What good is insight? Part two. A cognitive insight is how we talk “about” the patient or how he talks “about” himself, as if he is an object we can observe and cognize about. Two observers talking about an object named “you.” This is not psychotherapy. This is the illness for which psychotherapy is supposed to be the cure! The patient already comes to us with lots of “insights” offered by parents, siblings, teachers, friends, and therapists. But these “insights” and habitual thoughts (known as defenses) drown out the patient’s inner being. These insights are not spoken from the patient’s inner being nor are they really spoken to us. They are spoken from the patient’s defenses. When the patient offers us cognitive insights, they become a substitute for genuine emotional contact. The patient offers a head to head relationship (what others offered by giving cognitive insights). When she offers these cognitive insights, she is not listening to her being. She is listening away from her being. When we offer these cognitive insights, we talk to her head not to her heart. Defenses are how the patient ignores her inner life. That’s why she cannot see into it. When she sees her defenses she feels guilt and grief over her failure to listen to her innermost potential. What does it mean to listen in such a way that true insight is possible? We hear with the ears. But we listen with our entire being. This is not just being receptive to the other person. It’s you being in touch with your being so as to be in touch with the patient’s inner life. As Buber pointed out in his book, I and Thou, when I speak to you, only by being in touch with the inner you do I enter into a relationship with my inner being---the eternal I. We listen not just to the patient’s words but who she is underneath the words, the being toward whom the words can only point. Can we hear the unspoken message? Can we bear it? Can we let that bodily, wordless message reverberate within us? Only then will it be possible for us to speak from within us to the patient. Can we allow our inner life to gather force within us until it gives birth to the next insight from within? Or will we offer a cognitive thought to abort the emotional birth that almost occurred within us? A true insight from a therapist is not a ready made thought found in a book. True insight occurs because we saw into ourselves. By bearing feelings within ourselves, the emotional truth of this moment rises, giving birth to a new insight from within you. An insight is an inner being to inner being communication, heart to heart, not head to head. Can we bear our own being long enough so that when we speak we are speaking our own being? A dialogue is not two heads talking, but two hearts feeling, you speaking from your being to the inner being of the patient who is underneath the words. ISTDP is not a talking cure. It is a listening cure. By listening to who we are underneath our words, we can speak from our inner being to the inner being of the patient. By blocking defenses consistently and asking for feelings, we invite the patient to listen to her inner being and rest in it, so that the emotional truth of this moment can rise within her. In this sense, ISTDP and Heidegger share a common belief: all psychopathology is due to the forgetfulness of one’s being. Why offer cognitive insights that already are drowning out the wordless cries of the inner being who longs to be heard?
Posted on: Tue, 21 Oct 2014 05:08:43 +0000
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