Thanks for your positive responses to my last post. Means a lot to me. Over time, I’ll share more personal stories from my life.
Here the 31-year-old therapist Dylan talks with his Aunt Carmen, a retired therapist in the Otto Rank school, and his Cousin Ren, a Maslow-based therapist.
As a reminder:
The First Force in psychology is Freudian Psychoanalysis.
The Second Force is Behaviorism, pioneered by B.F. Skinner.
The Third Force is the psychology of self-actualization pioneered by Abraham Maslow — sometimes called Humanistic Psychology.
And the Fourth Force is psychology that includes spiritual and other transpersonal experiences. It is most associated with William James, Carl Jung, Roberto Assagioli, and Stanislav Grof.
(Dylan hasn’t yet discovered Grof at this point in the story.)
This dialogue between Carmen, Ren, and Dylan helps clarify some of the strengths and weaknesses of Third Force and Fourth Force psychologies.
Denver
November 17, 1970
My cousin Ren Prothero turns 50 today and we held a nice birthday dinner for him. Now it’s me and him and Aunt Carmen in her living room. We sit on the long cocoa-brown curve-around couch that can seat six, with Carmen in the middle.
Ren is her adopted son and not of Spanish and Mexican descent like Carmen. Ren’s entirely of Welsh descent, like Riis and me, and he looks a bit like Riis. I was adopted into this family too, when I was a toddler, and Riis’s sister Gwen became my stepmother.
Ren’s got 18, 19 years on me – and those years count. He’s got much more of a super-confident all-American personality than I do. He’s from the World War II Generation – the Big Band Generation. I’m from what they’ve started calling the Silent Generation, although if they’re the Big Band Generation I’d call us the Folk Generation. He’s also got thirty pounds on me, although I wouldn’t call him overweight, just robust, while I’m kinda wiry.
“It’s been great to see you today, Cousin,” Ren says. “Proud of your four years as a therapist now. I skipped the medical degree you and Mom got, and still can’t figure out how that helped each of you.” Ren earned a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in psychology at Boulder and has always found this sufficient.
I smile. “I draw from my medical knowledge now and then, even though I’m a Fourth Force therapist just like Aunt Carmen.”
Ren shrugs. “I do everything I need to for my clients.” He’s known Abraham Maslow since his grad-school days, he’s a Maslow guy all the way – Third Force psychology, they call it – and he’s been a Maslow-inspired therapist since he began his therapy work two decades ago.
Carmen brings us back to a unifying note. “Dylan and I have often discussed how Otto Rank focused on tenderness, empathy, compassion, and love and how Roberto Assagioli focuses on maximal encounter with other people.”
Ren nods and smiles. “Maslow’s approach involves ethics and it involves ideal behavior, kindness, generosity, friendships, compassion, self-sacrifice, love. Being self-actualizing includes being altruistic, dedicated to your duties to other people, being sociable, and having close personal relationships. To identify with humanity, to have a deep feeling of kinship with the whole human race, to do what is good and just and fair and benevolent.”
“None of us does all this,” Carmen says. “But good to keep it all in mind. What about Maslow on the human will?”
Ren shrugs. “Maslow doesn’t really focus on the will, Mom, but I agree with Rank and Assagioli on the will.”
“Maximum individuation and maximum connectedness,” she says.
He nods. “We align with Rank on that. Same goal: to balance our autonomy and uniqueness with good relationships with other people. We keep our individuality even as we identify deeply with the whole human race and as we care about and respect other people in profoundly affectionate, even altruistic ways. That’s a fullness of our humanity.”
“As much of that as we can remember and do, day by day,” Carmen says.
Carmen keeps looking at Ren. “What else do you agree with Assagioli on?”
“His focus on growth, actualization, meaning, values, choices and responsibility, motivation, and the unique individuality of each person.”
“Indeed,” says Carmen. She looks at me. “And what else do you agree with Maslow on?”
“His focus on people becoming whole and healthy. Maslow’s psychology is about goodness, faith, values, ideals, courage, beauty, poetry, music, art. It’s about joy, psychological health and maturity, human well-being, and personal fulfillment.”
Ren nods. “Maslow’s theories are based on the individual’s innate tendency toward growth. He’s interested in well-lived lives. He has an imagination for people at our best. He’s about us constantly using our talents and capabilities, and constantly challenging ourselves as we reach our potential, and become our best, become magnificent.”
“I agree with Maslow on all that,” I say.
Ren smiles at me. “Maslow focuses us on wholeness, fulfillment, integrity, and optimal psychological health. Maslow’s vision is a vision of the whole healthy human being. And of wise people who are discovering and developing all that is good, true, and beautiful within themselves.”
“I agree with all that,” I repeat. “And self-actualization.”
“Who could be against self-actualization?” Ren asks. “To be alive and fully-functioning. To feel whole and complete. To enjoy an ever-fresh appreciation for beauty and a sense of wonder, a good-natured sense of humor and playfulness and joy. And grace. With creative responses to problems. With healthy self-respect yet enough humility to be open to other people – to listening to and being taught. With a continued freshness of appreciation. With aesthetic sensitivity. We notice how lovely each flower is, how beautiful each sunset is. We are moved to tears by beauty, by joy, by tragedy. And yet we are more objective, seeing life clearly, not as we wish it to be, not letting our hopes and wishes distort our observations. We have clear perceptions of reality and sound judgment.”
I nod. “We realize our latent, unrealized potential. We live by higher motivations and we’re guided by inner directives. So we actualize our true self and we feel fortunate and graced.”
Carmen is pleased. “That’s a lot to agree on, Ren and Dylan.”
I nod again. “I also love how self-actualizing people have frequent peak experiences.”
“Who could be against peak experiences?” Ren asks. “Experiences of wonder, awe, beauty, serenity, happiness, ecstasy, or joy. When we’re in touch with the grandeur and splendor of the universe. When we’re aware of the meaningfulness of life. When we feel strong yet humble, free of doubt, beyond self-consciousness yet aware of the meaningfulness of our life, sure of ourselves, integrated, reverent, fully functioning, and able to withstand opposition.”
“Superb,” I say. “Psychosynthesis puts a strong emphasis on awe, wonder, and expanded awareness.”
“Like peak experiences,” says Ren.
“Sure, Cousin. Mystical experiences. Flashes of higher reality and spiritual enlightenment. And sacralizing everyday life.”
“Wonderful,” says Carmen.
“Can’t go there with you, you know,” says Ren. “Self-actualizing people live their lives with reverence. With a consistent choosing of good over evil, and finding it easy to do so. With an earnest desire to improve the lot of humanity. With dedication to their mission. But I refuse to go where Assagioli takes things.”
“So what’s the problem, Ren?” Carmen asks.
“First, I’m mystified by their techniques.”
“Psychosynthesis is unique,” I tell Carmen, “in that the primary work with clients is with imagery and visualization.”
“Why?” asks Ren.
“The image of oneself, that’s the whole show,” I say, “and the image of one’s inner journey.”
Ren raises his eyebrows. “How does it work?”
“We usually use a symbol of elevation, broadening, and expansion. We rely a lot on the symbol of a mountain. We prepare our client to climb the mountain. Gain knowledge of the mountain. Develop mountaineering skills. Then go. Ascend the mountain.”
“Sounds good to me,” Carmen says.
“I find it a little odd,” says Ren. “But the real issue is what they are coaxing their clients to ascend into.”
Ren’s never been supportive of my spiritual approach to therapy. And since his wife Vera died – suddenly, of pneumonia – in March of ‘68, he’s somehow felt guilty that he didn’t save her life. He’s become a tad bitter, and even tougher on me.
“That’s the difference,” I say. “You Third-Force Maslow folks are all about self-realization with high social ideals – self-actualization within society, within humanity. We Fourth Force folks also believe in moving toward other people, toward the world. But, unlike you, we support and reinforce people’s move toward the spiritual dimension, toward transpersonal realities, even toward the Divine.”
“You know I’m a spiritual man, Dylan. We share our Quaker faith. But spiritual things have no place in professional therapy work.”
“You Third Force folks neglect to help the client recreate their personality in a coherent, organized, and unified away around a transcendent center.”
“Hmmph.”
“That’s Psychosynthesis. Psychological and spiritual mountaineering. Ascending into transcendent reality, transcendent territory, and drawing inspiration from that reality, that territory. The soul awakening to Light and Warmth.”
“And you’re skeptical of that?” Carmen asks Ren.
“Skeptical doesn’t begin to describe my reaction.”
“It’s a better approach, Ren. In Psychosynthesis, we affirm the super-conscious and spiritual levels of reality – the field or range of consciousness we call ‘spiritual’ – and we see spiritual and superconscious energies as being as real and as fundamental as instinctual energies.”
Carmen nods. “And you stay neutral about your clients’ answers to philosophical and religious questions?”
I nod. “We’re neutral about spiritual worldviews. We’re not affirming anyone’s religious or philosophical concepts, doctrines, beliefs, or systems. We’re affirming the transpersonal dimension and the reality of experiences of the superconscious – of spiritual experiences. We’re about each individual growing toward realization of his or her spiritual essence.”
Ren has been frowning. “I would never, ever bring my spirituality into the counseling room. It doesn’t belong in my work with clients.”
“That’s not what we do,” I insist. “We work with our clients’ existing spirituality – with their own sense of what is transpersonal.”