I have just completed a short article for Arvind
Radhakrishnan for ‘The Bangalore Review’. He hopes it will appear in March. The
title is Psychotherapy and Counselling: Pseudo-Science or Pseudo-Myth? and I take up some of the themes of my Indian
lectures, in particular how
psychology takes its understanding from its conception of psyche, especially in
the relationship between mind and body. Drawing on the writings of Ludwig
Wittgenstein I argue that it is more fruitful to see psychology as means of
‘seeing the foundation of possible buildings’ rather than appealing to the
pseudo-objectivity of science. However the greatest pleasure in writing it for
me was to return to the writings of Rabindranath Tagore. In the first article I
wrote for an Indian publication (IIC) almost twenty years ago I concluded with
the Nobel laureate’s words. Returning to his last lectures for this article I
was struck once again by how pertinent and prescient his comments written in
1941, at the age of eighty, are. I am posting the final paragraphs of the
latest article here and conclude with one of my favourite verses from Tagore’s ‘Gitanjali’.
I hope you enjoy them.
Love
Peter
‘In this respect Wittgenstein saw the value of
Freud’s contribution to our understanding of the mind being not the
observations of a pseudo-scientist but of someone who ‘changes the perspective’
of their interlocutor:
When a dream is interpreted we might say that it
is fitted into a context in which it ceases to be puzzling. In a sense the
dreamer re-dreams his dream in surroundings such that its aspect changes…
In considering what a dream is, it is important to
consider what happens to it, the way its aspect changes when it is brought into
relation with other things remembered, for instance. (LC: 45-46)
Following this thought-way, a key point I would like to conclude this
short article is that we should view the practice of spiritual direction,
counselling and therapy as unlike other modes of healing, in particular,
scientific based modes. There is a tendency today to relate counselling to
scientific and observable, quantifiable and empirical ‘outcomes’. As Robert
Johnson says:
When people enter therapy today with (a hunger for
the divine) many healthcare professionals try to talk them out of their
experiences; too many mainstream therapists pathologise the client’s dreams and
visions and make every attempt to get this neurotic individual back into the
humdrum world of so-called ‘normality’. (Johnson 1996:13)
I would argue such a position is doomed to failure as therapy and
counselling are themselves modes of operation other than and in many ways alien
to the operations of the dividing and cutting cognitive mind. They are more at
home in the unheimlich – that which
is ‘not at home’ – that which is ushered in by the strange and inexplicable
phenomena from the ‘meadows of the underworld’. In this respect, I would argue,
the successful therapist or spiritual director is closer to that of the artist
and poet than to the scientist or analytical investigator. Freud, and Jung
understood this despite Freud’s attempts to put his nascent discipline on a
more ‘objective’ and ‘scientific’ footing. This seems to have wrong-footed
later commentators. With the benefit of hindsight we could conclude by saying
that counselling and psychotherapy owe more to the realm of myth-making than
scientific observation and how we understand that will depend on our view of
the value of mythos in a world increasingly
obsessed by the emergent dominance of the logos.
As the West seeks to recover mythos through the arts of psychotherapy and counselling my own
hope would be that India, with her rich traditions of mythos, will be able to preserve this perspective for future
generations. Twenty years ago I concluded an article for an Indian journal with
the words of the Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore. In one of his last
articles, written in 1941 and called ‘Crisis in Civilisation’ he wrote:
The spectre of a new barbarity strides over
Europe, teeth bare and claws unconcealed in an orgy of terror… the spirit of
violence dormant perhaps in the psychology of the West has roused itself and is
ready to desecrate the spirit of Man. (Tagore 1961:358)
As I return to Bangalore and see the spirit of innovation, industry and
enterprise fill the city I am delighted for the prosperity it will bring my
friends here. However, like Tagore, I fear the ‘spirit of violence’ dormant in
the calculative role of the logos. Mythos and logos both are needed for the true development of the human spirit.
Tagore’s final hope was that ‘a new dawn will come from this horizon, from the
East where the sun rises’ (Tagore 1961:359). As India integrates the insights
of Western psychology with its own mythic systems my own hope would be that
Indian intellectual life will preserve both mythos
and logos in the future psychological
paths it undertakes.’
Have you not heard his silent steps? He comes, comes, ever comes.
Every moment and every age, every day and every night he comes, comes, ever comes.
Many a song have I sung in many a mood of mind, but all their notes have always proclaimed, `He comes, comes, ever comes.'
In the fragrant days of sunny April through the forest path he comes, comes, ever comes.
In the rainy gloom of July nights on the thundering chariot of clouds he comes, comes, ever comes.
In sorrow after sorrow it is his steps that press upon my heart, and it is the golden touch of his feet that makes my joy to shine.
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