New York (#3)
New York
Outside of Montreal and Quebec City, New York and Paris are the two towns I have been in most often in my life. I am actually (Saturday) in New York with my friend Jean-Pierre. Yesterday night, as we were walking through Times Square, the lighting impressed Jean-Pierre. Times Square is like a huge HD TV screen, but with a lot of people walking around (I don’t think I would be able to stand this on a regular basis). We are staying in one of those post-modern hotels that welcome you through a computer screen – hard to feel human in the corridors that bring you to your room. This makes us quite aware that we really are in the 21st century.
But we are in New York for a significant reason. Jean-Pierre and I are passionate psychotherapists. As with my long time friend Daniel (nearly 40 years of friendship), Jean-Pierre and I may discuss for hours without seeing the time passing by. Our passion for psychotherapy is ultimately our way to search meaning for which concerns human affairs (as you already know, I am one of those for whom meaning wasn’t a given). So to psychology discussions, we add philosophy, biology, non-linear dynamic systems (very, very important!), anthropology, sociology, consciousness, mindfulness, neurosciences, non-religious spirituality etc. Also, Jean-Pierre loves mathematics. All our discussions are at the same time very personal – knowledge is in our bodies (Jean-Pierre was the person who introduced me to Gendlin’s notion of felt sense). Yesterday, while driving to New York, we had a non-stop discussion through cognitions, feelings, felt senses, meanings. Great time that ended up on Times Square (and with an excellent New York’s steak) – not bad!
So, I told you we are passionate psychotherapists. There are terrific therapy workshops in New York (Montreal is just a 6-7 hours drive from New York) and that’s the reason we are here. Bruce Ecker is giving a workshop Saturday and Sunday. He is the father of what has been named Coherence Therapy. Some years ago I became aware of his work as I read Depth Oriented Brief Therapy (I had found the title pretty ambitious). After reading it, I said to myself that it looked pretty impressive, but it seemed too difficult to implement in my regular practice. Last year, he (with colleagues) published another book, Unlocking the Emotional Brain. Another friend of mine, Michel, thought it might interest me. I was even more impressed than the first time. As the title suggests, would it be possible to directly modify emotional memories? For many psychotherapists, this would be like the discovery of the “philosophers’ stone”.
Moreover, this approach seemed to fit very well with my main theoretical framework, schema therapy.
Well, I must be careful. I am practicing psychotherapy to my best since nearly 40 years and I have already heard the story many times. New approaches appear and may announce themselves as being the response to nearly everything – they appeal to a certain number of psychotherapists that get trained (it may be quite expensive – yes, money is sometimes part of this world also). Some of these approaches remain even if they are not the response to everything, others disappear.
Lately, neurosciences are having a major impact on psychotherapy. The brain and the mind have never been so close. Eastern philosophies have taught us that extreme polarities are rarely wise: the mind as an epiphenomenon of the brain or the cartesian split between mind and some form of animal brain.
My actual position: the distinction between mind and brain is simply language categorization. In fact, it doesn’t exist. But since language is a necessary tool (I wouldn’t be able to write this blog without it!), the actual state of knowledge and my own paradigmatic limitations force me to use this distinction between mind and brain.
Coincidence – While I had to get back to our room in order to leave for the Sunday session after writing the sentence above, I find Jean-Pierre wired to his computer by electrodes measuring his brain electrical activity – that also goes with the 21st Century, access to yourself through your consciousness and your brain waves.
The theoretical foundations of Coherence Therapy are in phase with recent neurosciences discoveries on memory reconsolidation. Shortly explained, when our long-standing emotional memories (our schemas) are triggered, their neuronal synapses that seemed locked forever could be unlocked in certain conditions. In the book Unlocking the Emotional Brain many clinical examples are given. One example I remember is the story of a man that consulted because he persistently underachieved, his life being kind of a mess. That would be called the symptom. The anti-symptom position is his presenting issue in therapy; he wants to stop that enduring pattern. Usually people have tried many things to change the pattern until they decide to search professional help. In Coherence therapy, the first goal is to look for the pro-symptom position (PSP) – procrastination has a meaning (an emotional truth) for this individual and this meaning is more fundamental than the anti-symptom position. But an important problem is that this meaning is lost. In the example, this man had a very demanding and critical father who pretended to be always right. The procrastination has been a mean to oppose that demanding and critical father and gain some sense of self-agency. One of the many ways this meaning could be retrieved would be to ask the client to imagine what would happen if he had stopped procrastinating (symptom deprivation), had succeeded, and then met his father. The client’s response was something like my father would be bragging about the fact this was the proof he was right. For the client, keeping his sense of self-agency is locked in opposing his father’s expectations. That emotional truth must be kept activated in order to be unlocked by incongruent experience (it can’t be done by counter-active methods, but by a truly felt incongruence). Once the process completed (exploration in order to identify the emotional truth – integration of this emotional truth – juxtaposition to incongruent experience), this “truth” doesn’t feel true anymore. As a consequence the client may now feel free to wield his sense of self-agency on his own terms.
Very interesting, isn’t it?
But, there is also flesh to this story. Imagine 30 passionate psychotherapists in a room, coming from all over the United States and other countries, most of them with a long experience of psychotherapy, visibly well trained, and good-hearted. Lets use an analogy and say they are already good musicians who came to watch a virtuoso and try to catch some of his skills. And this virtuoso with two colleagues who visibly integrated (and probably enriched) his system (thank you Sara and Niall) share their knowledge, competencies with us, and supervise our first tries in trying to get it with such respect and warmth. Moreover since we have to use ourselves, as therapists and clients, there is that extraordinary sharing of our most sacred inner territory with people we didn’t know 24 hours ago. They have become people we had significant experiences with because we rapidly connected through trust and compassion.
Sometimes life is just great!
On the way home Jean-Pierre and I spent our entire journey translating in French some of the Coherence Therapy principles (I have the computer on my knees since I am not driving). Passionate?
Monday, 16 h, we are back home in Montréal, different from whom we were 48 hours ago. When we construct the world differently, the world is different.
pcousineau
pcousineau 
Les cohérences sont des séquences de la perception. Elles sont multiples, presque à l’infini, pour aménager notre adaptation. Elles s’élaborent à partir de ressentis profondément ancrés qui, par leurs états d’agirs, en établissent la conviction. Le cognitif est, à sa façon, un brouillard où s’élabore des mirages. Ils émergent de la réduplication d’une vieille intensité à la base d’un sens de vivre et de mourir. La psychothérapie, à mon avis, tend à moduler un peu plus l’aménagement de vivre. Mon cher Pierre, ton enthousiasme est toujours remarquable et te pousse constamment dans ta quête du réel humain.
Dans ce commentaire, je reconnais bien mon bon vieil ami Daniel… un commentaire digne de Kierkegaard!
«Le cognitif est, à sa façon, un brouillard où s’élabore des mirages.» – C’est très joli.
Mirage ou non, la fonction d’une cohérence cognitive est d’abord de nous donner du sens. Nos échanges en ont toujours été une source intarissable.
J’aime beaucoup ma famille, mais j’aurais vraiment voulu être présent! La prochaine fois!
J’ai enfin du temps pour lire et j’ai bien entamé le livre, ça me parle autant que lorsque j’ai lu “je réinvente ma vie” ou “découvrirez son enfant interieur”.
J’ai hâte de t’entendre en parler davantage.