Contents
I received great satisfaction when I wrote this work, but even now I adhere to the same views.
I think one of the reasons I liked it is that I wrote it exclusively for myself. I didn’t think about publishing it or using it for any other purpose. I wrote it only to clarify my growing perplexity and the contradictions that exist within me.
Looking back, I can understand the origin of this contradiction. There was a contradiction between the logical positivism in which I was educated and which I greatly respected, and the subjectively oriented existential thinking that nestled in me, which seemed to me to fit well with my experience in psychotherapy.
I am not a scientist in the field of existential philosophy. I first became acquainted with the work of Søren Kierkegaard and Martin Buber at the urging of some theologians who worked with me in Chicago. They were sure that the thinking of these two people would seem congenial to me, and in this they were largely right. Although there is much in Kierkegaard that does not resonate with me at all, some of his deeply penetrating convictions perfectly express my views, which, however, I could not formulate. Although Kierkegaard lived a good hundred years ago, I cannot but regard him as a lightly wounded and deeply receptive friend. I think this job shows that I owe him. I am mainly indebted to him for the fact that after reading his works I was freed and wanted to trust my own experience more and express it more fully.
It also helped that I was writing this work away from my colleagues, spending the winter in Taxco. I wrote most of it there. A year later, on the Caribbean island of Grenada, I completed the article, finishing the last section of it.
Like several other works in this volume, I have reproduced it for my colleagues and students. A few years later I was asked to submit it for publication, and to my surprise it was accepted by the American Psychologist. I have included this work here because I feel it best expresses the context in which I see psychotherapy research; the article also clarifies the reason for my «double life», subjective and objective.
Introduction
This work reflects my personal views, which I expressed primarily to myself in order to clarify the problem that puzzled me. For others, it will be interesting only to the extent that this problem exists for them. Therefore, in the introduction, I will describe how this article came about.
As I gained experience as a therapist, continuing the exciting and rewarding pursuit of psychotherapy, and working as a scientific researcher to find the objective essence of psychotherapy, I became more and more aware of the deep divergence between these two roles. The better I became as a therapist (and I guess I was), the more I became aware of my complete subjectivity, in those cases where I was best suited for this role. And as I became more experienced as a researcher, knowledgeable and focused on solving scientific problems (and I suppose I was), I became increasingly uncomfortable with the contrast between the strict objectivity of me as a scientist and the almost mystical subjectivity of me as a therapist. This work arose as a result of understanding this conflict.
The first thing I did was to allow myself to be a therapist and to best sum up the essence of the nature of psychotherapy, which many clients shared with me. I would highlight the fact that this is a very loose description reflecting my personal views. If it had been written by another person, or even by me, two years ago, it would have been different from the present in some respects. Then I took the position of a scientist — a stubborn seeker of objective facts in this area of psychology — and tried to outline the meaning that psychotherapy has for science. After which I had a discussion that arose within me, raising legitimate questions relating to these two different points of view.
When I got this far, I found that I only exacerbated the contradictions. These two points of view seemed more incompatible to me than ever. I discussed this material at a seminar with students and teachers of the faculty, and their comments helped me a lot. For the next year, I continued to think about this problem, until I felt the union of these two points of view arise in me. More than a year had passed since the writing of the first sections, when I made an attempt to put into words their probable and perhaps temporary unification.
Thus, the reader who wishes to follow my struggle in this matter will find that, quite unconsciously, it has taken the form of a drama, with all the characters of this drama being in myself: The First Protagonist Comedy — Ed.), Second Protagonist, Controversy and, finally, Decision. Let me, without further ado, introduce the First Protagonist, the therapist me, who has done my best to portray what is probably the experience of psychotherapy.
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The essence of psychotherapy in terms of experience ===
I enter into a relationship with a person with a hypothesis or belief that my liking, my trust and my understanding of the other’s inner world will lead to the essential process of his becoming. I enter into relationships not as a scientist, not as a doctor who can correctly diagnose and treat, but as a person entering into a relationship with another person. The more I consider the client only as an object, the more he will tend to become only an object.
I myself take risks, because when the relationship becomes deeper, failure is possible, the client returns to its previous state, rejection of me and the relationship with me — after that I feel that I can lose myself or some part of myself. At times this risk is very real and keenly felt.
I give myself the opportunity to enter into direct relationships, for which not just my consciousness is responsible, but my whole organism, receptive to these relationships. When I am approached, I respond without having planned and analyzed everything consciously, but simply, without hesitation, I react to another individual, and my reaction is based on a general organismic sensitivity to this person without the participation of consciousness. I exist in relationships on this basis.
It seems to me that the essence of some of the deepest foundations of psychotherapy lies in the fullness of experience. The client is able to freely experience his feeling in all its strength and originality, without intellectual inhibition and precautions, without being bound by knowledge of conflicting feelings. I am also able to feel with equal freedom my understanding of that feeling, without any conscious thought of it, without any apprehension or concern about where the feeling will lead, without any diagnostic or analytical deliberation, without any cognitive or emotional barriers to fully allowing that feeling into understanding. When this integrity, sincerity, fullness of experience in a relationship takes place, it acquires an “otherworldly” quality that many therapists have mentioned — a kind of trance appears in the relationship, from which both — the client and I — come out at the end of an hour of psychotherapy as from a deep well or tunnel. In all these moments, there is, in Buber’s words, a «genuine I-Thou relationship», a limitless existence in the experience of the experience that arises between the client and me. This experience is the exact opposite of seeing the client as an object of observation and change. This is the peak of personal subjectivity.
I often think that I don’t know where this direct relationship is leading. It is as if both of us—myself and the client—without fear allow ourselves to slip into the stream of becoming, the stream of process that carries us forward. The fact that the therapist has previously allowed himself to swim in this stream of life experience and found it worthwhile makes him more fearless to take the plunge each time. It is my confidence that makes it easier for the client to enter the flow on his part, even if it is for a short time. Often it seems as if this stream of experiences leads to some goal. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that the reward is the process itself, and the main reward is that it later enables both the client and myself to independently allow myself to enter into the process of becoming.
As for the client, as psychotherapy progresses, he dares to become himself, in spite of all the terrible things that he is sure will happen to him if he allows himself to do so. What does this becoming «oneself» mean? It seems to me that this means — to experience less fear of the organismic, non-reflexive reactions that a person has; the gradual growth of faith and even attachment to the complex, varied and rich feelings and aspirations that exist in him on an organic or organismic level. Consciousness, instead of being the guardian of a dangerous unpredictable mass of impulses from which only a few can be allowed to see the light, becomes a comfortable tenant in the midst of a diverse society of impulses, feelings and thoughts, which, it turns out, can perfectly self-govern when there is no vigilant and fearful taskmaster.
Involved in this process of becoming oneself is a profound experience of personal choice. A person realizes that he can either continue to hide behind a facade, or risk being himself; that he is a free agent, in whose power both to destroy himself or the other, and to make himself and the other stronger. Faced with this exposed reality of choice, he chooses the movement that leads him to become himself.
But being yourself doesn’t solve problems. It simply opens up a new way of being, in which there is more depth and strength in the experiences of the senses, more breadth and variety. The person feels more unique and hence more alone, but much more authentic, as his relationships with others lose their artificiality, become deeper, more satisfying and bring out the essence of the other person.
This process and this relationship can also be viewed in a different way as the acquisition of knowledge by the client (and to a lesser extent by the therapist). But this is rather strange knowledge. This knowledge is not complex, and the deepest of them is almost impossible to express in words. Often new knowledge is presented in such a simple form as “I am different from others”, “I actually hate him (her)”, “I am afraid to feel dependent”, “Actually I feel sorry for myself”, “I am self-centered ”, “I really have feelings of love and tenderness”, “I can be whoever I want”, etc. But despite its apparent simplicity, this knowledge is extremely important in some new respect, which is difficult to define. We can understand them in different ways. On the one hand, it is knowledge that becomes part of «me» and is based on experiences, not symbols. This knowledge is analogous to the knowledge of a child who has learned that two plus two is four, but one day, while playing with two pairs of objects, he suddenly realizes, acquiring a completely new knowledge, that two plus two is actually four.
Another understanding of this knowledge is that it represents a belated attempt to relate words to their content in the realm of the senses, a process that took place long before in cognition. In our minds, we carefully relate the chosen word to the content that experience gives us. So, I say that something happened “gradually”, while quickly (and mostly unconsciously) sorting out and rejecting such words as “slowly”, “imperceptibly”, “step by step” and the like, which do not convey quite a shade of the content of our experience. But in the field of feelings, we have never learned to correlate words with experience, to accurately convey its content. Something that rises up in me in the safe atmosphere of an accepting relationship — what is it? Is it sadness or anger, remorse or self-pity? Or is it regret for lost opportunities? “I ramble through a wide range of feelings until one of them ‘fits’, ‘feels right’, seems to really reflect the organism’s experience. In the course of this, the client discovers that he must learn the language of feeling and emotion, like a child learning to speak. Even worse, he finds that he must give up the wrong expression before he learns the right one.
Let’s try to define this type of knowledge differently, this time describing it in terms of negation. This is the type of knowledge that cannot be taught. Its essence lies in the fact that it is one of the sides of the discovery of oneself. Having «knowledge» in the sense in which we usually think of it, one person, with the appropriate motivation and ability, can transfer it to another. But in the meaningful learning that takes place in psychotherapy, one person cannot teach another. Learning will destroy learning. Thus, I could teach the client that it is safe for him to be himself, that it is not dangerous to be aware of his feelings freely, and so on. The more he studied this, the less he would master this knowledge, which arises only in experience, having significance for the client and constituting his “I”.
Kierkegaard regards this last type of knowledge as truly subjective and objectively proves that it, and even about it, cannot be directly communicated to another person. The most that one person can do to facilitate the emergence of such knowledge in another is to create certain conditions that make this knowledge possible. It cannot be forced.
In making a final attempt to describe this learning, the client gradually learns to name the whole general state. This state of the body with its experience, feelings, knowledge can be described in one statement. The matter becomes even more obscure and unsatisfactory, since the description seems completely unnecessary. In fact, this usually happens because the client wants to tell at least something about himself to the therapist, but this desire is probably not so important. The only necessary is the inner awareness of the general, integral, immediate, momentary state of the organism, which is “me”. For example, the essence of psychotherapy is to understand in full that at this moment my oneness is that «I am deeply afraid of the possibility of becoming someone else.» A client who clearly understands this will, of course, recognize and become aware of his condition when it looks like this. He is also likely to recognize and become more fully aware of other feelings that have arisen in him. Thus, he will move towards a state in which he feels more like himself. He will be more what he is organismically, and this seems to be the essence of psychotherapy.
The essence of psychotherapy in terms of science
Now I will allow the Second Protagonist, myself as a scientist, to continue and express my point of view on this area.
When we address the complex phenomenon of psychotherapy using the logic and methods of science, our goal is to try to understand this phenomenon. In science, this means gaining objective knowledge about events and the functional relationships between them. Science can also provide an opportunity to increase the predictability and control over these events, but this is not necessarily the result of scientific pursuits. If the goals of science in this area were fully achieved, we would presumably learn that certain elements of psychotherapy are associated with certain event outcomes. Knowing this, we could probably predict that a certain kind of psychotherapeutic relationship would have a certain outcome (within certain probabilistic limits) because certain elements would be included in it. In this case, we obviously could control the results of psychotherapy by skillfully handling the elements included in the psychotherapeutic relationship.
It is clear that regardless of the depth of our scientific research, we could in no way discover absolute truth, but could only describe relationships, the likelihood of which is increasing. We would also never be able to know the fundamental reality underlying a person, relationships, or the universe. We could only describe the connections between observed phenomena. If, in constructing the theory of psychotherapy, the science in this field followed the course of science in other fields, the working models of reality that would result would be very far from the realities that are perceived by our senses. A scientific description of psychotherapy and the psychotherapeutic relationship would be very different from how these phenomena are perceived.
Obviously, psychotherapy is very difficult to measure, it is a very complex phenomenon. However, since psychotherapy is considered to be a significant relationship involved in phenomena very distant from it, it may be worth surmounting the difficulties in order to uncover the patterns of personality and interpersonal relationships.
Since there is already an approximate theory in client-centered psychotherapy (although not a theory in the exact scientific sense of the word), we have a starting point for choosing a hypothesis. Let’s take for discussion a few approximate hypotheses that can be deduced from this theory and see what the scientific approach can do with them. Now we will not translate the general theory into the proper framework of formal logic and consider only a few hypotheses.
First, let’s outline three of them:
- The therapist’s acceptance of the client leads to an increase in the client’s acceptance of himself.
- The more the therapist perceives the client as a person and not as an object, the sooner the client will begin to perceive himself not as an object, but as a person.
- In psychotherapy, the client effectively examines himself on the basis of experience.
How would we translate each of these hypotheses into operational terms, and how would we test these hypotheses? What would be the results of such a check?
Some may be surprised that hypotheses that refer to such subjective experiences are treated as subjects of objective investigation. However, advanced psychological thought has gone far from primitive behaviorism and realized that the objectivity of psychology as a science is based on its method, and not on its content. Therefore, we can objectively deal with such deeply subjective feelings as fear, tension, satisfaction, and the like, provided that they can be given clear operational definitions. Stephenson, in The Postulates of Behaviorism, presents this point of view convincingly. With his Q-method, he makes an important contribution to the objectification of this important subjective material for scientific study.
It is impossible to answer these questions in detail in this article, but the general answer can be found in the studies already done. To test the first hypothesis, certain acceptance measurement techniques would be selected or developed. These can be objective or projective relationship tests, the Q-method, or something like that. It is likely that the same methods, with slightly different instructions or attitudes, could be used to measure the therapist’s acceptance of the client and the client’s acceptance of himself. Then the degree of acceptance of the client by the therapist must be operationally equated to some number on the scale of this technique. The presence of changes in the client’s self-acceptance would be shown by measurements before and after psychotherapy. The dependence of any change on psychotherapy could be determined by comparing changes in the course of psychotherapy with changes in the control period or in the control group. Ultimately, we would be able to tell if there was a relationship between the therapist’s acceptance and the client’s acceptance (acceptance would be defined operationally), and also calculate the correlation between the two.
The second and third hypotheses are difficult to test with measurements, but there is no reason to believe that these hypotheses cannot be examined objectively at all, since the sophistication of psychological measurements is growing all the time. A tool to test the second hypothesis could be some kind of attitude test or Q-sort — you can measure the relationship of the therapist to the client and the relationship of the client to himself. In this case, the continuum would extend from an objective consideration of an external object to a personal, subjective experience. Physiological methods could be used to test the third hypothesis, since it seems likely that experiential knowledge has measurable physiological components. Another possibility to infer experiential knowledge is to measure the effectiveness of learning in different domains. Perhaps, at the current level of our methods, testing the third hypothesis is beyond our ability, but, of course, in the foreseeable future, it may also include an operational definition and be tested.
The data obtained in the course of these studies could be of the following properties. Let’s introduce assumptions to present them in a more concrete form. Suppose we find that acceptance of the therapist leads to acceptance of the client and that the correlation between these two variables is approximately 0,70. Convinced that the second hypothesis is not confirmed, however, we find that the therapist’s greater acceptance of the client as a person leads to the client’s increasing acceptance of himself. Thus we would learn that being human-centered is an element of acceptance, but this has little to do with the fact that the client becomes more of a person to himself than an object. Let’s also assume that the third hypothesis is supported by the presence of experiential knowledge, which is more observed in the psychotherapy group than in the control group.
By interpreting all the main and secondary characteristics that would be contained in the data obtained, and omitting reference to unexpected results of the study of the course of personality development that might suddenly appear (since everything is difficult to imagine in advance), some idea can be found in the previous passage that can offer science in this area. It can give us a more and more accurate description of the events that take place in the process of psychotherapy and the changes that take place there. Science may begin to formulate some hypothetical laws of the dynamics of human relations. It can offer publicly available statements that if certain operational conditions exist in or in a relationship with a therapist, then certain types of client behavior can be expected with a certain probability. However, all this can be reproduced many times. Science is likely to be able to do this in the field of psychotherapy and personality change, just as it can do it in areas such as perception and learning. In time, theoretical formulations will bring these different areas closer together, proclaiming laws that apparently govern changes in human behavior. This is also true for situations that we attribute to perception, learning, or the laws of more global and fundamental changes that take place in psychotherapy and include both perception and learning.
Some problems
Two different ways of perceiving the essential aspects of psychotherapy have been presented here, two distinct approaches that are vying for leadership in this field. As has been presented, and as is often the case, there seems to be little in common between the two descriptions. Each of these approaches is a well thought out way of looking at psychotherapy, leading to its important truths. If they are shared by different individuals or groups, these positions become the basis of sharp disagreements between them. When each of these approaches seems right to one person, as happened to me, then they cause internal conflict in him. Although they can be artificially reconciled or seen as complementary, they seem to me to be fundamentally antagonistic.
Next, I would like to touch on some of the problems that I have in connection with this.
Scientist Questions
First of all, let me ask some questions that a scientific position asks another position based on experience (The terms «scientific» and «experiential» are used to distinguish between the two opposite points of view outlined above). The sophisticated scientist listens to the client’s experience and raises a number of research issues.
First of all, he wants to know: how do you know that your description of your subjective experience that took place at one time or another reflects what really happened? How can you know that your experience has anything to do with reality? If we believe that inner subjective experience reveals human relationships or ways of changing personality, then Yoga, Christian Science, Dianetics, and the hallucinations of mental patients who believe in their identity with Jesus Christ are all as true as your reports. Each of them represents the truth as it is internally perceived by some individual or group of individuals. If we are to avoid this quagmire of multiple conflicting truths, we need to resort to the only method we know how to achieve the closest approximation to reality — the scientific method.
Second, the experiential method does not provide an opportunity to improve psychotherapeutic skills or discover qualities of the relationship that do not satisfy the therapist. Until the description is considered as perfect (which is unlikely) or the given level of living the psychotherapeutic relationship as the most effective (which is also unlikely), these messages will contain flaws, imperfections, weaknesses unknown to us. How to detect and fix them? The experiential approach can offer nothing but a process of trial and error that is slow and does not guarantee that this goal will be achieved. Even other people’s criticisms and suggestions are of little help, because they are not the result of this experience and therefore are not as decisive as the relationship itself. But the scientific method and all the methods of modern logical positivism have much to offer here. Any experience that can be described at all can be described operationally. Hypotheses can be formulated and tested, and thus the white sheep of truth can be separated from the black sheep of error. This seems to be the only true road to more correct conclusions, to self-correction, to the growth of knowledge.
The scholar may also make another remark: “Your description of the psychotherapeutic relationship seems to imply that there are elements in it that cannot be predicted, that there is some kind of spontaneity, or, pardon the expression, ‘acts of free will’. You talk as if some of the client’s behavior — and perhaps some of the therapist’s behavior — is not conditioned, not a link in the chain of cause and effect. Without wishing to be a metaphysician, may I raise the question: is this not defeatism? Since it is possible to find out what causes most of the behavior (you yourself talked about creating conditions under which certain behavioral acts-outcomes will follow), why then do you give it up in any case? Why not at least aim to uncover the causes of all behavioral manifestations? This does not mean that a person should consider himself an automaton, but in our search for facts, we should not interfere with ourselves, considering that some doors are closed to us.
Finally, the scientist cannot understand why the therapist, the experimenter, should challenge the only tool and method by which almost all of our significant successes have been achieved. What is the basis for curing disease, reducing infant mortality, increasing crop yields, conserving food supplies, producing everything that makes us comfortable — from books to nylon — understanding the universe? The scientific method used to solve each of these and many other problems. Of course, the scientific method has improved the methods of warfare, serving man both constructively and destructively, but even so, its potential benefit to society is very great. So why should we question this approach in the social sciences? Of course, progress here has been slow and nothing fundamental like the law of gravity has been invented, but should we abandon this approach because of our impatience? What alternatives appear as a result of hope for science in this case as well? If we agree that the world’s social problems certainly require immediate action, that psychotherapy opens the way to the most decisive and significant drivers of change in human behavior, then, of course, the most precise criteria of the scientific method should be used as widely as possible in psychotherapy. so that we can move as quickly as possible to a hypothetical knowledge of the laws of individual behavior and change in attitudes.
Questions of the defender of the direction based on experience
While the scientist’s questions may seem to some to be exhaustive of the problem, his interpretation is far from satisfactory for the therapist who lives by the experience of psychotherapy. Such a person has several questions to the representative of the scientific point of view.
“Firstly,” points out the representative of the direction based on experience, “science always deals with something that is outside of it, with an object. Various scientists who are engaged in the logic of science (including the psychologist Stevens (C.S. Stevens (1906-1973) — an American psychologist who worked in the field of experimental psychology (Stevens law. — Approx. ed.)) show that the main thing in science is that it is in all cases dealing with an observable external object. This is true even if the scientist experiments on himself, for to a certain extent he regards himself as an observed, experienced object. He never deals with the experiencer, the self-experiencer. Not does this mean that for us there will always be an irrelevant kind of experience like psychotherapy, which is exclusively personal, very subjective and completely dependent on the relationship between two people, each of whom is an experiencing «I»?Science, of course, can study the events that occur, but its methods are always irrelevant to what is going on.An analogy could be drawn by saying that science can perform an autopsy on a dead body — an accomplished psychotherapeutic event — but by its very nature, it can never enter into its living flesh. That is why therapists are aware, as a rule intuitively, that any advance in psychotherapy, any new knowledge in its field, any revolutionary new hypothesis, must come from the experience of the therapist and the client and can never come from science. Let’s use the analogy again. When studying the measurements of the trajectories of the planets, some celestial bodies were discovered. Astronomers then tried to find these celestial bodies with a telescope and found them. It seems incredible that such a result could be obtained in psychotherapy, since science has nothing to say about what the «I» personally experiences during psychotherapy. She can only talk about events that take place in the other «I».
“Since the field of science is the “other” as an “object”, this means that everything that it touches turns into an object. This has never been a problem in the natural sciences. But already in medicine it created problems. Many medical professionals worry about whether the growing tendency to treat the human body as an object will lead to adverse consequences. They would rather see him as a human again. However, it is in the human sciences that this becomes a real problem. This means that the people studied by scientists in this field of knowledge are only objects for them. In psychotherapy, both the client and the therapist become objects of analysis, but not people with whom they enter into a life relationship. At first glance, it may seem that this is not important. We can say that the individual regards others as objects only as a scientist. He can step out of this role and become a man. But if we look deeper, we will see that this is a superficial answer. If we mentally fast forward to the future and assume that we have the answers to most of the questions of psychotherapy, then what? Then we will find ourselves increasingly compelled to treat others and even ourselves as objects. The knowledge of all human relationships would be so great that we would rather use this knowledge than practically exist in these relationships without thinking. We can look into this future by looking at the example of experienced parents who know that «love is good for children.» This knowledge often prevents them from being free to be themselves without considering whether they are loving parents or not. Thus, the development of science in a field such as psychotherapy is either irrelevant to its practice, or can only make it difficult to experience the relationship as a personal experience of the individual.
For those who rely on experience, there is another reason for concern: “When science turns people into objects, as shown above, there is another side effect. Science ultimately leads to manipulation. This is less important, for example, in a science such as astronomy, but in the sciences that study the living body and society, knowledge of events and their relationships leads to the control of some of the terms of the equation. No doubt this is true of psychology and would be true of psychotherapy. If we know everything about how learning happens, we use that knowledge to manipulate people like objects. I do not give any assessment of this manipulation. It can also be carried out with high ethical standards. Using this knowledge, we can even manipulate ourselves as an object. So, knowing that learning happens faster with repetition than with prolonged focus on one thing, I can use this knowledge to guide my Spanish learning. And knowledge is power. When I learn the laws of learning, I use them to control others through advertising and propaganda, anticipating and controlling their reactions. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the growth of knowledge in the human sciences contains a powerful trend of social control, the control of a small group of people over the whole of society. An equally strong tendency is the weakening or destruction of a person living in the present. When all are treated as objects, the subjective individual, the inner self, the person in the process of becoming, the unreflective awareness of being, the whole inner side of existing life, is weakened, devalued or destroyed. Best of all, in my opinion, this is reflected in two books. So, Skinner (B.F. Skinner — an American psychologist, a representative of modern behaviorism — came up with utopian projects for reorganizing society based on the ideas of operant behaviorism about managing human behavior. These ideas caused sharp criticism from many scientists. — Approx. ed.) in » Waldene-2″ gives a psychological picture of paradise. It must have seemed desirable to the author, unless it was a terrific satire. In any case, it is a paradise of manipulation, in which the extent to which one can be human is greatly reduced if one is not a member of the Ruling Council. Huxley’s Brave New World (O.L. Huxley (1894-1963) — English writer. His most famous work, Brave New World (1932), depicts a standardized, utilitarian, technocratic, soulless society of the future. — Approx. ed. ) is a frank satire and picturesquely depicts the loss of personality associated, according to the author, with the growth of psychological and biological knowledge. Thus, it can be said directly that the developing human sciences (if they continue to develop and be understood as they are now) lead to social dictate and the loss of personality in the individual. Kierkegaard saw this danger a hundred years ago, and now, in connection with the growth of knowledge, it seems even more real than then.
“Lastly,” says the representative of the experiential school, “doesn’t all this indicate that ethics is much more important than science? I do not deny the value of science as a tool, and I know very well that it can be a very important and necessary tool. But as long as it serves as an instrument not for a person of high moral principles, can it not become a bloody tank for everything that is meant by the word «man»? We have been unaware of this problem for a very long time, since it took the natural sciences centuries for ethical questions to become decisive for them, but today it finally happened. In the human sciences, ethical issues emerge more quickly because they are human-related. But in psychotherapy, this problem arises even more often and has a more serious significance. Everything subjective, internal, personal is concentrated in it. Here relationships are lived, not considered; and the result is not an object, but a person who feels, chooses, believes, acts not as an automaton, but as a person. And here, too, the most important thing in scientific research is manifested — an objective study of the most subjective aspects of life; reduction to hypotheses and ultimately to theories of everything that is considered a very personal, completely internal, completely individual world. And since these two sharply opposed positions are the subject of discussion here, we have to make a personal moral choice of our values. This choice can be made in absentia, deciding in favor of the plaintiff and not raising the issue. It is possible to make a choice in which both priorities are preserved — but we must choose. Therefore, we must take our time and think carefully before abandoning the values that are related to a person, to experiencing, to being in a relationship, to the formation of values in which I exist as a process, as a present moment, as an internal subjectively living «I» .
Dilemma
So, in modern psychological thought there are two opposing points of view, sometimes only implied, sometimes more openly expressed. The dispute of these positions presented is my inner thoughts: Where are we going? Is the problem described correctly or not? What are perceptual errors? If the problem really is exactly as it is presented here, should we choose one of the positions? And if so, which one? Or is there some broader formulation that includes both positions without prejudice to either?
Changing the way you look at science
During the year that has passed since the previous section was written, I have occasionally discussed these issues with colleagues, students, and friends. I am especially grateful to some of them who influenced my views.
I would like to express my gratitude to Robert M. Lipgar, Ross L. Mooney, David E. Rogers, and Eugene Strache. Discussions with them and their published and unpublished work helped me a lot. My own ideas have so deeply absorbed their thoughts and become so intertwined with them that I find it difficult to mention anyone in particular. I only know that much of what is stated here comes from them through me. I also gained much from correspondence with Anna Rowe and Walter Smet about this work.
Gradually I came to the conclusion that the biggest mistake in my original formulation was the description of science. In this section, I would like to correct this mistake, and in the next section, I would like to reconcile both points of view without prejudice to either of them.
The main drawback, in my opinion, was the view of science as something “out there”, somewhere “out there”, something written with a capital “N”, as a set of knowledge that exists somewhere in space and time. Like many psychologists, I considered science to be a collection of systematized and organized, previously verified facts, and I considered the methods of science as socially approved means for accumulating this mass of knowledge and further testing it. Science seemed to me like a reservoir into which everyone, without exception, can dip their buckets to get water with a 99% guarantee of purity. If one considers science as something external and impersonal, it may seem reasonable that it not only majestically opens up new knowledge, but is also associated with depersonalization, with the tendency to control, with the denial of the fundamental freedom of choice that I encountered in the experience of psychotherapy. Now I would like to consider the scientific approach from a different, and, I hope, more correct position.
Science in Man
Science exists only in man. Each scientific project has its own creative beginning, its own process and its own preliminary conclusions that exist in a person or in several people. Knowledge — even scientific knowledge — is that which is subjectively accepted. Scientific knowledge can only be communicated to those who are subjectively ready to accept this message. The use of science is also carried out only by people who are in search of values that make sense to them. These statements briefly summarize the shift in emphasis that I would like to make in my understanding of science. Allow me, from this point of view, to trace the various phases of scientific inquiry.
creative period
Science begins in a person who pursues his goals, interests and intentions, which have a personal, subjective meaning for him. Part of the purpose of searching in an area is to «find something.» As a result of this, a person, if he is a good scientist, is immersed in the relevant experience, whether it is a physical laboratory, animal or plant world, a psychological laboratory, a clinic, or something else. This immersion is complete and subjective, similar to the therapist’s immersion in psychotherapy, which I wrote about earlier. He feels the area he is interested in, he lives it. This is more than just thinking about it — he allows his body to take responsibility and respond on both a conscious and unconscious level. He begins to feel this area more than he could possibly put into words. He organismically reacts to it in the form of relationships that are absent in his consciousness.
Out of this complete subjective immersion emerges a creative readiness, a sense of direction, a vague formulation of relationships not previously conscious. Then the superfluous is cut off from it, it is sharpened, more clearly formulated, and this creative formation becomes a hypothesis — an assumption based on personal, subjective faith. The scientist says, relying on all the experience known and unknown to him: «I have a presentiment that such and such relations exist and their existence is related to my personal values.»
What I am describing is the initial stage of scientific research, probably its most important stage; but it is precisely this stage that American scientists, especially psychologists, tend to minimize or ignore altogether. It is not denied, but simply discarded. Kenneth Spence (K. Spence (1907-1967) — American psychologist, known for his work in the field of simple forms of learning, conditioning and motivation) said that this aspect of science “is taken for granted.
Perhaps it would be appropriate to quote this thought: “… the data of all sciences have the same origin, namely, the direct experience of the observing person, the scientist himself. That is, direct experience, the initial form from which all sciences develop, is no longer considered important to the researcher as a scientist. He simply takes it for granted and then proceeds to the task of describing the events that have happened, of identifying and articulating the nature of the relationship that exists between them. — K.W. Spence. psychological theory. Ed. by MMMarx (New York Macmillan, 1951), p. 173.
Like so many other things that are taken for granted, it does not stay in the memory. Of course, it is in subjective, directly personal experience that the source of all science and every scientific research lies.
Reconcile with reality
The scientist creatively created his hypothesis, his hypothetical faith. But why compare it with reality? Each of us knows from experience that it is very easy to deceive ourselves, to believe what will be rejected by further experience. How can I determine whether this hypothetical belief has a real bearing on the observed facts? I can use more than one type of evidence, but several. In order to be sure that there is no self-deception, I can introduce certain precautionary rules into the process of observation. I can consult someone who is also concerned with this and has therefore invented useful ways of interpreting observations. In short, I can use all the complex methods accumulated by science. I see that stating the hypothesis in operational terms will save me from many dead ends and wrong conclusions. I learn that control groups can help me avoid wrong conclusions. I learn that correlations, t-tests and necessary coefficients, as well as a whole range of statistical methods can also only help to draw reasonable conclusions.
So, it is clear that the methods of science are used for their intended purpose — as a way to prevent self-deception in the appearance of my creatively created subjective guesses that arise as a result of the relationship between me and the observed material. It is in this context, and perhaps only in it, that numerous structures of operationalism, logical positivism, research planning, significance criteria, etc. take place. They do not exist by themselves, but in order to find a correspondence between subjective feeling, conjecture or human hypothesis and objective reality.
And even when using such rigorous, precise, and impersonal methods, the scientist makes all important choices subjectively. Which of the many hypotheses will I spend more time on? Which control group is best suited to avoid self-deception in this particular study? How much do I use statistical analysis? How much can I trust the results? Each of these judgments is necessarily a personal, subjective judgment, indicating that the structure of science that satisfies us is based mainly on its subjective use by man. It is the best tool we have ever been able to devise to control our organismic sense of the universe.
Data received
If I have been open to all facts in the course of the study, if I have wisely chosen and used all the precautions against self-deception, then I begin to trust the data received and consider them as a springboard for further research and searches.
It seems to me that the goal of the best research in science is to offer a hypothesis, belief, opinion that would most satisfy the researcher himself and seem reliable to him. If a scientist to some extent tries to prove something not to himself, but to someone else (and I made this mistake more than once), then he uses science to protect himself from the threat to his personality. He does not give her the opportunity to play her truly creative role — to serve man.
As for the scientific data obtained, their subjective basis is manifested in the fact that sometimes a scientist may not believe his own results. “The experiment showed so-and-so, but I think that it is not so” — such an opinion has repeatedly arisen in every scientist. Some very useful discoveries owe their existence to the scientist’s persistent disbelief in his own results and in the results of others. In this case, the scientist may have more confidence in his organismic reactions than in the methods of science. There is no doubt that this can lead to both a serious error and a scientific discovery, but it affirms the leading role of the subjective in science.
Transfer of scientific data
For example, this morning, while wading through a coral reef in the Caribbean, I saw a large sleepy fish. So I think. If you, not knowing about my perception of the fish, also saw it, I would feel more confident in my own observation. This phenomenon is known as intersubjective verification, which plays an important role in our understanding of science. If I take you (by conversation, by word of mouth, or by action) through the steps I have taken in research, and it seems to you, too, that I have not deceived myself and have in fact discovered new relationships that are significant for my magnitudes, and that I am right in my initial trust in this relationship, then you will have an idea of the beginnings of Science with a capital letter. It is at this point that it may seem that we have created objective scientific knowledge. In reality it does not exist. There are only hypothetical beliefs that exist subjectively in the minds of many people. If these beliefs are not hypothetical, then we are dealing with dogma, not science. If, on the other hand, no one except the researcher believes the data obtained, then these data are either the product of an abnormal personality, a manifestation of psychopathology, or an unusual truth discovered by a genius that no one is subjectively ready to believe yet. This reasoning leads me to consider the group of people who can believe the hypothetical statements in any scientific research.
Transfer to whom?
It is clear that scientific results can only be communicated to those who share the same basic rules of research. The Australian Bushman will not be impressed by the data of science concerning bacteriological infection. He knows that sickness is actually caused by evil spirits. Only if he also agrees with the scientific method as a good means of preventing self-deception, is he likely to accept this scientific evidence.
But even among those who have accepted the basic rules of science, initial faith in the results of scientific research can only arise when there is a subjective willingness to believe. There are many examples of this. Most psychologists are ready to believe the facts that the lecture system leads to a significant increase in knowledge, and are not at all ready to believe that an invisible playing card can be determined using psychic abilities. However, the scientific evidence for the latter is much more impeccable. Likewise, as soon as the so-called «Iowa studies» showed that intelligence can be significantly altered by the environment, most psychologists did not believe this and began to sharply criticize the imperfect scientific methods. Now the scientific evidence for these results is not much better, but the subjective willingness of psychologists to believe this is quite obvious. One scholar of the history of science remarked that the empiricists, if they existed at the time, would have been the first to disbelieve the data of Copernicus.
It turns out that whether I believe the scientific results of other scientists or my own depends in part on my initial willingness to believe in those results.
One example from my own experience may suffice. In 1941, scientific work done under my direction showed that the future of delinquent adolescents was best predicted by the measure of the realism of their understanding and acceptance of themselves. I used approximate measurements, but they gave a better prediction than the measurement of family environment, hereditary abilities, social environment, etc. At the time, I was simply not ready to believe these results because, like most psychologists, I believed that future crime depended on factors such as the emotional climate in the family and the influence of peers in the group. Only gradually, with the development and deepening of my experience in psychotherapy, did I try to believe in the results of this and later studies (1944), which confirmed them. Both of these studies are presented in the article «The role of self-understanding in the prediction of behavior» by CRRogers, BLKell and H.McNeilg. consult. Psychol., 12, 1948, pp. 174-186.
One of the reasons why we are not fully aware of this subjective factor is that, especially in the natural sciences, huge areas of experimental material have gradually been accepted and used, where we are ready to believe any results, if they are based on a scientific game organized according to the relevant rules.
The use of science
But not only the origin, process and conclusions of scientific research are something that exists only in the subjective experience of people. This also happens when using science. Science itself never deals with depersonalization, never manipulates, never controls. Only people can and will do it. Of course, this is a very obvious and banal observation, but for me its deep understanding was of great importance. It means that the use of scientific results obtained in the field of personality psychology is and will be a matter of subjective, personal choice — the same choice as the one that a person makes in psychotherapy. The more a person closes the sphere of his experience with his defensive reactions, the more he is inclined to choose antisocial solutions. To the extent that he is open to all stages of his experience, to that extent we can be sure that he is more likely to use the results and methods of science (or any other tools or abilities) in a way that is creative for the individual and society (B I gave a fuller rationale for this point of view in another article in this book, «Toward a Theory of Creativity»). Thus, in reality, there is no formidable creature called «Science with a capital S» that can somehow influence our destiny. There are only people. And, of course, some of them are aggressive and dangerous because of their defensive reactions, and modern scientific knowledge enhances this aggression and danger. But this is only part of the picture. There are two more important aspects. 1. Many people are largely open to experience and therefore likely to be socially creative. 2. The subjective experience of psychotherapy and related scientific research shows that individuals can be encouraged to change. They can be helped to change in the direction of greater openness to experience, and hence in the acquisition of behavior that would strengthen their own selves and society, rather than destroy them.
In short, Science cannot threaten us. Only humans can do this. But people, armed with the means that scientific knowledge has given them, are capable of many destructions. On the other hand, we already have subjective and objective knowledge of the basic principles by which individuals can achieve more constructive social behavior that is natural to their organismic process of becoming.
New association
It is this line of thought that led me to a new integration in which the conflict between the representatives of «experiential living» and «scientific» directions disappears. This association may be unacceptable to others, but for me it is really significant. In the previous section, its main principles were largely only implied, but here I will try to state them in such a way as to draw attention to the evidence for opposing views.
Science, like psychotherapy and other aspects of life, has its roots and is based on the direct subjective experience of a person. It originates in an internal general organismic experience, which can be transmitted only partially and very imperfectly. This is one of the stages of the subjective existence of knowledge.
Precisely because human relationships are especially valuable and fertile for me, I enter into a relationship called psychotherapeutic, where feelings and knowledge merge into one holistic experience, which is lived rather than analyzed; in which awareness is unrelated to thinking and where I am a participant rather than an observer. But since I am interested in the complex patterns that seem to be inherent in the universe and these relationships, I can isolate myself from this experience and look at it as an observer, making myself and (or) others the objects of observation. As an observer, I use all the guesswork that grows out of my experience of living this relationship. To avoid self-deception when observing, to create a more accurate picture of existing patterns, I use all the rules of science. Science is not something impersonal; it is simply a person who subjectively experiences another phase of himself. A deeper understanding of psychotherapy or any other problem can be either by existing in it, or by observing it according to the rules of science, or through the communication of these two types of experience within oneself. As for the subjective experience of choice, it is of paramount importance not only in psychotherapy, but also in the use of the scientific method by man.
What I do with the knowledge obtained through the scientific method — whether I use it to understand, increase, enrich, or to control, manipulate and destroy — is a matter of subjective choice, depending on the values that have for me personal meaning. If, due to fear and defensiveness, I push large areas of experience out of my mind, I can only see the facts that support my current beliefs, but I will be blind to all other facts. If I can only see the objective aspects of life and cannot perceive the subjective, if somehow I have blocked my perception and do not use the full range of the senses, then I am likely to be socially destructive regardless of whether I use knowledge as an instrument of destruction. and the means of science, or the power and emotional force of subjective relations. On the other hand, if I am open to my experience and can allow myself to be aware of all the sensations of my complex organism, then I am probably using myself, my subjective experience and my scientific knowledge for genuine creation.
This is the degree of integration that I am currently able to achieve. This is the integration of two approaches that at first seemed to contradict each other. It does not completely solve all the problems raised in the previous section, but it seems to point the way to a solution. The problem of integration is reviewed and perceived in a new way due to the fact that the person existing in this life with his subjectivity, with all his values is accepted as the basis and essence of both psychotherapeutic and scientific relations. And at the beginning of science there are also human relations «I-Thou». And I can only enter into each of these relationships as a person who has subjective experience.