In pastoral counselling and spiritual direction, the therapeutic relationship between the client and the therapist is key. Because of this, much attention and research has been done within the different schools of psychology to understand the dynamics that happen within this counselling relationship. Within the Diamond Approach, these insights are all valued and used but there is an extra dimension that the Diamond Approach highlights that I have found so helpful, namely the concept and experience of the soul as a field. In this blog, I want explore the experience of the counselling field that can form between a client and their spiritual director. In doing so, I will be drawing upon insights from Rogerian psychology, Self Psychology, Attachment Theory, transference/countertransference, and the Diamond Approach to help explain the dynamics we experience in this counselling field. The Soul as a Field of Consciousness The concept “field” is a scientific term. We talk about magnetic fields, electrical fields, and gravitational fields. Almaas, the main developer of the Diamond Approach, describes a field in this way: “A field, a kind of fabric in space, usually invisible to our senses, is responsive to particular stimuli. The electromagnetic field, for example, will respond to electric charges and magnets, and these in turn will respond to it. In other words, an electromagnetic field is a pervasive spatial sensitivity, and so is a gravitational field. What is most significant for our discussion is that a field is not a collection of particles or parts. It is homogeneous, in that the field is active at all points of its space … The soul is a field in this sense, a region of space with particular properties responsive to a specific set of stimuli. The field of the soul is not physical, electromagnetic, or gravitational; rather, it is related to awareness and consciousness” (Almaas, Inner Journey p. 27). In summary, the soul is a field of consciousness from which different experiences emerge in response to what is happening within the field. For example, when pain is experienced, the quality of compassion arises in our soul. When hurt or injustice is experienced, a holy anger emerges in our soul. When we do something wrong, the experience of guilt appears in our soul. While the term “field” may seem out of place in the religious context, within the Christian tradition, we have theological concepts that capture this idea of the field. Christians talk about developing a relationship with God, a relationship that can develop and mature into a relationship of oneness with a God (John 15). When this happens, no longer is our human soul separate from God. The boundary between God and us has dissolved and yet there is still a sense of “I” and God within this communion. That oneness we can experience with God is an example of a field. The Bible talks about how in marriage two people become one, two souls become one soul, and yet each person’s individuality in that oneness is not lost (Mark 10:7-8). The oneness in marriage is another example of a spiritual field. The Bible talks about the church as being the “body of Christ” that has many members, but they all function as part of a whole spiritual body (1 Cor. 12: 12-27). This is another example of a field. Finally, Jesus is quoted in the Bible as saying that “when two or three are gathered in my name, then I (spirit of Christ/God) am there with you” (Matt. 18: 20). This is another example of a field. The term “field” is a scientific way of describing this mystical unity that we, as Christians, and other religious people, experience in different areas of our life. What I have found interesting is that the therapeutic relationship that forms between a therapist and a client functions like a field. To understand how this counselling field operates, let me turn to some person-centred psychologies that stress the importance of the therapeutic relationship. Rogerian Psychology and the Therapeutic Relationship Within Rogerian psychology, three core conditions are necessary for a therapist to develop a transforming therapeutic relationship with their clients. They include congruence, unconditional positive regard, and empathic understanding to the client (//www.simplypsychology.org/client-centred-therapy.html). The client experiences the therapist as congruent when the therapist reveals themselves as they really are with their client in the present moment rather than maintain a face of non-responsiveness to their client. This means that the therapist is part of the counselling experience with the client, not separate from it. Unconditional positive regard means that the therapist is able to express to their client a positive attitude despite what the client may have said or done. When this positive attitude is present, the client feels safe and is able become more vulnerable with the counsellor. Finally, empathy refers to the therapist’s ability to “understand sensitively and accurately [but not sympathetically] the client's experience and feelings in the here-and-now” (ibid). This sensitivity is only possible when the therapist is able to feel the emotional dynamics of their client within the therapeutic relationship. When these three core conditions are realized, a special therapeutic relationship develops, one that functions like a counselling field. Self Psychology and the Therapeutic Relationship In Self Psychology, transference plays a key role in the therapeutic relationship with the clients. When individuals are not able to meet their own childhood needs, they transfer these selfobject needs to others, including their therapist, looking to others to get these needs met. Heintz Kohut highlighted three selfobject needs that the therapist can meet for the client: mirroring, idealizing, and twinning. When a counsellor is mirroring, they are reflecting back accurately what their client is experiencing thereby affirming and validating their client’s experience. Idealizing happens when clients experience their therapist as a calming and soothing presence, like a caring parent. Twinning happens when clients sense that their counsellor is like them in some way, can relate to their experience and thus not totally different to them. (//www.goodtherapy.org/learn-about-therapy/types/self-psychology) When one of these selfobject needs are present, therapists will feel this transference in the counselling relationship. As the counsellor holds this transference and meets these selfobject needs, the therapeutic relationship deepens, and begins to take on field-like qualities. Attachment Theory and the Therapeutic Relationship In Emotionally Focusing Therapy, the therapeutic relationship is based on the principles of attachment theory. Clients need to experience a secure attachment with their therapist, that is, the therapist is accessible, responsive, and emotional engaged (Attachment Theory in Practice, Susan Johnson, p. 7). Johnson bases these conditions of secure attachment on Murray Bowen’s research showing how secure attachment forms between parents and children. When clients don’t experience these conditions with their therapist, they will move to one of two coping patterns, that of distancing from their counsellor (avoidant attachment) or clinging to their counsellor (anxious attachment). In the case of distancing, the client projects their distrust from their childhood's holding environment onto the counsellor. With clinging, the client projects their anxiety from their holding environment onto their counsellor believing that the counsellor may abandon them due to something they have done wrong. However, if the therapist is able to connect with their client in such a way that the client feels their therapist is accessible, emotionally engaged, and responsive to them, the client will feel securely attached and thus will settled and be able enter into deep therapeutic work with their therapist. To nurture this secure attachment, the therapist seeks to be Rogerian in nature being congruent, empathetic, and holding the client with positive regard. Since EFT also incorporates insights from family systems, therapists are able to practice, more deeply, holding their client with positive regard. Often unhealthy interactional patterns (eg. yelling, withdrawal) are viewed as problematic by the therapist thus undermining their ability to hold the client with a positive attitude. However, since EFT sees negative interactional patterns as a coping or survival strategy that were useful at one time but now have become the problem, the therapist no longer sees the client as the problem but a victim of a stuck relational pattern. This shift in framework makes it far easier for the therapist to view the client in a positive way. In doing so, the client is able to experience a more secure attachment with their counsellor, an attachment that begins to take on field-like qualities. Diamond Approach and the Therapeutic Relationship The Diamond Approach, an individual approach to spiritual formation, has a similar starting point to EFT. Rather than focus on attachment, the Diamond Approach focuses on the childhood holding environment of the client. Almaas describes it this way: “If the environment is a good holding environment, it makes you feel taken care of, protected, understood, loved, and held in such a way that your consciousness -- which at the beginning of life is unformed, fluid, and changeable -- can grow spontaneously and naturally on its own. The soul in this respect is like a seedling. The seedling needs a particular holding environment in order to develop into a tree: the right soil, enough water, the right nutrients, the right amounts of light and shade. If it doesn't have the proper holding environment, it won’t grow steadily and healthily and it might not grow at all. A good holding environment, then, is the environment that is needed for the human soul to grow and develop into what she can become. It needs to provide a sense of safety and security, the sense that you are, and can count on, being taken care of. Your soul needs an environment that is dependable, consistent, attuned to your needs, and that provides for you in a way that is empathic to those needs” (Facets of Unity, pg. 38). This positive holding environment is what the therapist seeks to recreate with their client. They seek to hold all of their client’s experiences, especially their negative experiences (anger, weakness, anxiety, depression, fear, hatred, lust, fantasy, powerlessness, distrust, sadness, etc. ) in a nonjudgmental way. In many ways, the therapist practices all the Rogerian principles that make a deep trusting therapeutic relationship, namely authenticity, empathy, and positive regard. However, like EFT, the Diamond Approach holds all the client’s negative experiences in a way that does not blame the client. Instead, the ego structure within the person’s soul/psyche that is causing the person to become stuck in certain experiences becomes the focus of curiosity. The Diamond Approach understands every ego structure (coping strategies, rigid beliefs, relationship patterns, attachments, compulsions, etc.) as having a valid reason (survival, coping) that it formed in our past even though it is now problematic in the present. Seeing in this light, the person is no longer the problem but rather the ego structure within their soul is. Transference and Countertransference and the Therapeutic Relationship When the therapist holds their client’s experience in this way, they are forming a deep therapeutic relationship with their client. But a relationship never involves just one person. It always involves two people, in this case, the client and the therapist. This means that when therapists find themselves holding their client’s experiences, they also find themselves holding their own experiences that are arising in them as they listen and interact with their client. It is essential that counsellors pay attentions to both their client’s experience but also the experiences that are emerging in them as they listen and interact with their client. A common psychological framework used to understand these types of experiences are the dynamics of transference and countertransference. Transference was a word coined by Sigmund Freud to label the way patients "transfer" feelings from important persons in their early lives, onto the psychoanalyst or therapist” (//www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/sacramento-street-psychiatry/201003/countertransference-overview). We have already noted how clients will transfer their self-object needs of mirroring, idealizing, and twinning onto their therapists. However, if the client perceives their counsellor, at times as their unsafe parent, they will manage their counseling experience to keep it within their safe zone. With this form of transference, the client will suppress their negative feelings (sadness, anger, anxiety, hate, doubt, helplessness, guilt, shame, etc.) believing these experiences will cause their counsellor to reject them just as one or both of their parents did in the past. Freud “realized that transference is universal, and therefore could occur in the analyst as well” (ibid.) This transference in the therapist is called countertransference. Part of this countertransference involves the therapist experiencing a client like someone in their past, one of their parents, a sibling, a partner or wife, etc. However, therapists, similar to what has been noted in clients, often manage their clients ‘ experiences in session when clients expressed negative feelings that are outside the counsellor’s comfort zones. This discomfort is a form of countertransference for they are experiencing their client through the experiential framework of their own childhood environment. If the therapist’s parents didn’t allow them to hold comfortably their own tears, anger, or other negative emotions, the therapist will find it very difficult to hold these same rejected negative experiences in their clients. This is why Freud stressed that “the analyst experiencing countertransference should rid himself of these feelings by having further analysis himself” (ibid). When the therapeutic relationship is understood as an experiential field, it becomes very apparent that when we, as counsellors, manage ourselves, we are also at the same time managing the counselling field, and thus our clients. From a Diamond Approach perspective, it is a myth that the counsellor’s soul field is separate and independent of our client’s soul field. These respective soul fields overlap and when the secure attachment qualities of empathy, emotional connection, and responsiveness are strongly present, a very sensitive counselling field emerges between the client and the therapist. The sensitivity of this therapeutic field shuts down if a therapist needs to manage this field due to their discomfort with one or more experiences their client is sharing. This dampening of the counselling field is why “safe effective use of self” is so important in pastoral counselling training. Transpersonal Dynamics of the Counselling Field So far, I have reviewed the primary psychology theories that teach us about the dynamics that are active in the therapeutic relationship or counselling field: congruence, unconditional positive regard, and empathy of Rogerian Psychology; the mirroring, idealizing, and twinning dynamics of Self Psychology; empathy, emotional connection, and responsiveness of Attachment Theory; the nonjudgement holding of all experiences taught by the Diamond Approach; and the dynamics of transference and countertransference. As you review these theories, you soon realize that there are dynamics arising in the therapeutic field that don’t have their roots within the client or the therapist. True, these dynamics are experienced within the client and therapist, that is, the client and therapist are recipients of these experiences but neither person is the cause. Rather the experiences of compassion, love, joy, strength, power, inner support, truth/insight, etc. emerge in the soul fields of the client and therapist and thus are part of the emerging counselling field. The emergent quality of these experiences is why they are often called fruits of the Spirit in the Christian tradition, or the qualities of Essence within the Diamond Approach, and not the created works of the human person. This means that every life experience is a combination of emerging spiritual dynamics from the field of consciousness and the egoic dynamics that arise due to historical conditioning in our soul in reaction to what is arising. Knowing that both spiritual and egoic dynamics are present in the counselling field, this framework provides another therapeutic framework of how to work with clients. Working Therapeutically with the Counselling Field (a glimpse) Once the awareness of an experience enters our soul/mind, soon the experience often becomes distorted based on our childhood holding environment with all its conditioning. For example, when a client becomes aware of pain in their soul field, the spiritual dynamics of vulnerability, tenderness, compassion, softening, and possibly tears will naturally arise from the depth of their soul in response to soothe this pain. When a client shares this pain with someone like therapist, a similar compassionate response will naturally arise in the counsellor. These are all qualities of spirit at work and have nothing to do with the dynamics of transference or countertransference. However, if a client was raised in a family where vulnerability, tenderness, and tears were not safe to express, the historical ego structures within the client's soul will take over and begin to manage and distort that original emergent dynamic of compassion. Instead of becoming vulnerable and tearful, their ego structures will cause them to suppress this tenderness and move to a place where they express a tough indifference stance toward their pain. In contast, when a well trained counsellor is also aware of the counselling field, they will first experience the pain that the client has just shared, but they will also experience the qualities of compassion emerging in the counselling field. They will notice a tenderness, vulnerability, softness and even some sadness in the field causing them to feel compassion toward their client. If the therapist notices that their client has toughened up and disconnected from the experience of compassion in the field, this will trigger a curiosity within the therapist, “where is the compassion?” There is clearly some ego structure within their client’s soul that is blocking their ability to feel this compassion that can soothe their pain. As a therapist, I may used this observation and wonder out loud with my client, “you have just shared a very painful experience in your life. How does you heart/gut respond to what they have shared?” This may lead to a deeper exploration and vulnerability that allows us to explore their painful experiences around being vulnerable, tender, and compassionate with oneself. But many times, the client can’t go at this time to this place of vulnerability. I need to honor where they are, and in this case, they are in touch with their need to suppress their pain and vulnerability, which often means they are in touch with the secondary experience of anger, an anger and strength that is making it possible for them to manage their pain. Within the Diamond Approach, anger is closely connected with the essential quality or spiritual fruit of strength. This means that instead of seeing their anger as a problem, I see it as a bridge that can lead my client to the place of divine strength, a strength that they need to protect themselves from future harm, but also a strength that can allow them to eventually be able to sit with their experience of pain without getting lost in it. Sometime in the future, as they are able to be with their pain for longer periods of time, my client will eventually touch into the experience of compassion that is tryinig to emerge within them to soothe their pain. Conclusion Much, much more could be shared, but that gives you a glimpse into what counselling looks when you begin to see the therapeutic relationship as a counselling field. The concept of the counselling field brings into focus the common experience that can and does happen between client and counsellor beyond the dynamics of transference and countertransference. We begin to notice dynamics in the field that have little to do with the ego structures and historical conditioning in either of our souls. Instead, we notice spiritual qualities that are inherent to the counselling field, qualities which are call spiritual fruits in the Christian tradition and essential qualities within the Diamond Approach. Questions to Ponder: 1. When you have experienced what I am calling the counselling or relationship field in your life? What was that like for you? What made this sensation of oneness possible for you? 2. As you explore more deeply the relationship or counselling field that you form with people, which dynamics are egoic in nature (historical conditioning: coping patterns, emotional strategies, transference, countertransference, rigid beliefs, unresolved memories, etc.)? Which ones are emergent in nature, that is, arising in a pure form in the moment (compassion, insight, peace, joy, strength, power, inner support, curiosity, vulnerability, openness)? Written by Gord Alton (May 2019)
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