously be any
9:16duration between things. It would be very difficult to
9:19specify things in terms of size. There wouldn't be
9:23any of the qualities that we experience...
9:25...that we experience our being is having 'cause
9:28colour doesn't seem to be an intrinsic part of the world,
9:31smell doesn't seem to be an intrinsic part of the world.
9:34It's very difficult. The more you think about it, you'd find
9:37the more difficut it is to determine exactly what there would
9:40be if there was no one to observe it.
9:43And...that's not the tree-in-the-forest idea, precisely
9:45It's not so much if a tree falls in the forest
9:49and there's no one to hear it, it doesn't make a sound
9:51'cause that's more a matter of the definition of sound than anything else.
9:54This is more, like, if there's a tree in the forest and there isn't anyone,
9:57is there a tree ? And that's a
10:00whole different question. Anyways, so, what Heidegger did,
10:04partly because he was not pleased, I suppose,
10:08with the metaphysical
10:10consequences of the scientific worldview,
10:13and also, perhaps, because he wasn't very
10:16happy about our ability to account for consciousness,
10:19he decided to see what would happen if he played
10:22a different kind of game. And
10:24you can do that in an intellectual discussion, you know, you can say, well,
10:28here's a set of axioms out of which a system
10:31will emerge, like, here's a set of rules out of which a game
10:34would emerge. Same idea.
10:36What if we start with a different set of rules? Let's see
10:39what we can do if we do that. You kind of do that when you play one video game
10:43rather than another. You know, there're little worlds
10:45that pop out. There's a different underlining structure.
10:48And then, you can go inside that world and experiment with it and
10:51see what comes out of it.
10:54So Heidegger decided to say "OK, what we're gonna do instead
10:57is we're going to assume that everything we experience is real.
11:00We're going to make our field of experience itself
11:03reality".
11:06And...So that would mean, from Heidegger's point of view,
11:10that
11:11everything about
11:14the being that manifests itself to you is to be regarded as
11:17equallly real. So, then, you think, well, that makes pain
11:20a fundamental reality. That makes anxiety a fundamental reality.
11:23It makes beauty and colour fundamental
11:26realities. They're not self-evidently
11:29reducible to anything else, which they would be...
11:33...which they are in a scientific...from a scientific
11:36perspective because you have to think about them as
11:38manifestations of some more fundamental underlying
11:41material reality. And I guess that's another problem with the
11:44subject/object model and the material
11:47model.
11:49When you aggregate atoms, when you
11:52arrange them in certain forms.
11:55When they manifest themselves as certain molecules and then
11:58in more complex structures, they seem to take on all sorts
12:01of qualities that you couldn't predict if you just knew about
12:04the
12:05subatomic particles and the atoms themselves and so, of course, the...
12:10those are called emerging properties and you say, well, you can
12:14observe hydrogen and you can observe oxygen but
12:17that doesn't make it self-evident
12:20for you to be able to predict the properties of water. And, of course,
12:23that's a more simpler problem, all things considered,
12:26than the problem of figuring YOU out. You're this
12:29crazily complex aggregate of these hypothetical...
12:32hypothetically simple entities but
12:35it isn't obvious how
12:37their elemental properties can combine
12:40to produce YOU. It's not obvious at all.
12:43It's certainly not obious how a material that's supposed to be
12:46dead matter, so to speak, can
12:49manifest consciousness,
12:52no matter how complexly it's arranged.
12:55So...
12:58The phenomenologists,
13:02Heidegger leading them, were...
13:05attempted to produce a philosophical model of
13:07being.
13:09And...We'll talk more specifically about the phenomenologists
13:12after we're done with Rogers, but he is...
13:15he fits in that
13:17philosophical
13:19framework.
13:21And...
13:35One of the things that I've thought...
13:38-- This is a bit of a tangent but I'll move back
13:41to the model afterwards. --
13:44See, I really like the psychoanalysts.
13:46And I like the idea that you have a psyche that's inside
13:49of you and that is structured, in part
13:51consciously and in part uncounsciously.
13:53There's something about that that's really cool and I've learned a lot
13:57from the psychoanalysts. But, you know, there is a funny
14:00conesquence of thinking the way they think -- and you do
14:04think the way they think, even if you don't know it --
14:06like we tend to think that a lot of us is inside our head,
14:09you know. That's the psyche model basically.
14:13But, the more I've practised as a clinical psychologist
14:16the less I've actually been convinced that that's true
14:19So, I could say, well...Let's say I want to know about
14:21your personality. We think, well, I wanna now
14:24you. I wanna know about your subjectivity and I want to know
14:27what's inside of you.
14:29But that is not exactly what you do want to know if you're doing clinical
14:32work, say, with someone. You wanna know
14:35do they have any friends?
14:37That's really important. Because, if you're miserable
14:40and anxious and badly placed in life
14:43and misbehaving,
14:45one of the reasons that all of that can occur is 'cause
14:47you don't have any friends, you don't know anyone. And that's not something that's
14:50inside you.
14:52It's you, localized
14:55in a broader sphere. And then, you might say, well, do you
14:57have a job?
14:59And...Well, let's talk about the job. Do you actually make enough
15:01money with your job? Is it satisfying for
15:04you in any way? Are you bullied all the time when you're at work?
15:07Does it provoke anxiety? Is it a carrier that allows
15:10you to go somewhere? Are you overworked?
15:13Or...But let's start with just the first question.
15:15Do you have a job? Well, if the answer to that is "no",
15:19you have a serious problem and that would enough
15:22might be to depress you and make you anxious and
15:25hopeless and nihilistic and all of those things. And, you could say, well,
15:28you're not reacting very well to not having a job but
15:31that's kind of a foolish objection, even though some of
15:34it might be true. One problem is that you're not reacting very
15:37well to not having a job but another problem is that you don't have a
15:40job and that, actually, constitutes the problem,
15:43right? You don't get to eat, you don't have a place to live.
15:46Those aren't psychological problems precisely, even
15:49though a psychological probem could make it worse.
15:52Well, are you as educated as you should be?
15:55That's another question. How do you handle drugs and alcohol?
15:57Are they taking you down a bad pathway? Know?
16:00Uhmm...
16:02What about intimate relationships ? Do you have one?
16:04Do you have a plan for one? Or is that a never ending series of
16:08catastrophes or something that you avoid completely?
16:11That's a big problem! And, maybe, people don't...
16:13aren't attracted to you for one reason or another and.... You can think about that as
16:16a psychological problem but...it's an interpersonal
16:19problem.
16:20And the degree to which that's a psychological problem is...
16:24is certainly unspecified when
16:26you first begin to talk to somebody. What about your family? Do you have a family?
16:30'Cause' it's hard to be in the world all by yourself. That's for sure!
16:34It makes things a lot more stressful...even though having a family
16:37can also be extraordinarily stressful...you know..
16:40Do you have plans to have children? How are you doing with your parents?
16:43Do you get along with your siblings? You know, all of
16:45that, all of that, to me, is more
16:47fundamental and it's outside of you. Those are elements of your experience.
16:52More broadly...conceptualized...
16:54more than they are objects of your psychology
16:57or of your internal experience. You know, it's sort of like
17:04Well, a person is a creature that exists
17:07at multiple levels of analysis.
17:10Right? Something might go wrong with you at a
17:12cellular level. So, maybe, you're born with a genetic abnormality.
17:16So, something's wrong with you molecularly.
17:18Or you have something wrong with a major organ.
17:21Or, maybe, there's something wrong with you psycologically. Or, maybe,
17:24you're in a pathological family. Or, maybe, you're stuck
17:26in a pathological social system. And...
17:30figuring out why you're suffering
17:33means going up and down those different levels trying
17:35to specify the appropriate level
17:37for analysis and also the appropriate level for intervention.
17:40And, for me, as I said, even though I'm a great admirer
17:43of the psychoanalysts and I do
17:45things like dream analysis which I really find
17:48incredibly useful and enlightning, the first, the
17:51fundamental level of analysis is, well, what's your experience structured like...
17:55exactly? And that isn't localized in you.
17:58Now, the behaviourists do that to, because...
18:00-- which is one of the things I really like about the behaviourial approach of psychotherapy.
18:03It's very very concrete and practical. It's like,
18:06they'll say, well,
18:08there're certain things that you need to have in order to live properly
18:10and, maybe, you don't have the skills or the wherewithwall...
18:12wherewithal to accumulate them and we'll break them down
18:15into tiny little pieces and you'll practice. So, for example,
18:19someone who doesn't have any friends and you do a micro-analysis
18:21of their...social skills, say,
18:24and maybe an analysis of the kind of anxiety
18:27that are stopping them from going out and meeting people
18:29and then you address those things practically one by one. You try
18:32to get the person have some friends. You try to figure out how they can
18:36establish an intimate relationship. You see if you could help
18:38them sort out their family. You do what you can about their
18:41employment and...A lot of that's only tangentially related
18:44to -- really, in some sense -- to the structure of their psyche.
18:47But, one of the things you'll see, if you work as a
18:50clinician, or as a counsellor, is that, most of the time, people
18:53come and see you because they have problems, not because they have psychological
18:56problems.
18:58And those things are not that easy to distinguish.
19:00You know, it's sort of the psychoanalytic idea, sort of like, well, if you juste got
19:04your act together, everything would work out for you. It's like,
19:07yeaaaah...
19:11There's some truth in that.
19:13But...
19:17But, you know if you're 55 years old and you've just been
19:19laid off work,
19:22and, maybe, through no fault of your own,
19:25it isn't obvious how much getting your act together
19:28is gonna help you find another job...because...
19:31the actual problem that you're facing may have
19:34relatively little to do with you. And that would especially be the case
19:37if you're,
19:38maybe, on the bottom half of the itelligence distribution,
19:41for example, and so...it isn't
19:43as easy for you just to go out and pick up new
19:46skills at the drop of a hat...you know...and that
19:49gets harder as you get older because your IQ actually declines quite
19:52substantially as you get older, the working or the....
19:55the fluid intelligence part, anyways -- exercise
19:58can keep that at bay, by the way, it's the best way to keep that at bay.
20:02So, anyways...you can think,
20:05from the phenomenological viewpoint, of
20:07your experience as a whole, instead of
20:10you being a subject in an objective world.
20:12And so...here's another way of...here's something that's quite useful.
20:16Jung talked about this
20:17'cause he was moving towards a phenomenological perspective later
20:20in his life. The last book he wrote was called Mysterium Coniunctionis.
20:23He talked about three conjunctions
20:26that needed to take place in order for someone to be
20:29well constituted psychologically. And, you know how
20:32Piaget talked about
20:34learning that you could,
20:36not only follow rules, but that you could make rules for new
20:39games as sort of a highest level of moral development. I would say
20:42Jung extended the Piagetian
20:45moral continuum
20:47up past what Piaget had envisioned. Now, he didn't...
20:50he didn't do that 'cause he wasn't trying to extend Piaget's model. But...
20:54But you can think about it the same way. And it's not easy to
20:57come up with a moral
21:00mode of being, say, that transcends the ability to
21:02make rules for new games. That's damn smart, man, that's...
21:06That's a major home run by Piaget,
21:08as far as I am concerned. But Jung said something like this.
21:10He said, look, when you're going through the process of
21:13psychological integration...
21:16Here's a way of conceptualizing it. He thought about this as...
21:21symbolically, as male-female pairings, because...
21:24as I've tried to point out, the most... one of the most fundamental
21:28categories that our mythological imagination
21:30uses to structure the world is the category
21:33of masculine and feminine. And it moves that around, you know,
21:36it's a fundamental metaphor so you can move that around anywhere.
21:39And so Jung thought well, one of the things that you're trying to do
21:43is to get your thoughts and your emotions
21:45integrated.
21:47And so, you know, the classic Enlightenment viewpoint,
21:50roughly speaking, is something like,
21:52passion is the enemy of reason.
21:55Right? And so, to the degree that you're rational, it's sort of
21:57a Freudian viewpoint 'cause you've got your emotions under control.
22:01And...there's some truth in that but...not enough truth.
22:04I like the Piagetian idea better, which is that,
22:07no, no, that isn't what happens. What happens is if...
22:10if you're playing the proper game is that, you integrate your
22:13emotions underneath your thinkings, something like that.
22:16So, they're all working in the same direction, you know. So,
22:19for example,
22:21you can make your anxiety work against you or for you.
22:24And, one of the ways...
22:25I made a program, called the Future Authoring Program
22:28that I think helps people do that. 'Cause, one of the things you see when you're
22:31talking to people and they're trying to solve problems is that they're afraid to
22:35face the problem.
22:37And so, then, their anxiety is working against them and you can think about it as a...
22:39as antagonistic to rationality.
22:43But then, I could say, well, what if you think for a while about
22:46what your life would be like if you didn't face
22:49this problem?
22:50Because, if you think that through, if you have a problem and you
22:53really think through what the consequences are
22:56gonna be in two to three years of not facing it, then
22:59you're gonna get more afraid of not facing it than facing it.
23:02And that's great because then, your anxiety, instead of
23:05standing in front of you...instead of...
23:07you having a dragon that's guarding the path in front of you, you
23:10have one chasing you down the path from behind. That's
23:13a lot more useful.
23:15And so...
23:16you know, that's just a...
23:18a minimal example of the utility of getting your emotions
23:21and your...
23:22and your thoughts aligned the same way. The same
23:24thing happens with the aggression.
23:27You know...One of the most common reasons that people come and
23:30seek psychotherapy, really, is because they're too agreeable.
23:33But...what that means is they're not assertive enough. They haven't
23:35integrated their capacity for aggression. And so, other people can push them around.
23:39And...and they're very conflict avoidant.
23:43And...and so, the consequences of that across time
23:46is that you don't stand up for yourself well enough
23:49and you get taken advantage of and that spirals
23:52badly downwards. And so, partly what you do when you're
23:56doing assertiveness training with people
23:59is you find out what they're angry about...and...
24:02They're usuallly angry, if they're not assertive enough,
24:04because other people are taking advantage of them or, you could say, because they're not
24:07putting their own...
24:09necessities forward
24:10with enough force. It's hard to distinguish between those two things.
24:14But, anyways, you...
24:16get them to talk about what they're angry about,
24:18that often makes them cry, often many times,
24:21and then, you get them to kind of envision what they would want
24:24to have instead, which they're often afraid to do
24:27because people are afraid to think about what they want
24:31because that makes it more clear when they're not getting it
24:33and that's painful, right? Or, maybe, they're afraid of hoping
24:36so they won't specify a clear aim. But, anyways, you get them to
24:39think about what they might want instead. You get them
24:42to think about the cost of not pursuing that
24:45and then, you help them develop strategies for integrating
24:48their aggression and... with their thinking,
24:52so they can come up with a plan to
24:54approach the world in a more confident way. So, for example,
24:57someone might come to me and say "I'm being bullied badly at work".
25:01And so, then, I'll say "well, what are your options?
25:04You have to put up with it? Well,
25:06we'll figure that out cause maybe you do, maybe you don't have options.
25:09But here's how to find out. Get your damn CV together,
25:12so it's pristine, right? It's ready to go.
25:16Get over your fear of a new interview, because
25:19people are generally afraid of that. Get over your fear of applying
25:22for a new job. Start thinking about what it would mean to have
25:24a different job. Start thinking about what it would mean to have
25:28a better job, even. Cause, maybe, your fear
25:31is just making you stuck here but I can tell you one thing :
25:33if someone's picking on you at work and you don't have options,
25:36you lose."
25:38So you get the person to start building a strategy. It's like, "OK,
25:41if you're gonna tell this person to stop,
25:44you have to know how to make them stop
25:46and the one thing you need for sure is an option,
25:49and, if you can't...if you don't have an option
25:52then, maybe, we start thinking about the fact that you need some more
25:55training or something like that. Because you cannot negotiate
25:58if you don't have any power.
26:00So...because while....especially if you're dealing with someone
26:02who's really out to get you or really disagreeable,
26:06If you don't have a leg to stand on, they'll just push you over and, maybe, they'll
26:08jump on you too because that's what they're like and enjoy anyways, so...
26:12It's no joke.
26:13So...
26:14You put your options behind you and then you
26:17start to think about strategy." So I tell people "Look,
26:20if you're being harassed at work, you document it every time
26:23it happens. You write it down. So you've got like twenty
26:25stories about it and it's fully documented. And then,
26:28you go confront the person at some point with, at least,
26:313 pieces of evidence. And you have some
26:33sense about what you tell them about what will happen if they don't stop.
26:37So you have to figure out : well, they don't stop?
26:40What are you gonna do about it? Leave? Not if you
26:43can't leave. So, you have to be able to
26:46-- what is it? -- wield a big stick and speak softly.
26:49But, you see, that way...that's how you take your
26:52aggression, which is an absolute necessary
26:55part of your psyche and manifest it up into
26:58a sophisticated means of dealing with the world.
27:01You don't just suppress it and say "well, I should be able to put up with it"
27:04or "I wish I wasn't so angry" or some...it's like...forget that!
27:08That's...
27:09All that'll happen is your blood pressure will stay high and you'll die of a heart
27:12attack. Because anger, for example, is a very toxic emotion.
27:16And it does cause heart damage over time. It's the only
27:18emotion that we really know that's been linked to things like
27:21cardiovascular risk. And anger is toxic because
27:25it's like, you're driving a car, you're stepping on the gas
27:27and pushing on the brake at the same time. Because
27:29anger tells you to run away and to attack
27:33...at the same time, cause you don't know what's gonna happen. And so, it
27:36really amps up the physiological
27:39demand on your body. And so, if you...
27:42-- including your heart and your musculature -- so, if you stay like that for
27:44like 10 years, you know...you're gonna age
27:4720 years.
27:49And that's a bad plan.
27:51So...
27:53So, you know, you take your
27:55underground emotions and you integrate them into a sophisticated
27:59reality.
28:01Now...
28:03Jung said, so
28:05"FIrst of all you unite your mind,
28:08your thinking, let's say, with your emotions. So that makes one
28:11thing, instead of two fighting things."
28:14OK. That's a good one. And then, the next conjunction
28:17he talked about was
28:18"It isn'tenough to unite your mind
28:21and your emotions". And he tought about that as male/female
28:24pairing, symbolically. That's how
28:26it would manifest itself sometimes in dreams. So you
28:29take the masculine element and the feminine element,
28:32the thinking and the emotion, unite
28:35those and that makes you more like one thing. OK and now,
28:37all of a sudden, that's represented as symbolicaly male, that one thing.
28:41And it unites with something else that's now represented
28:43symbolically femin...female. That's the body.
28:46So you take the mind/emotion integration
28:49and integrate that in your body. So what'd that be?
28:52You act it out!
28:53Instead of just thinking.
28:55So, there's this philosophical idea called a...
29:00-- now I'm gonna forget what it's called -- It's a
29:03contradiction in action! There's actually a technical term for it.
29:06But that's when you think and believe something but you don't act it out.
29:09And so, that means there's a dissociation in you somehow
29:12between your abstract representations and
29:15what you manifest in action. Wel that's
29:18another form of discontinuity that isn't doing you any good.
29:22You know, the driver is going one way and the car is going the
29:24other. And you won't even be able to understand yourself, if you do that.
29:28But, even more, you're not putting your principles into practice.
29:31So, you're dissociated. Your being is dissociated. So...
29:35Once you get your mind and your emotions working together, then
29:38the next thing to do is to act that out consistenly.
29:40That was the second conjunction, as far as Jung was concerned, and then
29:44the third one was -- this is the tough one, and
29:46this is the one that's related to phenomenology --
29:50you erase the distinction between yourself and the world.
29:54OK.
29:55That's a tough one.
29:56So, imagine you're dealing with someone who's hoarding.
29:59Now, people who are hoarding are often older or
30:02neurologically damaged or they have obsessive compulsive disorder.
30:06But then, you walk into their house and there's like ten
30:08thousands things in their house. There's...there's...there's
30:11There's, maybe, a hundred boxes. And you open up a box and, in the box, there's some
30:15pens and some old passports and some
30:18checks and... there's collections of silver dollars and
30:21some hypodermic needles and some dust and...
30:23you know, a dead mouse and...and...
30:26there's boxes and boxes and boxes. It's like
30:29that in the house. It's absolute chaos in there.
30:32Absolute chaos. Not order...chaos.
30:34And then, you think, is that their house or is that
30:36their being? Is that their mind? And the answer is :
30:40there's no difference. There's no difference.
30:43So, you know, I could say, well, if you want to organize your
30:46psyche, you could start by organizing your room...if that
30:49would be easier, cause, maybe, you're a more
30:50concrete person and you need something concrete to do.
30:53So...you go clean up under your bed and you
30:55make your bed and you organize the papers on your desk and you think, well...
30:59Just exactly what are you organizing? Are you
31:01organizing the objective world or are you objecting your field...
31:05are you organizing your field of being,
31:07like your field of total experience?
31:10And Jung believed that...and I think
31:12there's a Buddhist doctrine that's sort of nested in there,
31:14that, at the highest level of psychological integrration, there's
31:18no difference between you and what your experience.
31:20Now, you think, well,
31:23I can't control everything I experience. But that's no objection
31:26because you can't control yourself anyway, so the mere fact
31:29that you can't extend control over everything
31:32you experience is no argument against the
31:34idea that you should still treat that as an extension of yourself.
31:38Well, let's say that you have a longstanding
31:41feud with your brother. Well...
31:44Is that a psychological problem? Is that him? Is it a
31:47problem in the objective world or is it a problem in your field
31:50of being? And it's very useful to think
31:53that way because you might ask what could you do to
31:55improve yourself? Well, let's step
31:58one step backwards. The first question might be why should you even bother
32:01improving yourself?
32:03And I think the answer to that is something like : so you don't
32:06suffer any more stupidly than you have to.
32:09And, maybe, so others don't have to either. It's something like that.
32:12You know, like, there's a real injunction at the bottom of it. It's not some
32:15casual self-help doctrine, it's that if you don't
32:19organize yourself properly, you'll pay for
32:21it. And in a big way. And so will the people around you. Now...
32:25And, you could say, well, I don't care about that but that's actually not
32:28true. You actually do care about that. Because, if you're in pain,
32:31you will care about it. And so, you do care
32:34about it. Even if it's just that negative way, you know.
32:37It's very rare that you can find someone
32:40who's in excruciating pain who would ever say
32:43well, it would be no better if I was out of this.
32:46This sort of pain is one of those things that brings
32:49the idea that it would be better if it didn't exist
32:52along with it. It's incontrovertible.
32:55So...You get your act together so that there
32:57isn't any more stupid pain around you than necessary.
33:01So then, the question might be: well, how would you go about getting
33:03your act together? And the answer to that
33:05-- and this is a phenomenological idea too -- it's something like:
33:08look around for something that bothers you
33:11and see if you can fix it.
33:13So...Now, you think, well
33:16let's say you go into a
33:19-- you can do this in a room. It's quite fun to do it just when
33:22you're sitting in a room, like, a room...maybe, your bedroom, you can sit there
33:25and then just sort of meditate on it, think, OK, if I wanted to
33:28spend 10 minutes making this room better,
33:32what would I have to do? And you have to ask yourself that,
33:34right? It's not a command, it's like a genuine question. And things
33:37will pop out in the room that, you know, you...like...there's a
33:40stack of papers over there that's kind of bugging you and you know that, maybe,
33:43a little order there would be a good thing and, you know you haven't...
33:47There's some rubbish behind your computer monitor that you haven't
33:50attended to for, like, six months and...the room would be slightly better
33:53if it was a little less dusty and the cables weren't all
33:56tangled up the same way and...
33:57like, if you...if you allow
33:59yourself just to consider the
34:02expanse in which you exist at that moment,
34:05there'll be all sorts of things that will pop out in it, that
34:08you could just fix.
34:10And, you know, I might say, well, if you're coming to see me for
34:13psychotherapy, the easiest thing for us to do
34:16first would just be to get you to organize your room.
34:18You think, well, is that psychotherapy? And the answer is, well,
34:21it depends on how you conceive the limits of your
34:25being
34:26And, I would say, start where you can start.
34:30You know, if something announces itself
34:32to you, which is a strange way of thinking about it,
34:35as in need of repair, that you could repair,
34:38then, hey! fix it! You fix a hundred
34:42things like that, your life will be a lot different.
34:46You know, I often tell people too, "fix the things you
34:48repeat every day. Cause people tend to think of those as trivial.
34:52Right? You get up, you brush your teeth,
34:55you have your breakfast, you know, you have your
34:57routines that you go through everyday. Well, those...those probably
35:00constitute 50% of your life. And
35:03people think "well, they're mundane, I don't need to pay attention to them", it's like
35:06no, no, that's exactly wrong. The things you do every day,
35:09those are the most important things you do.
35:12Hands down. All you have to do is do the arithmetic.
35:15You figure it out right away. So...
35:17A hundred adjustments to your...broader
35:20domain of being and there's a lot less
35:23rubbish and..
35:25there's a lot less rubbish around and a lot fewer traps for you
35:28to step into. And so...
35:30That's in keeping with Jung's idea about
35:34erasing the diss...once you've got your mind and your
35:36emotions together and once you're acting that out, then
35:39you can extend what you're willing to
35:42consider yourself and start fixing up the things
35:46that are part of your broader extent. Now,
35:49sometimes, you don't know how to do that. So, you might say, imagine you're walking down
35:52Bloor Street and there's this guy who's, like, alcoholic
35:55and schizophrenic and he's been on the street for ten years.
35:57He sort of stumbles towards you and, you know, incoherently
36:00mutters something. That's a problem!
36:03And...it would be good if you could fix it but
36:06you haven't got a clue about how to fix THAT.
36:09You just walk around that and go find something that you could
36:12fix because, if you muck about in that,
36:15not only is it unlikely that' you'll help that person, it's very
36:17likely that you'll get hurt yourself. So...
36:20you know, just because, while your experiencing
36:23things announce themselves as in need of repair
36:26doesn't mean that it's you, right then and there, that
36:29should repair them. You have to have some humility, you know.
36:32You don't walk up to a helicopter that isn't working and just start
36:35tinkering away with it. You have to stay within
36:38your domain of competence. But, most of the time, when people look
36:41at their lives, you know....
36:43-- It's a very interesting thing to do. I like...I like
36:46the idea of the room because you can do that at the drop of a hat.
36:50You know, go back to where you live and sit down and think "OK,
36:53I'm gonna make this place better for half an hour. What should I
36:56do?"
36:57You have to ask.
36:59And...things will just pop up like mad. And it's partly
37:02because your mind is a very strange thing. As soon as you give it an aim,
37:05a genuine aim, it'll
37:08reconfigure the world in keeping with that aim. That's, that's
37:11actually how you see, to begin with. And so, if you
37:14set it a task, espec... -- you have to be genuine about it,
37:17which is why you have to bring your
37:19thoughts and emotions together and then, you have to get them in
37:22your body, so you're acting consistently. You have to
37:24be genuine about the aim - But once you aim, the
37:27world will reconfigure itself around that aim,
37:30which is very strange. And...and... it's...
37:33it's..it's technically true.
37:36You know, the best example of that
37:38-- you've all seen this video where you...watch the
37:42basket ball being tossed back and forth
37:44between members of the white team versus the black
37:47team and, while you're doing that, a gorilla
37:49walks up into the middle of the video and you don't see it. It's like...
37:52-- you know, if you thought about that experiment for about five
37:55years, that would be about the right amount of time to spend thinking about it.
37:58Because, what it shows yo isthat you see what you aim at.
38:02And that, man, if you can get one thing through your
38:04head as a consequence of even being in University,
38:07that would be a good one: you see what you aim at.
38:10And so, because...one...
38:13inference you might draw from that is... be careful what
38:16you aimt at!
38:17Right? What you aim at determines the
38:21way the world manifests itself to you. And so, if the world is
38:24manifesting itself in a...
38:25very negative way, one thing to ask
38:29is: are you aiming at the right thing? Now...
38:31you know, I'm not trying to reduce everybody's problems to
38:35an improper aim. People get cut off at the knees for all
38:37sorts of reasons, you know. They get sick, they have accidents,
38:41There's a random element to being, that's for sure. But
38:44-- and so, you don't want to take anything, even that particular
38:47phrase too far. You want to bind it with the fact that
38:50random things do happen to people. But it's still a great thing to
38:53ask.-- OK, so, Rogers was a
38:56phenomenologist. He was interested in...he didn't start
38:59his philosophy from the perspective of
39:02subject versus object or from the idea of psyche,
39:05like, sort of inside you, your mind
39:08with it's layers.
39:10That's not how it looked at it. And so,
39:12let's go through...
39:15(now...) I'll introduce you to Rogers. I think that...
39:18then we'll talk more about him next time. I'm gonna start though,
39:21with something that I learned from him that I think was of
39:24crucial importance. And so, we'll set the stage for the
39:27further discussion with this. And I'm gonna read it to you.
39:31ROGERS : "Assuming a minimal mutual willingness to be in
39:34contact and to receive communications, we may say that
39:37the greater the communicated congruence
39:40of experience,
39:42awareness and behaviour on the part of
39:45one individual, the more the ensuing relationship will involve
39:48a tendency towards reciprocal communication with the same
39:50qualities. Mutually accurate
39:53understanding of the communications, improved psychological adjustments
39:56and functioning in both parties, and mutual
39:58satisfaction in the relationship."
40:00It's quite a mouthful.
40:02What does it mean?
40:04"Assuming a minimal mutual willingness to be in contact
40:07and to receive communications." Okay, we are having a conversation.
40:10I'm deciding I'm going to listen to you.
40:13Right,
40:14That's different than how people
40:16generally
40:17communicate, because usually when they communicate,
40:20they're doing something like: Okay
40:22We're going to have a conversation, and I'm going to tell you why I'm right,
40:26and I'll win if you agree
40:28or maybe you're having a conversation where
40:30i don't know what your trying to do, maybe your trying to impress the person
40:33you're talking to, so you're not listening to them at all, you're just thinking about what you're
40:36going to say next. Okay, so that's Not This.
40:39This Is: You might have something to tell me.
40:43And So, I'm going to Listen On the off chance
40:46that you'll tell me something that would really be useful for me to know.
40:49and so, you can think about it as an
40:51extension of the Piagetian...
40:55you know Piaget talked about the fundamental
40:58The fundamentally important element of knowledge being
41:00to describe how knowledge is sought.
41:02The process by which knowledge is generated. Well,
41:06if you agree with me and I find that out,
41:08I know nothing more than I knew before. I just know what I knew before.
41:12And, maybe, I'm happy about that because, you know, it didn't get
41:14challenged. But I'm no smarter than I was before.
41:17But, maybe, you're different than
41:18me and so, while I'm listening to you, you'll tell me something I would...
41:21I don't like. Maybe, it's something I find contemptible...
41:24or difficult, whatever. Maybe you'll find...you'll tell me something
41:28I don't know. And then, I won't be quite as stupid. And then,
41:31maybe, I won't run painfully into quite as many things.
41:35And that's a really useful thing to know, especially if you live
41:37with someone and you're trying to make long-term
41:40peace with them and they're not the same as you.
41:43And their way they look at the world and the facts that they pull out of the world
41:46aren't the same as your facts. And...
41:48even though you're going to be overwhelmed with the
41:51procilvity to demonstrate that you're right,
41:54it is the case that two brains are better than one.
41:57And so, maybe, nine of the ten
42:00things they tell you are dispensable,
42:02or, maybe, even 49 out of 50. But
42:05one thing...all you need to get out of the damn conversations is
42:08one thing you don't know. And one of the things that's very
42:11cool about a good psychotherapeutic
42:13session is that the whole conversation is like that.
42:17All you're doing is trying to...
42:20express the truth of the situation
42:23as clearly as possible. That's it!
42:27And so...
42:28Now, Rodgers' proposition
42:32-- and I'll tell you why he derived it -- was that,
42:35if you have a conversation like that with someone,
42:38it will make both of you better.
42:40It will make both of you psychologically healthier.
42:43So, there's an implicit presupposition that the exchange
42:46of truth is curative. Well, that's
42:49a very cool idea. I mean, it's a very deep idea.
42:52I think it's the most profound idea...
42:55It's the idea upon western civil...
42:58upon which western civilization -- although not
43:01only western civilization -- is actually predicated.
43:04The idea that truth produces health. But for
43:07Rogers, that was the entire purpose of the psychotherapeutic alliance.
43:10You come to see me because you want to be better.
43:14You don't even know what that means, necessarily. Neither do I.
43:17We're gonna figure that out together. But you come and you say
43:20"Look, things are not acceptable to me and
43:23maybe, there's something I could do about that". So
43:25that's the minimal precondition to engage in therapy.
43:28Something's wrong. You're willing to talk about it truthfuly
43:31and you want it to be better. WIthout that, the therapeutic
43:35relationship does not get off the ground.
43:37And so, then, you might ask: well what relationships are therapeutic?
43:40And the answer to that will be: if you have a real relationship,
43:43it's therapeutic.
43:45If it isn't, what you have is not a relationship. God only
43:48knows what you have. You're a slave, they're a tyrant.
43:51You know, you're both butting heads with one another. It's a primate
43:54dominance hierarchy dispute or,
43:57I don't know, you're like two cats in a barrel or two people with their hands around
44:00each other's throats. But what you have is not a
44:03relationship. So...
44:05All right. ROGERS "We may say that the greater the
44:08communicated congruence of experience, awareness and behaviour on the
44:11part of one individual"...PETERSON That's a reference to the same idea
44:14that I was describing, with regards to Jung. so...
44:17Let's say,
44:18you come and talk to me and you want things do go well. Well, I'm gonna
44:21have to more or less be one thing. Because, if I'm all over the
44:24place,
44:26you can't trust any continuity in what I
44:28say. There's no....and...you
44:30There's no reason for you to believe that I'm capable
44:33of actually telling you...
44:35...I'm capable of expressing anything that's true.
44:38So, the truth is something that emerges as a consequence
44:40of getting yourself lined up...and beating all the...
44:45-- what would you call? --
44:48...all the impurities out of your...out of your...
44:51out of your....
44:52soul, for lack of a better word.
44:55You have to be integrated for that to happen. And you do that, at least in
44:58part, by wanting to tell the truth. ROGERS "...the more the ensuing
45:02relationship wil involve a tendency towards
45:04reciprocal communication with the same qualities...." PETERSON : So, one of
45:07the things -- 'cause I've been quite influenced by Rogers --
45:10One of the things I try to do in my therapeutic sessions is, first of all,
45:13to listen, to really listen. And then,
45:16while I listen, I watch. And while
45:19I'm listening, things will happen in my head.
45:22You know, maybe, I'll get a litte image of something or
45:25I'll get a thought or a question will emerge and I'll just tell the
45:27person what that is. But it's sort of
45:29directionless, you know. It's not like I have a goal
45:32-- except that we're trying to make things better -- I'm on the side
45:35of the person...I'm on the side of the part of the
45:37person that wants things to be better, not worse.
45:41And so, then, those parts of us have a dialogue and
45:44the consequence of that dialogue is that certain things take place.
45:47And then, I'll just tell the person what happened. And it isn't that
45:50I'm right.
45:51That's not the point The point of this is that, they get to have an hour
45:54with someone who actually tells them what they think.
45:58Here's the impact you're having on me.
46:00You know...This is making me angry. This is making me
46:03happy. This is really interesting. This
46:05reminds me of something that you said an hour ago that I don't quite understand.
46:09And the whole...
46:10the whole point is not, for either
46:13person to make the propositon or convince
46:16the other that their position is correct, but merely to
46:19have an exchange of experience
46:22about how things are set up.
46:24And it's extraordinarily useful for people because it's often difficult
46:27for anyone to find anyone to talk to that will actually listen.
46:31And so...another thing that's really strange about this listening
46:34is that, if you really listen to people, they will tell you the weirdest bloody things
46:38so fast you just cannot believe it. So,
46:40if you're having a conversation with someone and it's dull, it's because
46:43you're stupid. That's why. You're not
46:46listening to them properly. Because they're weird. They're like
46:50wombats or albatrosses or rhinoceroses or something,
46:53like, they're strange creatures. And so if you were actually
46:56communicating with them and they were telling you how weird they really are,
46:59it would be...it would be anything but boring.
47:03So.... And you can ask questions, that's a really good
47:06way of listening. But, you know... one of
47:09Rogers' point is that, well, you have to orientate properly in order to listen.
47:12And the orientation has to be:
47:13look, what I want out of this conversation is
47:16that the place we both end up is better than the place we left.
47:19That's it!
47:20That's what I'm after. And, if you're not after that, you gotta think:
47:23why the hell wouldn't you be after that? What could you
47:26possibly be after that would be better than that?
47:29You walk away smarter and more well equipped for
47:32the world than you were before you had the conversation.
47:35And so does the other person. Well, maybe, if you're
47:38bitter and resentful and angry and anxious and, you know,
47:41generally annoyed at the world, then,
47:44that isn't what you want. You want the other person to walk away
47:47worse, and you too, cause you're full of revenge. But...you know...
47:50You'll get what you want, if you do that. So...
47:54ROGERS "We know from our research that such empathic
47:57understanding..." PETERSON: It's already defined, that. I want to hear you,
48:00I want to hear what you have to say, so we can clarify it and move forward.
48:04I want to have your best interest in mind...And mine as well...but...
48:07you know...both at the same time. Your family's too, if we
48:10can manage that. We're after making things better.
48:14ROGERS: "We know from our reserach that such emphatic understanding
48:17-- understanding with a person, not about them -- is such an
48:20effective approach that it can bring about major changes in personality.
48:23Some of you may be feeling that you listen well
48:26to people and that you have never seen such results. The chances are
48:29very great that you have not been listening
48:31in the manner that I have described. Fortunately, I can suggest
48:34a little experiment that you can do to test the quality of our understanding.
48:37the quality of our understanding. The next time you get into an argument
48:40with your wife, or your friend, or a small group of friends, stop
48:43the discussion for a moment and, for an experiment, institute
48:46this rule.
48:47Each person can speak up for himself only
48:50after he has first restated the ideas and feelings
48:54of the previous speaker accurately."
48:56PETERSON: What "accurately" means is they have to
48:58agree with your restatement. Now, that's an annoying
49:01thing to do! Because, if someone is talking to you and you
49:04disagree with them, the first thing you wanna do is take their argument and make it
49:07the stupidest possible thing out of it that you can
49:10-- that's the straw man -- and then, demolish it.
49:13It's like...so then, you can walk away feeling good about it
49:16and, you know, you primate domins...
49:18dominated them really nicely. So...
49:21But that is not what you do. You say, OK, well, I'm gonna take what you told me,
49:24and, maybe, I'm even gonna make your argument stronger than the one you made.
49:27That's useful if you're dealing with someone that you have to live with.
49:30Because, maybe, they can't bloody well express themselves very well but they
49:33have something to say. So you...make
49:36their argument strong. All right...then...
49:39ROGERS: "You see what this would mean. It would mean that before presenting
49:42your own point of view, it'd be necessary
49:44for you to really achieve the other speaker's frame of reference
49:47-- to understand his thoughts and feelings so well
49:50that you could summarize them for him. Sound simple
49:53doesn't it?
49:54But if you try it, you'll find that it's the most
49:57difficult thing that you've ever done."
49:59PETERSON: OK, good, we'll leave it at that and then, we'll see you on Tuesday.