Leading up to some aspects of the human predicament…
Many times, I’ve asked someone, “what would it be like for you inside / what would it mean / what would happen…if ______?”. The first response is often an externally oriented fact, a plan of action to neutralize or deal with the ‘if’, or some statement or solution that ‘makes [rational] sense’.
I never reject that and actively appreciate the response, but I help a little at that point by gently pointing back to my actual question. Feelings. Meaning. Fears (Wishes, too). Not pure rationality. Plans, facts, reasoning are part of what we do in therapy, but those often won’t help until inner experience is consciously understood. And inner experience is often not fully rational.
Again, a person in therapy doing their best is doing their best. I admire it and never critique those who are brave enough to seek help. Instead, the practical or take-care-of-it answers make for a great start. That is, what makes rational sense to most people is relevant but in therapy it is mainly a signpost for where else to look. Weird, right? An arrow-shaped signpost that points and has a smiley face of it but also says, “NOT that way.”
So, Therapy is Irrational??
It’s a guided approach to understanding our irrational realms (emotions, feelings, desires, fears, as they occur in your general and specific existential and social context). To guide it well, therapists must be able to access and understand—even temporarily identify with—both your rational and irrational processes.
Except for extremely practical problems, the keys to relief and growth are rarely found in the rational alone. Better therapy absorbs, understands, and then (when it is time) consciously interprets problem-linked processes that are made up of strange-seeming combinations of the rational and irrational.
Some Ways to Recognize (and Use) Irrational Psychological Processes
I am going to present this part simply as a collection of mental tools (and because it might be interesting). I do not purport to have a complete definitional and experiential hold on ‘the irrational’ like a statistician or mathematician. For our purpose, I find psychoanalytic ideas on dreams, the unconscious, and thinking useful. In dreams, the relative mixture of rational and irrational processes (usually) tips more strongly to the irrational side. I often call the parts ‘dream logic’ and ‘waking logic’.
I made up an example to help in some of my sessions:
In waking logic, “I feed my cat at 6:00.” This means feed him, pet him, and watch him eat a little bit, with each minute it takes equaling each other minute and moving in a sequence. It does not go any other way.
In dream logic, this could turn into my cat and I having dinner together, feeding each other with spoons, and conversing verbally for hours, with the clock showing 6:00 the entire time. (In this dream logic, we could translate differently and, a bit darkly, consider that the phrase “I feed my cat at 6:00” could mean, in dream logic, that my cat is literally eating me!)
There are a couple elements here. First, taking my cue from psychoanalyst Matte-Blanco, we are talking about differences in relative symmetry versus relative asymmetry. In the example above, my cat in a dream can suddenly do human things. He and I have become more symmetrical to one another. That is a major feature of dream (unconscious mind) logic.
On a related front, time does not work the same way in dreams as it does in waking logic. Time is much more malleable and variable in dreams. If we think of human time as a series of measured intervals in sequence, we might intuit how symmetry is at work in dreams regarding distortion of time, too.
While it is also related to the symmetry idea, the little bit I added about ‘I feed my cat’ meaning that my cat is using me for food is from discussions about the surface level meaning of phrases, as contrasted to their multiple latent meanings (see Bandler & Grinder, this is related to hypnotic ideas).
One way to approach layers of meaning is by noting the context surrounding verbal content or actions. Sometimes context helps us get more specific and sometimes it opens up multiple possibilities of meaning. Discriminating vs. generalizing, from a behaviorist standpoint…
Irrational processes (dream logics) are also present, but muted or reduced, when we are awake.
They are actually very helpful with expansion, association, and creativity…until they get soaked with alarm emotions that are linked to survival concerns. Then, from behind the curtain, irrational processes / dream logics run the show in a way that is inefficient, anti-growth, or even harmful, and that, if we realized what was going on, we would want to change!
To cut to the chase here, I’ll give another quick example.
Equations made of waking and dream logic ‘terms’ can outline a patient / client’s problem.
Sometimes I might intervene by hypothesizing and summarizing the current state of things for a given patient, as “_____ EQUALS _____ .” That can be a very effective and clear way to present the current situation of a psyche.
For example, what would happen if a given patient has had negative experiences (or a lack of needed experiences) that led them to develop the unconscious equation:
Emotional closeness = Danger
Or
(Emotional closeness) + (A perceived or actual rival) = Danger of Loss
Or
(Emotional closeness) + (I am insufficiently lovable) + (A perceived or actual rival who seems perfectly lovable) = Danger of Loss
Notice that the equation gains nuance. Often this is how things work out across therapy sessions; we pinpoint the so-called equation better and better.
But in a simple, quick and dirty way, the first equation is very accessible, not too wordy, and emotionally powerful. So, sometimes we go in the other direction: we may have discovered a very nuanced set of terms in relation to a feared or wished-for result, but we need to say it simpler.
Also note the ‘absolute’ quality to such equations. That is why we unconsciously cling to them. That is, even if the result is unhappy, it feels known, predictable, certain. That is a form of ‘perceptual control’ (see Marken & Casey, more, on perceptual control theory). The feeling given by a perception of total control helps ease even deeper anxieties about the unknown and uncertain.
As should be apparent, the processes outlined above are irrational in structure and based on, not rational logic, but emotion.
The Wish for Everything to Become Mechanized and Controlled
David Bowie: “I don’t want knowledge. I want certainty!” (in fairness, this is yelled by a ‘character’ on one of his concept albums)
Unfortunately, more than ever, humans seem to want to become rational logic machines, defer to any such machines, or somehow think that doing so will be the solution to the world’s problems. I think there may even be an unconscious fantasy that, if we could be machines (or already are and just need to hack ourselves), we would be immune from upset and conflict (also, death).
This perspective thinks that more information and statistical prediction is the answer. Now, if only we could all just agree completely about what all that data means. And if only we could remove individualized self-interest from the equation. Then, all would be right with the world.
Good luck. We are also irrational, dreaming-while-asleep-and-when-awake creatures bent on survival needs—and we also have individual desires that, through competitive and altruistic processes, begin to feel like survival needs.
The urge to distinguish ourselves is in tension with an urge for belonging, sharing, and community
The more we deny and ignore that tension state, the greater the possibility any unhealthy or dangerous parts of our nature could take over. But we do quite a lot to hide this tension state. People even get angry or scared when you reveal it suddenly and without warning or protections (see mimetic theory and the reaction of many to it…) Still, the irrational and hidden parts of our nature are what must be understood, accepted, and negotiated for this life to work better for everyone.
Certainly, irrationality and imagination are good. Indeed, I might say they are critical to human life, leading to creativity, imagination, potential, ‘the possible’. But with no intervention, with a low or damaged ability to become aware of those processes, with no self-investigation or conscious understanding of them, irrationality is often marked by distortion and a cause of misdirection.
There is more to say as we get into the human predicament (as I see it for the purpose of therapy), but that’s enough for now!
(Images by alexas_fotos on Pixabay (cat) and vectorstock (arrows))