Foundations: The Ericksonian Legacy and Self-relations Psychotherapy

Step 6: Return to the Original Problem Sequence

Just as in any therapeutic approach at some point there must be a test of the quality of one's work, so too it happens in self-relations. If we have been successful in restoring the flow in the relational self, it should follow that a person would be able to move through the problem sequence without becoming symptomatic. This is what this step is all about. The variety of ways of undertaking to test the work cannot be overestimated. It could start in imaginal recreations of the problem sequence and then move to "in vivo" tests of the work. It could involve a variety of homework assignments, rituals, or other enactments that are designed to give a direct experience of moving through the problem sequence while staying a-symptomatic. The final step in the prototype of self-relations detailed in The Courage to Love involves these kinds of activities.

Step 7: Further Work

Specific tests of the quality of the work are built into the relational process of therapy. Decisions about how to set up such "tests" are an inevitable part of the style and strategies of different therapists and different client's presenting problems. Usually the work will involve attempts to hook clients up with practices or changes in life-style where they find themselves "living" the model and making it more and more an integral part of their life. For example, meditation, or twelve-step groups may turn out to be wonderful "laboratories" were clients can test themselves in living the basic premises of the model. Others may find their work, their marriage, the trials of parenting, or some specific physical or creative practice the laboratory where they play with the protocol on an ongoing basis. The important thing is to build bridges between therapy and life-world challenges where client's can awarely test their internalization of the model and grow in their understanding of its implications.

One final point needs to be made in considering "further work." It is important to note that self-relations is a "practice" model. As in any art-form, the more you practice and grow and show your "chops" in working the model, the more aware you become of the more subtle meanings underlying the model. In other words, the model takes on "flesh." It becomes something that has wider and wider applicability to life as a whole. A corollary to this observation is that any "practice" involves a committed dedication to a process of learning to fail "gracefully." We must resign ourselves that we will fail, "check out" and leave ourselves again and again. That cannot be helped. What we do have control over, and hopefully more and more so over time, is the ability to keep coming back to ourselves and to realize more and more the value of the relational self in enriching our life as a whole. As Rainer Maria Rilke aptly observed in the conclusion of "A Man Watching" (Tr., Robert Bly, in Bly, Hillman & Mead, 1992: 298-299):

Whoever was beaten by this Angel
(who often simply declined the fight)
went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneaded him as if to change his shape
Winning does not tempt that man..
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
By constantly greater beings.

Sponsorship and the Archetypal Self

Few of the core concepts of self-relations are more deeply rooted in the Erickson's thought and practice than sponsorship and the archetypal self. The idea that the unconscious is not a thing but rather a being (or state of being), originating from the Erickson legacy, was instrumental in shaping much of the thinking in self-relations about experiences and imaginal figures that arise in the context of work with the relational self. There are few concepts more suited to linking the somatic self and cognitive processes to vital and energetic currents flowing in the relational field than the notion of archetype. The self-relations practice of deep listening and dancing awarely with deep currents flowing in the self, also found in the Erickson legacy, became fertile soil for curiosity about how these archetypal energies may be named, blessed, and utilized in sponsoring generative processes and awakening a vital connection to the world.

Regarding sponsorship, Gilligan points out that each of us have been touched by many sponsors, some negative and some positive, throughout the course of our lives. As he points out (Gilligan, 2002: 296) "A positive sponsor is one who (1) helps awaken awareness of the goodness and gifts of self, (2) helps awaken awareness of the goodness and gifts of the world, and (3) helps develop practices and understandings that connect the two domains." A negative sponsor does just the opposite, i.e., turns awareness away from the goodness and gifts of the self and the world and ". . .promotes practices and traditions of neglect or abuse against self, others, and the world."

When we begin working with the archetypes, very quickly we see the myriad ways the somatic self, neglected self, and archetypal self are connected. In psychotherapeutic work we learn to artfully work across these distinct but interpenetrating manifestations of being. In so doing we are always dealing with at least two histories, the history of the personal self (i.e., the narrative of our own particular life) and a history of the species or collective life. Jung (1916/1971) showed how the latter is organized around universal themes, images, and instinctive ways of responding to life. These general patterns are integral to the textures and shape of our daily lives: for example, giving and receiving love, protecting life, healing and nurturing, and connecting to the life of the community. Each generation has to deal with specific challenges related to the above. Basic "instincts," response tendencies, psychic structures and human institutions spring up around these universal human needs and patterns of response. They lead to the development of psychological structures and images that are deeply imbedded in the human psyche. These are what Jung referred to as archetypes. As he observed (1916/1971:57):

Archetypes are typical modes of apprehension, and wherever we meet with uniform and regularly recurring modes of apprehension we are dealing with an archetype, no mater whether its mythological character is recognized or not. . . The collective unconscious consists of the sum of the instincts and their correlates, the archetypes. Just as everybody possesses instincts, so he also possesses a stock of archetypal images . . . The archetype (or primordial images). . . might suitably be described as the instinct's perception of itself.

Although it is difficult to specify exactly what Jung meant in describing an archetype as "the instinct's perception of itself," in self-relations archetypes are thought to be images and feelings that embody basic structures and their related energy states deeply embedded in the human psyche. These structures become particularly manifest in times of crisis or personal or social upheaval. In self-relations we are drawn to archetypes not so much as descriptions of basic psychic structures as we are to seeing them as universal processes or currents flowing in the psyche and relational field that are awakened during times of profound identity shifts in therapy.

Over the course of their development, a direct link between symptomatic experiences and the archetypes becomes more and more apparent. Symptoms point to ways the neglected self and archetypal self may be looked at relationally and how both are a part of the larger human experience. In a sense, then, an archetypal experience serves as a sort of sponsor for the person, awakening his or her awareness to a deeper field of relevance to what is experienced and invites a deeper awareness of the self as a relational process. The effect of such work is that clients are able to link the particularities of their situation to a larger context of meaning within which their suffering can become more interpretable. It allows them to see beyond the chaos and extreme suffering of the moment to a larger and more stable field of meaning and purpose holding their life. Seen in this way, archetypal work allows therapeutic relationships and outcomes to move from the realm of the "merely personal," or individual, to the realm of what the poet Galway Kinnell termed the "truly personal"—individual experience reflected back into community and tradition (Norris, 1966:10). In other words, as we deliberately evoke, name, and touch these deep archetypal currents in our psychotherapeutic work, we are opening the relational process vertically to the gods and the transpersonal world and horizontally to a soulful connection found in our common human experience.

One of the distinct practices that developed in self-relations residential workshops and training groups was learning to work with archetypal entities and energies. Four great archetypal traditions, that of the King/Queen, Warrior, Lover and Magician were of particular interest.¹⁰ Steve Gilligan devoted a great deal of time in training groups both in learning how to recognize these archetypes and their respective energy states in the relational field and how to channel them in our work as therapists. Both of these foci are extremely important. It is one thing to use the archetypes in an exercise or as a topic of discussion in therapy. It is quite another to experience them and they relate directly to a client's life. One of the central tasks in self-relations training is learning to talk explicitly with clients about the places where they will most directly experience the archetypal energies. In my experience such discussions are often necessary to bring the concept of archetype "home" and show its relevance in the immediacy of a client's life. Below are a few of the things I have recognized about these archetypal energies as they touch my life. I find have found in general that clients know immediately what we are talking about when we share this information directly with them. Such discussions make any experience or exercise therapists use to awaken these energies in therapy more immediately relevant and real in client's lives.

War and Boundaries / The Warrior

War is one of the great levelers in social life. In the face of war or natural disaster, the divisions of class, race, or circumstance tend to dissolve as people pull together against a common threat or enemy. Once the crisis is over, the same people will tend quickly to fall back into mutual separation, mistrust, and even hatred. The archetypal realm involved here is that of the Warrior. Powerful threats tend to pull people out of the mundane ordinariness of their lives and into contact with something they experience as greater than themselves. Driven by a great sense of urgency and necessity, people "lose" or "sacrifice" themselves to participate in a great historical drama. Paradoxically as they lose themselves in this drama, a deeper sense of connection to themselves, other people and history follows. People tend to look back on such times with a sense of nostalgia, longing, and regret, attempting to recapture the immediacy, vividness, and meaning of such experiences, even though they were filled with pain, sacrifice and personal suffering. These times give us a direct experience of the Warrior archetype and remind us that life still often requires that we channel this kind of archaic energy.¹¹

Love, Passion and Sexuality / The Lover

Like war, the experience of love and sexuality can connect us to a timeless and universal order of experience within which we "lose" ourselves and find ourselves connected to a greater realm of being. The boundaries separating us from others tend to dissolve and we become lost in a physical experience of exquisite sensitivity and mutuality. As the expression goes, "the earth moves." In this powerful juxtaposition of biological immediacy and mutuality, sensitivity, and intersubjectivity, we find the context where we are most likely to have direct contact with the archetype of the Lover. Love, like war, can transport us beyond the mundane into a greater, more universal, order of experience. This is why love and war are so often woven together, adding depth, drama and a sense of historical inevitability to many of the great love stories, myths, and dramas of history.¹² The archetype of love in clinical settings is more directly related to the impulse to protect, nurture, bless, and welcome someone into the life of the community. Lover energies are devoted to awakening a client's passion for life and their ability to connect with and nurture themselves and others.


Magic and Transformation / The Magician

People of very different backgrounds or life circumstances tend to forget themselves and respond in a very similar and distinct way when they meet a young infant or very young child. Children have the ability to draw people together who otherwise would feel distinct and quite separate. Why is this? Although we may not recognize it, under such circumstances we are under the influence of the archetype of the Magician. Infants and young children cast a particular kind of "spell" that makes us forget ourselves and connects us directly to experiences unmediated by language, custom, or fixed ideas. At first glance this would see to contradict everything we know about the Magician. The Magician, among other things, is the master of language. He or she uses words to cast spells, is able to collapse boundaries, shift shape, and move in and out of ordinary experience through the use of esoteric knowledge and magic. Yet, the infant, because he or she doesn't have language, enchants us by reminding us that there is a more immediate experienced reality that lies underneath and beyond language. Infants collapse boundaries and make us forget ourselves, just as war and lovemaking do, but though a very different mechanism. They cast a spell that pulls us out of ourselves and into the immediacy of experience—funny faces, funny noises, imitation, mirroring, communication without words, all of which remind us of our biological roots, and a simplicity and directness that connects past and the future in the immediacy of the present.

One other archetypal experience that connects us with the Magician's realm is knowledge of death. Death represents the obliteration of all boundaries, the ultimate loss of self. In the face of death we feel connected to something greater than ourselves to which we can only surrender. Here too, we encounter directly and singularly the power of a greater reality that lies beyond the immediacy of human experience, but to which all human experience points and culminates. The Magician embodies the fascination with a futile attempt to control this process and master the supernatural world.

Dominion and Blessing / King or Queen

One of the challenges of living in contemporary society is discovering and cultivating the kind of experiences that give us access to the realm of the King/Queen. We have been trained, particularly in the United States, to be suspicious of authority. Most traditional institutions and sources of identity within the community have lost a great deal of power and moral authority. Post-modern society has been called a "global village." One of the paradoxes of the age of communication and specialization is that we have very little understanding of or contact with many of the traditional institutional sources of authority, dominion, leadership and rule. Many writers, in commenting on the male experience, have discussed the lack of ritual, initiatory structures, and mentoring in post-modern society (Campbell, 1949; Moore & Gillette, 1990, Bly, 1990). Others have shown that women face similar challenges (Miller, 1976; Belinky, et. al., 1986; Bem, 1993; Pipher, 1994). It becomes increasingly difficult to find a distinct community into which each new generation is initiated. King and Queen energy has been supplanted by the expertise of specialized, bureaucratic knowledge. The archetypal process of blessing, mentoring, and initiation has been lost in the segmentation and separation of the generations and in the devaluation of the authority of age and experience. With the eclipse of the community, each new generation has more or less been left to fend for itself.

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¹⁰Important sources of background information on archetypes in Jung's thought and their relevance to self-relations can be found in Moore & Gillette, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine, 1990, in Pierson, The Hero Within: Six Archetypes we Live By, 1989; Pierson, Awakening the Hero Within: Twelve Archetypes to Help Us Find Ourselves and Transform our World., 1991; and Raff, Jung and the Alchemical Imagination, 2000.

¹¹I have been writing this chapter in the weeks leading up to Super Bowl XXXIX. Watching the frenetic excitement building in anticipation of this spectacle reminds me that in contemporary society, it is also in various sports Arenas where people—mostly men— witness and participate vicariously in the symbolism and energetic field of the Warrior. The intensity and drama that surrounds such events and the degree to which people become attached to the fate of their favorite team offers some perspective into the degree to which this archetype is still deeply ingrained in our psyches. The degree to which the more raw and primitive manifestations of this archetype found in war is present or sublimated in these events varies widely from sport to sport but is always present in some form to be witnessed and identified with.

¹²Few themes have been more compelling in adding depth and emotional weight to many the great movies that have won academy awards through the years. Think about it: "Gone with the Wind," "The English Patient," "Saving Private Ryan," "Hotel Rwanda" and a host of other movies are all based on these archetypes. Many of the great myths of antiquity obviously also embody and connect these archetypes.

*Robert D. Rossel, Ph.D. is a Life Coach/hypnotherapist practicing in Los Altos Hills, California. He is a long-time practitioner of self-relations psychotherapy and Ericksonian hypnotherapy. With an abiding interest in music, art, yoga, and other body-mind practices, Dr. Rossel is also a long-time practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism and has sought for many years to find ways to apply meditation and mindfulness in his psychotherapy practice. He may be reached at 10490 Albertsworth Lane, Los Altos Hills, CA 94024. Address all correspondence to his e-mail address: Rosselrob@aol.com.

We also thank Robert for his other articles, which we were happy to publish on our site:

Foundations:
The Ericksonian Legacy and Self-relations Psychotherapy
The Paradox of Surrender:
Finding Strength and Wisdom in the Struggle
The Expansion and Contraction of Being
Liminal Spaces and Transformation
Emptiness and the Relational-self
Our Clients, Our Teachers
Growing Up With Music
Things that Last
Mirror Work

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