Therapy and emergence of the self

Been working with this woman over the past few months and I am doing almost completely relational work.  She is pleasant, well versed in therapy, quite capable of introspection and seems motivated. All the qualities are there for a good prognosis.

But it is one of those times where you know something is wrong but you don’t know what it is. You know something is not going right but you can’t articulate it. My Free Child is reacting to her and the therapeutic relationship with disquiet. We have discussed this “problem” I have but it still is not getting to the core of it. My feeling reaction is one of unease. Not in a bad way but in a way of, “I know there is something going on here but I don’t know what it is”.

The work we are doing would be consistent with what Winnicott called the holding environment. I am psychologically ‘holding her”. This of course fits with a relational approach where the focus is on the relationship we have. I have come across the term in relational theory called - the emergence of the self. This fits for what I am doing here. I am simply letting myself go in the relationship with the client not knowing what is going to emerge for me personally.

Winnicott's therapeutic approach of the holding environment does this, but only psychologically. I must say I have always been a bit surprised how people can regress as they do in the holding environment. Indeed some people can become highly regressed. The perfect opportunity for hypnotic suggestions. Getting the client out of the chair down on the floor to do floor work can result in a signficant and abrupt change in ego states especially when they have done it a few times before and are used to it.

I have always thought this a little odd as the therapy in one sense is more about me than about the client. The focus is on my FC and how it is reacting and emerging in relation to the client. Of course the positive for the client is that as I become aware of my personal emergence I report this to her which benefits her. In this instance I don’t feel I have a choice. The conventional approach of analyzing the client, is going OK, but my intuition tells me I am missing something.

What is going to happen? I don’t know. I will have to wait and see what emerges.

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Human development

Developmental psychologists have tended to divide up the human life span into the following three categories. Most books on human psychological development use this breakdown.

One can portray human development as a series of hurdles of tasks that the person must jump over or master. For example in childhood the child has to learn to walk, talk, be toilet trained, deal with the oedipus complex, go to school and so on. They need to go through all the stages of cognitive development and moral development and so on. A child goes through a period of significant and quite fast physical change and psychological change.

One can say the same applies for the teenager. They have a whole series of hurdles to jump or tasks to master. They also have to go through a series of cognitive and moral development stages, learn how to engage with the opposite sex, develop a social support system with their peers and so forth. Like in childhood they go through a period of quite fast and significant physical and psychological development.

Developmental psychologist have decided to make a separation between the stages of childhood and adolescence. This corresponds with the age about when puberty starts. For some reason at this point they say a person has moved onto a new stage of psychological development. They distinguish between the psychological stage of childhood and the psychological stage of adolescence as occurring when puberty arrives.

To my mind this is an arbitrary distinction which is a nonsense and I have not heard of the rational for doing this. One could argue that this distinction needs to be made because the developmental tasks required in childhood are significantly different than the developmental tasks required in adolescence. This is a hypothesis with which I would agree. Without a doubt a 4 year old child is dealing with very different developmental issues than a 14 year old teenager. However the choice of 12 or 13 years of age for the new developmental stage to arrive seems quite a random decision to make.

It can also be argued that a 2 year old child and an 8 year old child are very different physically and the psychological developmental issues they are dealing with are also quite different. So why not conclude that they are two separate developmental stages instead of including them in the same developmental stage as is currently the case. The same of course applies for a 13 year old and the 18 year old. At the moment they are in the same developmental stage but they are also quite different physically and psychologically. Why are they not defined as two separate developmental stages?

One can really see the two stages of childhood and adolescence as one developmental stage. In both stages the young person is going through significant and rapid physical and psychological change. Whereas in adulthood this is not the case. Yes there is indeed physical and psychological change occurring in adulthood but it can be seen as much slower and less psychologically significant. Thus there is much more focus on the younger person as this is where more of the difficulties can occur if the development is not occurring as it should. Developmental psychology is about developmental change in the person so one could see the human life cycle in a different way. Divided up into phases where there is a lot of psychological change occurring and not.

In this model pre-adulthood (childhood and adolesence) is seen as a phase of significant physical and psychological development. Adulthood is a phase of much less significant physical and psychological development. At the end of life we have another developmental stage, Post-adulthood. One could say this stage begins in the late 50s or 60s. In this period there is significant physical change as the body again moves into such a phase of change. These changes can have significant consequences including major disability, deformity or death. These changes force the person into significant psychological change as they accept, or seek to deny, the consequences of such change and acceptance of their bodily changes. With the physical changes the person has to change their perception of them self and their interaction with others and the environment. Thus one could argue that this constitutes a significant level of psychological change and hence we have another period of the development cycle.

For instance the loss of sight, hearing, memory, physical abilities and many other conditions like Parkinson's disease all require the person to make a significant psychological readjustment about how they perceive them self, their identity and how they interact with the world. Of course with illness and accidents these can occur in the adulthood stage and also result in disability and or disfigurement. Again the person has to change their perception of self and the world like happens in the Post-adulthood stage.

This model is about periods of developmental change and periods of non significant change which seems to be the task for the developmental psychologist. In the beginning of life there is a period of significant physical and psychological change. To arbitrarily break this up seems to be a nonsense. This is followed by a period of about 30 to 40 years where there is much more consistency in ones physical and psychological state such that much less psychological development and change occurs. Finally in the last couple of decades of life one again goes into a state of significant physical change. It is postulated that this would then result in significant psychological change as the person reorients their identity and perception of self to correctly align with their physical self.

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