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Therapy Isn’t Rocket (or Computer) Science—It’s ‘Simple but Not Easy’ part V

A second segment about our human predicament:

To review from part IV, needs are innate. Desires are learned, not created in the usual sense. Machines, however, do not have life-and-death needs, and especially not desires, and will not deeply and truly understand (relate to) them. That is, machines cannot innately understand a creature whose needs relate to life and death. It will not be able to relate to a creature whose drive to desire is tied to true needs.

Part of what is unconscious is anxieties and blame schemes (including self-blame) about whether our needs and desires are met. That can have to do with whether they are already met and jealously maintained, or not met and longed for or envied. Wrapped up in there are unconscious concerns about mental and physical life and death, including attachment. And,

“Needs and desires are brought into psychological and social reality by way of imitation, identification, and (influenced) imagination.” (I quote my previous post)

Now. What to imagine, identify with, imitate?

That comes from the organic ‘tech’ of influence that our brains are innately wired to transmit and receive. For a more upbeat and psychotherapeutic update of the related mimetic theory (Girard), read Intimate Domain (Reineke). Or search online for Rebecca Adams’s expansions on ‘positive mimesis’. An interesting read on influence and desire from the mimetic perspective is The Puppet of Desire by Oughoulian.

The felt importance of needs and desires is signaled by emotions (love, anger, hatred, fear, anxiety, and their varied combinations) and feelings (joy and pain). (Thank you, Smith, 1990 for a conceptually useful distinction between emotions and feelings; see his Mammalian Behavior.)

When all one has is one’s subjective ‘experience thus far’ and no one helps illuminate and process emotions, feelings, and the material they signal (needs and desires), those things become hard to face, manage, and navigate.

What happens when emotions, feelings, needs, desires, are hard to face, manage, and navigate?

Defenses kick in and we need some additional support, input, and help to search with a better map and flashlight. Another person (especially a trained one) is often the best source! Sounds simple, right?

Well, we are often afraid to depend on anyone or anything. So, we get into what I might call lonely self-management choices. Lonely self-management choices include various ‘pain avoidance’ routines and various ‘satisfaction chasing’ routines. But they are only band-aids that eventually chafe and make wounds worse. (Compare such routines to support, understanding, rethinking, and retrying with a living person who can identify with you, even if they can never identify perfectly.)

More to come, soon. P.S.…if that other person can identify with you—but not perfectlythat is paradoxically part of the cure, and part of what (hopefully) will keep the best psychotherapies fully human. How’s that for a cliffhanger?

 

Image: Andreas Rasmussen, Unsplash



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