Foundations: The Ericksonian Legacy and Self-relations Psychotherapy

Archetypes and their Shadows in Clinical Practice

Gilligan's model for working with the archetypes requires therapists to become adept at identifying the archetypal energy present in a symptom and then train clients in developing new more life affirming ways of understanding and expressing that archetypal energy. Warrior skills in therapy involve learning how to set boundaries, make commitments, skillfully disarm bullshit, cut through deception and fight for integrity. Magician skills cultivate the ability to persuade, reframe, play with boundaries, tell enchanting stories, and midwife difficult developmental transitions. The skills of the Lover are about dancing with heart energies—passion, support, deep empathy and love. The skills of the King/Queen are in the realm of giving blessing, sponsorship and welcoming self and others into a place where one's essential goodness is seen and respected.

Our access to and skill in channeling these energies are in various stages of development. If our access to an archetype is in a developed or mature form, its energy is available in a life-giving and life-affirming way. If our access is undeveloped or expressed in a shadow form, it can be harmful if not life-destroying. Just as the task of a self-relational therapist is to build experiential bridges between the neglected self and the cognitive self, transforming symptoms into solutions, so too the task is to help transform the shadow or undeveloped manifestations of the archetypes into more mature and integrated forms.

In working with Lover energies, the therapist's primary task is examining and deepening a client's passion and love for life. In working with Warrior energies, the guiding question has to do with what a person is fighting for and where their connection to boundaries needs to be reinforced. In working with Magician energies, the focus is on identity and what is dying and what need to be born, as well as unattended wounds that need to be healed. With the King/Queen energies, focus shifts to a person's perceived place in the world. It involves exploring and valuing the special gifts that essentially define their humanness. It is about blessing and welcoming those gifts—making it possible for a person to discover their unique place in the world.

The primary challenge in working with archetypes is helping clients see them as complementary qualities of the relational self. As Gilligan has pointed out (1997:171):

The client's inner responses guide the action, but the therapist is responsible for creating a therapeutic context where new meanings and possibilities arise. . . .In working with archetypes, we begin to see that they represent the complementary qualities of the relational self. The surrender and communion of the Lover blend with the agency of the Warrior to form the "agency-in-communion" of the relational self. The self-transformation of the Magician/Healer and the self-transcendence of the King/Queen form another self-relational expression. As Wilber (1995) remarked, these properties—agency, communion, dissolution, and transcendence—are central to any intelligent consciousness. None is superior, all are necessary. One therefore strives to find one's center in order to feel and integrate the shifting balance of these different energies.

Cultivating these balanced and fully integrated energies is very challenging. I can't emphasize enough the stress that was placed in self-relations residential workshops on learning how to do this. Each of us has favorites, ones that we naturally find relatively easy to channel as therapists or clients. Other archetypal energies are unnatural for us, sometimes to an extreme degree. These are the energies we need to practice. As we do this they become more available to us and more meaningful as a part of our lives. Then we need to practice balancing their use with those of archetypes we are more familiar with. This is another distinct level in the training. Finally, as therapists, we need to master the flexible use of archetypal experience and awareness in matching and joining in the dance of the symptom in our clients. This is a distinct skill that Erickson seemed to understand intuitively and becomes the heart of working with these energies in psychotherapy.¹³

To summarize, archetypes represent another core foundational link between self-relations and its roots in the Ericksonian legacy. Even though Erickson was not a Jungian, and, to my knowledge, did not speak directly about archetypes in his seminars or writings, his mind/body orientation and ability to dance with the subtle flow of energy states and images of the unconscious shows a finely tuned awareness of their presence. More important, his orientation laid the foundation for a much more fluid and energetic perception of the archetype, that later could be fully developed and applied directly to clinical practice in self-relations. Reifying or "literalizing" the archetypal figures has the potential of shutting down what best needs to be considered an open-ended and dynamic process. Archetypes connect the utterly personal with the sublimely and "awe-ful" universal. They are universal images that need to be reflected upon and sensed with a body-awareness and never treated as things-in-themselves. This is not to say that they aren't "real" and have no relevance to our daily lives. Rather, it is to say that archetypal awareness connects the particularity of our everyday lives to universal experiences and challenges in living that connect us deeply to all other historical times, all other peoples, and all other cultures. As such archetypal experience and awareness is vitally important in giving us a sense of depth in life and in overcoming all the artificial divisions that freeze our process and prevent us from being open to many new possibilities of being.

Creating a Ritual Space for Therapy and Healing

A final foundational link between Erickson and Self-relations involves the use of therapeutic rituals and the creation of a "ritual space" for healing in clinical settings. Again we see Erickson's seminal influence in the background. His influence here is more indirect but, nonetheless, essential. Erickson's unorthodox use of ordeals, rituals and behavioral tasks has been a subject of enormous interest among many of his students and, as pointed out above, highly influential in shaping many distinct approaches and schools of thought in contemporary psychotherapy.¹⁴ His particular practices have undergone an important transition in the hands of his students as they sought to bring his unique approach more in line with their own particular tastes, the changing cultural context, and evolving notions of the ethics of clinical practice. There have been a wide variety of different interpretations and applications of this part of Erickson's legacy. Steve Gilligan went through his own process of change in thinking about and refining the use of homework and rituals as he sought to differentiate his approach from that of his teacher (Cf., Gilligan, 1997: 177-195). The first was to address the critical ideas of power, manipulation and deception that had become such an important part of the Ericksonian legacy. One central question that guided the evolution of Gilligan's thought, and ultimately his break from certain aspects of his teacher's work, was this: "Is the power of love greater than or equal to the love of power?" A second related question was: "Is 'love as a skill' relevant to doing therapy?" (Cf. Gilligan, 2002:235). These two questions, along with the question of identity discussed above, became the guiding principles in the development of self-relations psychotherapy. His answer was as follows:

I believe the answer is yes to each of these questions. Once we move beyond our immature and rigid understanding of love as a state that 'happens to you' under favorable circumstances, we can appreciate it as a cultivated skill and force available under the most adverse circumstances (see Fromm, 1956). We see examples of this in the work of Gandhi, King, Christ, and others. I think we saw it also in the work of Erickson. Love as a skill has many aspects, including opening, understanding from the heart, grounding, receiving, compassion (suffering with), protecting, being with, blessing, noticing growth, commitment, warning, flexibility, and so forth. I think therapy involves a great deal of love. And that it is unfortunate that we talk so little of it.

Gilligan's question about love inevitably led him to create more sacred or spiritual contexts in thinking how Erickson's outrageous practices might be transformed as they were extended and applied in self-relations. It also moved him to write his first book on self-relations, (Gilligan,1997). It is interesting that Gilligan was encouraged by Erickson's example to move from a place of trying to dictate and control life, to learning how to cooperate with it. At the same time a similar impulse moved him to differentiate his approach from that of his teacher in certain ways. We see a growing ambivalence in the evolution of Gilligan's relationship to Erickson and this legacy. He felt both tremendous love emanating in Erickson's work and that there were certain "flaws" in Erickson's way of doing therapy, suggesting a need to think about it in terms of love, rather than power or manipulation.

The self-relations residentials and the communities that sprang up around them were a major impetus for this transformation. They became laboratories for exploring the basic premises that embodied "love as a skill." They were vital communities within which the practice of love took on flesh and in very palpable ways transformed the lives of participants. In thinking about healing more and more of us wondered if psychotherapy might be considered some sort of spiritual path, though clearly not a religion, that radicalized how we thought about psychotherapy as a healing practice. As one of my colleagues, Dvorah Simon, has observed: (Gilligan & Simon, 2004: 45):

Obviously, "spirituality" means many things to many people. For now, let's say that "spirituality" is an approach to meaning-making and life which looks beyond physical, objectifiable appearances to a felt sense and/or belief-based frame of "something more." What the "more" is varies from one tradition to another but often includes concepts of energies and forces unseen, a soul that transcends and survives the body, and an intelligence and intentionality to the universe. Spiritual work is the set of practices one uses to increase one's awareness of spiritual reality and its place in one's life. Spiritual reality, in such a frame, is seen as a truer marker of the purpose and intrinsic worth of an individual, trumping the more common and consensual identifications as job, social roles, personal skills, or status.

As the focus of self-relations shifted more and more to the central question of identity, it inevitably also found its focus shifting to "ultimate concerns" and questions of meaning. It is thus easy to see why questions of spirituality and the spiritual path came more to the fore. Simon goes on to point out that psychotherapy might be thought to be "a transforming ritual space, in which trauma is treated as a 'terrible gift of awakening' Gilligan, 1997), provided, of course, that the therapist is not blocked in her own spirituality. Or, for that matter, trained to not attend to it." I believe that self-relations workshops tended to be crucibles within which many of us began to question many of our presuppositions and beliefs about spirituality and spiritual paths as they related to psychotherapy. I know this was certainly true in my case. Many of my doubts and reservations about such things, my earlier religious beliefs so thoroughly drummed out of me in my "scientific" training in psychology and sociology, began to be thrown into a state of radical uncertainty. My doubts about my doubts served as the ultimate form of confusion technique, propelling me into a re-awakening of a very deep spiritual longing, very much present in my early life, but which I had lost over the years.¹⁵ This, in turn, awakened my curiosity about Buddhism and how it might be incorporated into my life and my psychotherapy practice. Similar "awakenings" were taking place in many other participants in self-relations workshops as we sought to come to terms with the radically transforming impact of the experiences we were having on our identities and lives.

In saying this it also needs to be emphatically stressed that it is not essential that psychotherapy be seen in this way, or that "spiritual frames" or assumptions ever be imposed on clients in working with their suffering. That would simply be replacing one kind of "fundamentalism" with another. Rather, self-relations tends to open awareness to the kinds of concerns (presence, the "field," the larger mind, deep questioning about meaning and identity) that are typical of traditions and practices far older than psychotherapy. At the same time, the same interests and concerns are quite compatible with many of the more recent understandings about religion and spirituality emanating from "new science" and scientifically based cosmology (Cf., Wilber, 1996, 1998a, 1998b).¹⁶ This is another example of a wonderful "both/and" solution. As one becomes more aware of the implications of the new discoveries of contemporary science in understanding the human condition, "spiritually based" psychotherapy will inevitably become more and more the rule rather than the exception.

In addition to creating groups that radicalized our assumptions about spirituality and healing in psychotherapy, Gilligan had a specific interest in creating therapeutic rituals and healing ceremonies to sponsor passages into new identities in his clients. He has described some of the basic properties of therapeutic rituals in The Courage to Love.¹⁷ They are laid out in great detail in his book so I will not review them in detail here. It must be clear that the ritual would connect a specific complaint to an emotional trauma or developmental challenge. It also should be clear how a ritual would frame the symptom as an incomplete or unsuccessful attempt to change one's identity. And finally it must be clear how the ritual would serve as a liminal event or rite of passage into a new identity. If a client is receptive and the therapist is clear that a ritual is appropriate, then a careful mult-week process is mapped out for planning and enacting the ritual. When the entire sequence is completed, care must be exercised to reintegrate the client back into his or her life, exploring various implications of his or her new resources and new identity in finding new life-direction and purpose.¹⁸

For our purposes it is important to note that the use of therapeutic rituals must connect the symptom to specific traumatic events in a client's life in an experiential way. This is the only way a ritual can become an experiential bridge into a new identity. Without experiential grounding such events are wholly inadequate and leave the communication only at a cognitive level. The use of language and symbols in the enactment of rituals must relate directly to the embodied awareness of the somatic self, just as before we noted that symptoms and hypnotic phenomena must do. Gilligan (1997:193) points out that it is exactly those cases where cognitive understanding is of little or no value that rituals may be especially indicated. Therefore, therapeutic rituals often flow quite naturally and seamlessly out of a period of clinical work where hypnotic experiences and language have been explored extensively and a client has come to appreciate the flow of more embodied forms of awareness.

Summary

In this article we have explored some of the foundational roots of self-relations in the thought and life of Milton H. Erickson We have seen how several of the core concepts and practices of self-relations are deeply rooted in Erickson's influence on Stephen Gilligan and, in turn, how Steve deepened and extended this legacy in presenting many of Erickson's ideas and practices in self-relations residential workshops. These groups increasingly became laboratories for testing out many innovative ideas and techniques that both built on and transformed the foundational concepts found in Erickson's approach. This process not only sharpened Gilligan's ideas, placing them in vibrant and evolving relational fields co-created with his students, it also served as a crucible for the development and transformation of the lives and practices of his students. Each of his students in their own way attempted to come to terms with this legacy through their relationship with their mentor, Steve Gilligan. In so doing they went through a parallel process of internalization and differentiation that Gilligan went through with his teacher. These groups became a sort of sacred or ritual space within which the core ideas and practices of self-relations could be learned and experientially deepened in communities devoted to internalizing and making them more relevant to clinical practice. It is indeed fortunate that the Internet came into existence over this time period. The development of the Internet and the self-relations List became a unique communicational link between these communities and Steve Gilligan and served as an important vehicle for his students to share their experience and take collective "ownership" of self-relations. I hope this article has provided a useful description of the roots of self-relations in Milton H. Erickson's life and seminal ideas and also hinted at the direction many of Gilligan's students are taking the growing legacy they are discovering in their teacher's remarkable life, ideas and presence.

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¹³In The Courage to Love, 1997: 172-173) Gilligan tells a wonderful story of Erickson working with a client, a fifty year old woman who he said looked a bit like June Cleaver, with neatly coifed hair, pearls, and a frozen charming smile. She brought Erickson a beautifully wrapped gift and placed it on his desk with a "sweet declaration of profound gratitude for all he had done for [her]." Erickson looked at her with grave intensity and pushed the gift across his desk, saying, quite simply and directly, "I won't accept it." Gilligan was surprised at this because he had seen Erickson accepts small gifts from clients and students on many other occasions. The woman's smile grew wider and she again tried to offer the gift and again Erickson refused it. Finally, after several passes and refusals, Erickson pushed the gift in his client's lap, leaving her in shock and confusion. At that point Gilligan saw a subtle shift in Erickson's demeanor and language as he began asking if she cooked various types of food—Greek, Ethiopian, Thai, etc. When she said that she did not, Erickson cheerfully pointed out that his daughter Betty Alice did and how much he enjoyed her cooking. Finally, with tears welling in her eyes as she slumped into sadness, Erickson moved into his Lover-Magician persona, asking her softly what her favorite comic strip was, arousing her curiosity as he disrupted her withdrawal into depression. At this point they began to talk and things got more "real" between them. Gilligan said that it took years for him to understand what Erickson was doing in this interview. He pointed out that later he realized that that woman was presenting what could be called "a smiling depression." Erickson saw that her gift was a kind of "Trojan horse" and the violation of boundaries an invitation for a special more familiar, hence, less impactful relationship. Erickson responded with the boundary commitment of the Warrior, then shifted into the Magician's pattern disruption and then finally into the more soothing healing persona of the Lover-Magician. This remarkable facility to shift smoothly from one archetypal presence to another, in Gilligan's view, was one of Erickson's greatest skills.

¹⁴One has to only turn to one of the many books describing Erickson's behavioral tasks, ordeals, and homework assignments (Cf., Erickson & Rossi, 1979, 1981, 1989; Haley, 1973, 1984, 1985a, b & c; O'Hanlon & Hexum, 1990; Rossi, 1980a, b, c & d; Rossi, Ryan, & Sharp, 1983; Rossi & Ryan, 1985, 1986) to see how creative Erickson was at creating contexts for enactment of rituals and to get a sense of how central ritual and special enactments were in his work. Gilligan was not as interested in building on this specific aspect of the legacy as he was in moving from a place of trying to dictate and control life to learning how to cooperate with it though the creation of relational fields that honored life and made room for problem saturated experience to dissolve on its own.

¹⁵See Rossel (1987) for a description of the conflictual relationship I had with things "spiritual" throughout my life.

¹⁶The list of contemporary attempts to synthesize scientific and spiritual understanding of the human condition of which Wilber is perhaps the most important exemplar, is very long and quite varied. In my view books in this tradition are among the most exciting and useful developments on the contemporary scene and will do more than anything to put psychology and psychotherapy on a new foundation where the assumptions of "positivistic" psychology which are so basic to medical-model psychotherapy will be thoroughly discredited.

¹⁷As such he is following in a tradition mapped out not only by Erickson, but also by several other therapists (Cf., van der Hart, 1983, Turner, 1969, 1982; Campbell, 1984, Haley, 1984, Imber-Black, Roberts, and Whiting, 1989, Madanes, 1990, and Palazzoli, Boscolo, Cecchin, and Prata, 1978).

¹⁸Chapter 8 in The Courage to Love contains a moving and fairly detailed description of Gilligan's use of a therapeutic ritual with one of his clients, "Joseph." I recommend that the reader turn to that chapter and case description for a more detailed understanding of the use of therapeutic rituals in self-relations.

*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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