Hello and thanks for joining me today. Today I have Dr. Eric Monsager. He's been on here
a few times. Dr. Monsager is an Adlerian depth psychotherapist based in Switzerland.
And recently I've been learning more about internal family systems which uses a lot of
parts language. If you're familiar with it you'll know that they talk about the exile part,
the manager part, the firefighter part, and it talks about how you have all of these parts
that are kind of, maybe in some ways it seems like they're at war with one another because
they're in some ways they're fighting against one another but you reframe it in the sense
that they're only trying to help one another. You have like the firefighter part that comes
in when the exile part feels overwhelmed. And so they're all in a lot of ways working toward
a common goal, not a common goal, but they all have different goals but they're all trying
to help out. And if you're anything like me or perhaps the rest of humanity, there are
probably at times where you feel like you're at odds with yourself. I know a lot of times
I want to do the best thing for myself, for my family, for other people, but that can
be a lot of responsibility and it can be really hard. And then there's like this other part
of me that just wants to come in and go live a life of frivolity and ease. But a lot of
times it's actually a really big struggle. And there might be times where you even feel
some distance from a part of yourself where it's like, who is that or where is that coming
from or I thought I had worked through that. It's just so... I reached out to Dr. Monsager
because I wanted to hear more about the Illyrian perspective on this and he's mentioned before.
And I've read in some of Adler's works about how he conceptualizes the personality as unified.
And I think that was a little bit foreign to me, even with I think my small understanding
of Carl Jung's works, how it's kind of you're working toward becoming whole or you're working
toward individuation and you're working toward becoming unified, whereas Adler says that
we're already unified from my understanding. So Dr. Monsager, thank you for joining me
again today. And yeah, with that, can you kind of let us know what you have prepared
or how you conceptualize this?
Daniel, I really appreciate you reaching out. And we originally had conceived this just
as a friendly talk. I think both of us are happy to share it with others. But I have
in mind a little bit of a dialogue. And I mean, if you could share a little bit about
those parts that you experience. And I don't know if there is a... I mean, where you could
illustrate the firefighter or the exile or something to that degree. I'd like to hear
what the experience is like for you.
Okay. Let's see. For me, there is... So I'm trying to think of how personal to get with
it or how revealing...
Not, not probably. You can even make one up if you've heard it in class or something like
that. I didn't mean to put you on the spot that way.
No, yeah, you're good. I don't mind. I'm just trying to think of a good clear example that
is worth sharing. I think... For instance, with the internal family systems, if you have
somebody who... It's like every time I try to do the right thing, then there's a part
of me that comes in and is really critical of me. And then I start feeling really down.
And then I end up maybe cutting or watching porn or doing something that is completely
against my ideal self. So I have my ideal self that I'm striving for. But... And there's
part of me that works toward that goal and likes to be seen that way. But then there's
a part of me that comes in and is super critical and then ends up... There's a part of me that
goes completely against what I'm striving for.
Yeah, good. Thanks for that. So the ideal self or the ego ideal was a concept Adler developed
actually and Freud kind of took over. But that's another thing. And he used it differently
than Adler. Adler was concerned about how is it that we make it through life and draw
from our experiences into overcoming the existential issues of not being very fit for this world
without our families and the like. But this idea of trying to be our ideal self, as you
said, and then finding myself doing something else is the issue you raised earlier in our
conversations on the email about Paul in scripture. I don't do the things I want to do and I end
up doing things I don't want to do. I think he was being very humane and human in such
an example. Adler would look at such a thing to say, and he often did, quoting Martin Luther,
don't look at the tongue in my mouth. Look at the tongue in your shoes to see where you're
going. Say that one. Or he'd say, don't look at the head. Look at the fists, because they're
the ones that you're going to have to watch out for when you're interacting with a belligerent.
Luther would say such a thing. Now, Adler's point also was, if I want to see what's happening
in my client initially, I don't want to listen to the story immediately. I actually want
to watch their body movements in the light as if in a pantomime, because they will tell
their story. They can't not tell their story, because they're not thinking about the way
they're expressing themselves physically. And the body is a part of the whole, and it
will tell the story. Now, that's a lot of stuff around the issue of what is going on
when I want to do one thing and I think about that, but I end up doing it and feeling bad
about myself or actually harming myself. Adler's going to suggest that the action orientation
is truer to what the person believes than the actual ideal. And that the ideal might
be put there to impress myself and to make myself feel better, that I ought to do better,
I could do better. More likely, because Adler believes in the community around us, the person
may be struggling trying to be accepted in her or his community, their community, because
they don't feel good about themselves for whatever the history is. So he would say,
it's an apparent dichotomy. We act as if there are two of us. And it is to its own purpose.
Something that he quoted Breuer, who worked with Freud early on, also from Austria, who
was one of the first one Adler could remember that talked about purpose of behavior, interesting,
prior to Adler, that is, what is going beyond behind the scenes is helping the person accomplish.
Just by the little scenario you gave me, it would be a guess of mine in working with such
a person that they think they have to be right minded or not involved in self harm and like
they have to look good in the community, but they don't know how. And when they harm themselves,
they lower the expectation. Okay. And they're relieved temporarily by the fact that the
ideal has been obliterated and pushed out of the way. But also the emotion that is brought
about by the actual behavior is one that says, I can do better than that. So then they start
the system all over again, you know, and I can get up to it. So Adler told us in that
regard, always watch out for guilt feelings. Following Nietzsche's lead, he said, they're
often immoral, these guilt feelings that we can feel remorse, which Adler, the term translation
of the term remorse was an action oriented movement away from the behavior that I'm not
accepting of myself. Okay. Rather, or one can say I am guilty, which is a, which is
a judgment or an evaluation of the thing that was done. But if I'm feeling guilty, it's
not just in the Christian churches. I know this, you know, from my Jewish friends and
my Muslim friends that they also have this sense of retribution or repayment, I should
say, restitution, I mean, you're pardoned. And some people, I mean, there used to be
self whippings and stuff like that. Do your penance is one. Holy days that where we make
repair and the like. There is in our collective understanding of humanity, that I can expiate
my sins. And then what I go back to being a sinner is how the human tends to express
him or herself in such a way. So I know that that addresses your very specific one, but
I would say generally the parts idea and Adlerian would say, because Adlerians are, I was told
as a young Adlerian, theoretical purists, but eclectic technical people, you know, whatever
works and whatever helps a person we're for that, if it puts them in the direction of
social interest and, and healing themselves so they can be helpful to other people. There's
no objection to the idea by an Adlerian that I know of talking parts in the light, but
we would look for the parts and see what they're doing for the person. And it was a fortunate
slip that you made. They have the same goal. No, not the same goal. You said they have
different things in mind, but there is something that says, uh, I am going somewhere. And that's
what we call purposive behavior. And take the moment to say that's also what Adler meant
and who's meant by intentionality to be intentional is not to be deliberate, deliberate is the
consciousness and to be intentional is to not know, except in a vague kind of way that
when I get up, I'll eventually get to the door and open it. But I'm leaving now. Thank
you. Goodbye. Intentionality is my purpose of movement through life. And, and I want
to say a few things about that because without that, some of the theoretical underpinnings
of psychotherapy altogether fall apart. There's a fantastic author by the name of Ian McGilchrist
that you do well to interview, but he's a very interested man, a psychiatrist who talks
about the known science of the left brain, right brain kind of issues. And he says these
kinds of things, dichotomies exists. A holist, someone who is dealing with holism doesn't
say dichotomies aren't there. Left brain, right brain is a dichotomy. And it's every,
every proof that, you know, the brains are asymmetrical in this sense. Of course we wouldn't
deny dichotomy, but if they don't work together toward a whole and toward a movement through
life, they're not very good, much good to us. The left brain, roughly detail and focus
and the right brain, big view, emotions and things that are, help us understand the bigger
picture. You know, and he says, if we readapt the atomistic look, the parts approach, we
make two primary mistakes he suggests. I wanted to share those with you. One is the direction
goes instead of toward the whole, where we would understand why it's all together and
what the big meaning is. It goes backwards and down into the parts that says, what is
this part doing and what is that part doing? And then he says, possibly more serious. What
is the, let's see, he says, what is the cause of this one? And once you drop into the causal
level, it's a, it's a free for all because there's no way to get out in front of things
on the mind level. And so he says, instead, the scientists have always gone to gathering
the detail and then seeing what is coming of this. The scientists haven't always done
that, but greater science moves that direction. Science does this, you know, scientific atomizing
and trying to determine what each part is for. But once that's determined, you still
don't have the whole, that's the whole gestalt axiom, you know, that the sum is greater.
So McGilchrist just kind of puts out a warning that way and says, we are always looking for
the greater picture and we have a brain that has evolved to do that. It's never capitulated
to the left brain and it's never interfered with the left brain doing its thing, protecting
us, watching out for things. Okay. Now from that point, I want to share another part that
the existentialists, et cetera, and the humanists, humanistic theories remind us that in order
to be fully human here, we have to transcend ourselves. Now that's a fairly common saying,
but what could it mean if we have parts? Am I transcending my parts or am I gathering
my parts together and then transcending them? Okay. Or maybe there's a simple answer to
that. I don't mean to be argumentative, you know, but I'm saying the transcendence into
something bigger and more important is the human endeavor that has pushed us through
evolution or pulled us through, better said, evolution for eons and eons. And so now when
I look back at the parts, okay, that you named adroitly, the question has to be to me, what
would be going on there? Maybe, I mean, I don't want to answer it, but I would like
to ask you to come back in and say, if there was a firefighter that came in, is there a
scenario you would say that this is what the firefighter is up to or the exile or the comforter?
Yeah. And that way of thinking, the exile is like the wounded part of yourself that
gets maybe emotionally overwhelmed or is under a lot of pain. The firefighter, the firefighter
doesn't really think about the circumstances, it just sees a burning building and it just
tries to put out the fire. So the firefighter could be the part of you that cuts or that
goes to something that we might see as destructive. But the firefighter is trying to distract
from the pain because it doesn't think that the exile can handle it. So it's just like
called in to basically cause a distraction maybe. And then there's the manager part,
which is the part of you that is going to be critical, tries to keep you in line, tries
to get you back on the right path, so to speak. And then there's one other part, but I can't
think of the other one. So they all have maybe different goals.
Yeah. Or different objectives, one would say when we're making managerial plans, we have
so many objectives, but it all goes into the same goal. It could be. I would suggest that
it'd be a good way to organize it. But I suspected this and I just acknowledge without embarrassment,
I'm not up to speed with the parts model. Although the family constellation, they had
grabbed my attention for obvious reasons, Dr. Adler. But you see, this is going to be
a hard truth or small t, small truth. Adler says, my healing is my responsibility. And
my community recognizes that and endorses me and supports me, speaking of parts, to
say, we can get through this together, but it's your job. Ideally. Okay. And in that
regard, Adler was not merciless, he was quite a gentle soul, to hear it from any of the
stories that we still have around about him. But he was unwavering when it came to using
his humor and his empathy and his evidently sweet, grandmotherly attitude to say, what
are you going to do about this? What shall we do together? How can I help you? But in
the end, it ends up your job. And I think that is being lost generationally, currently,
probably won't be lost altogether. But it's not attended to at all. The firefighter sees
a fire and doesn't understand why I'm burning with this thing. It just tries to save me.
Thank you very much. I'll set the fire again as soon as you're gone, because I guess I
needed that fight, you know, or the exile is wandering around not understanding where
they belong in the lake. And you say, come here, I've found you, I'll put you to work
here and we'll work this out together. That would be helpful even sounds community oriented.
But if I haven't addressed why the exile, either exiled themselves, or somehow found
themselves in, you know, unconnected, there would be the tendency to go back to that,
unless there's not just a cognitive understanding, but a new, a new conviction, I can still see
it. Okay. And in what I'm trying to put across here is each of those parts has a responsibility
to the whole to, to find the way out, which way out, there's an answer to that, because
of course, there's 360, or then in three dimensions, how many degrees are there that we can go.
But the answer is always toward the community. I have got to heal. Because I can do things
that nobody else can do. People might argue this. And they, of course, I would, you know,
accept that I would argue politely with him. But because I can't tell somebody to help
me, but I can say, I would like your help, I could use your help. I can see that you
understand things. And here we are in a great example of it. You explained to me at least
briefly enough for me to interact with you about parts models, you know, and the like.
So all of us together can do far more for the healing of the world than any one person
can do by getting too lost in the parts issue. I would, I would say though, truly, no argument
with the parts as long as they heal enough so I can turn outward, not inward, or no longer
inward. That's where we start. That's what depth psychology is about anyway. But we turn
our outward because there's much work to be done. There's much work to be done. And the
many hands make light work. And it can be fun work. Ask the hunter gatherers when they
are out hunting and gathering, they're having the times of their life. Occasional danger,
of course. But I mean, that's what we learned from the civilized to death and some of those
literature out there is that the democratic familial approach to life is to say, we can
do this together. And it's always the motto of Adler to to look that way. That raise a
question or two.
Yeah, yeah. I think a first a few things that stand out is it seems like so with also I
recently her name is losing me right now. But the very last video I uploaded, I spoke
with the lady who started a union center for spiritual sciences. And she talked about the
ultimate goal is also to turn outward from a union perspective is also to turn outward.
And that what benefits me benefits you what benefits you benefits me and to be and so
it's and that's kind of across I think most religions as well. And it seems across therapies.
So I think that that is worth causing to note. Yeah. Because I think that is also something
that tends to get something. Yeah.
Adler mentioned this in the book you and I talked about earlier. He said, in a sense,
psychology is the late comer. And its worth is that it has in a what he calls scientific
way but in an empirical way we would say today shown that the golden rule which also appears
in all book religions and in many of the spoken religions that this is the way forward to
do to other people the way you want to be treated. You know, scientists found that also
a little later. And I think she's saying it from a union perspective and I say cheers
from the Adlerian.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So with the gestalt picture, you have a bunch of different parts. But together
all of those parts create a unified whole. But I'm trying to think of there's an example
of because I can see what it means to say that although it maybe it feels like there
are different parts of us, there is a unified whole. And in that sense, there's a unified
personality. I'm trying to and I guess, I guess if you have like almost like a mandala
and the mandala is a is one whole thing. But there's a bunch of different parts. There's
like triangles, maybe squares and stars and and you could say that the different shapes
are fighting against one like they're they're they're butting up against one another because
you know, if the circles were like you need to be a circle, why are you? Why are you all
pointy as a triangle? Maybe that's kind of what we're doing in terms of personality is
we have all of these different components, parts. And it seems like they're at odd with
one another because you've got a triangle over here, a square over here, maybe a star
here. But ultimately, they make up a mandala, something like that. Is that accurate? I think
look, this is such a good point. You've made a metaphor. You've made a beautiful metaphor.
Metaphors are meant for us to be able to communicate across the gap in such a way that my awareness
of triangles and circles and colors as you just described it, joins yours. They're separate
from one another. But that's what a metaphor does. It brings also the emotional content.
And Adler simply said, use them, but be careful. Because the metaphor isn't everything. And
people can jump into a given metaphor. Like the tripartite mind, ego, id, and super ego,
etc. Or, you know, anyone that maybe the young would start to say, they're all well and good,
just like I affirm the family systems is good. But it's a metaphor. We mustn't mistake it
for reality. That's always a problem. Adler always, everything can always be different.
He insisted on it. We're only taking it from our viewpoint and the best we can and explain
it. So in that sense, it's marvelous. I can use a metaphor and as far as we can go, we
should go together. Then if there's still some distance to go, we need to help each other
in our own other directions. Complete that. But I want to ask you because of the metaphor.
Would you agree or would it make sense to you that the mandala itself, mandala has a
unifying principle to it?
Like a teleological one? Well, not yet. Okay, we'll get there. First step is, what organizes
the mandala? I mean, in the nuisance sense? It's usually like, it's made up of a bunch
of different parts, but it's symmetrical. And it's usually got some type of a boundary
that even if the boundary is usually like, or if it's not symmetrical, it can be composed
of like opposites. So like the left side is one theme, the right side is a different theme.
Yeah, what unify a unifying principle? That's a good question.
Well, let me maybe take a guess because they're not all that is the boundary. What is equal
distance from the boundary? Yes, that's what I would say is what it's all organized around.
And I just use that as a metaphor to share this little bit that comes from Adler's very
creative mind. But I mean, he was a doctor and he wasn't just thinking this stuff up.
But he certainly didn't have available to him then what we have available to us now,
which Dan Siegel is very clear on the organization of the mind starts haphazardly almost. And
chaos theory is the best explanatory theory we have nowadays for showing how the mind
finally doesn't coagulate. I'm mixing metaphors there. But it finally in a little baby has
enough connections that it starts looking for other connections. Adler called it the
apperceptive schema. And we know what schema is. He says once the schema is set, we start
taking in things only through the schema. You see, it's organized itself. And I won't
even see other things, just the things that come through the schema. Now, at this point,
when he talks about the when he talks about it developmentally, he says, This happens
probably as early as your third year. Okay. Now, that's pretty close to within 18 months,
you say 18 to three years, 18 months to three years, when the hippocampus, which governs
memory or helps us with memory, finally ripens enough to do its thing where the amygdala
is firing with us as soon as we show up on the on the scene. But it takes a hippocampus
to organize. And as soon as we as soon as we organize, we can start having memories.
And Adler was saying, It's around this time that we have a thought about how I fit in
here as a big brother as a new baby, as a little girl as you know, whatever the the
individuals facing at a time, they figure it out rudimentary at three years or so. Now
that it's that then that they're figuring out how I fit in. And that's where our goal
comes from. That's what I want to say. And that goal is like the center of the mandala.
And or is the fixing of the first neuro nets that didn't start looking to produce other
neuro nets kind of like them. And it's I'm not saying it proves it. I'm just saying it
fits in the theory that is not argumentative or dismissive of today's sciences, you know,
and we keep with would that be would that be like, let's say, just as an example, what
brings to my mind is, if you have that child, and they that's their center, and they grow
up within this family, and they start, everything builds off of maybe I'm the middle child,
or something, or I'm the oldest, or, and then, okay, what goes along with being the oldest,
maybe responsibility, or I have to, you know, set a good example, there's different things.
And then so then the way that they learn to manage stress or emotional pain in the family,
maybe maybe they learn that, you know, that my parents are having this emotional difficulty.
So I got to be the one that steps up and takes care of my siblings. So then they also put
that on themselves. And when they have emotional pain, they just try to repress it or stuff
it down. Because that's the way they've managed it. They've had to push it down in order to
Yeah, does that make sense? They would come to learn that I don't pay attention to myself,
I pay attention to other people. And it's a good start rudimentary for humanisms. And
the like. But of course, kids are prone to the mistake of overdoing it and overcompensating
for this. And so you're suggesting this kid may well not pay attention to the self and
anxiety that is being endorsed by parents who aren't helping this child even do it
himself. He just mans up or woman's up and takes care of things for people. And that
organizes their understanding of themselves. Certainly it does. And I'll go this far as
to say, such a person is then at risk if you want to say it that way, for finding a partner
that they can organize that is sad like mom or dad. And when I see that, I will know I'm
in love. And now I know how to interact with this person. It's not quite that bold. But
there you have it is how your secret goal or the fictional goal that you have suggested
is, I will be the helper in the family or the consoler in the family now becomes the
adult consoler. And maybe becomes a good pastor or a good doctor, maybe. But if it's a troubled
and disturbed thing to see being overemphasized, they're going to get into a lot of bad relationships
where they can console people. Maybe, you know, it wouldn't be satisfied until they
have somebody who is unconsolable, that they can press themselves to feel right about themselves.
Yeah. Okay, so let's say earlier you said that the ideal self is less real than the
way you're actually doing in the moment. Thinking of like, I have a few things around that.
So that maybe this is my limited understanding of humanism. But I would say generally speaking,
it's like the real put like the potential is hard to explain. But like the real you
is probably is like saddled down with pain and grief and turmoil. And all you got to
do is unload like work through that, remove the barriers to growth, and then the individual
will grow. So in some ways that to me, I think of like the ideal self, all that you can be,
that's that's the you that's just being hindered currently by this pain or this stuff that
you haven't worked through. And if we can help you work through that pain or remove
those barriers to growth, then you will become all that you are. So that nice premise for
therapy. What are you? What? Isn't it? I would agree. I want to, I think as an adlerian,
my colleagues would agree with this. There isn't actually an ideal self. That is a fiction
we create for ourselves. Fictions aren't false. But neither are they true or real. They're
meant to guide us through life. And, and we realize some of them, you know, but the fiction
of an ideal is to say, if I can unload these burdens that have come to me, some through
my own actions, most of them not because the world is the way it is, is to say, at every
moment I drop one of the bonds, I can progress in a direction that I don't know exactly
what it is, except I'm getting better at that. And they get better and better and better.
And I guess there's no outside limit to that. That's why Adler and Maslow liked each other
so much, I think, but they were like minded spirits were thinking about this. And, and
Maslow could see what self actualization it has its own growth pains today. But it was
something like that. So our ideal self keeps us going. Remember, Adler said we never reach
the perfect community of social interests. But it all it always draws us toward it, which
you just described. Yeah. Is the the teleological pull? Is that so we have perhaps a biological
teleology? Is the ideal self or the fictional? I do self is a fine word as long as we don't
reify it. That's all. Yeah. Okay. What is the is is the the teleology that Adler speaks
about? Is that purely psychological? Is that based on our fantasies or our ideal selves?
Is that what pulls us? Or is there something else that gives us a direction?
It's important question. The existentialist say the future is what actually draws us.
Because we maybe other animals can also do it. But humans dwell in what's going to happen
next. What about tomorrow? What about next year? What about the next crop? You know,
what about the rainy season coming? We're always thinking about that way. That seems
to be part of the organizing element. And why we are meaningfully meaningfully looking
toward the future for the ultimate, which includes the ideal, but the ultimate, but
the big you is where the concept of God and Allah and Nirvana all share common ground.
You know? Yeah, I think that is part of it. I guess that's where the teleology is joined.
You know, there's the big one, which is kind of religious or spiritual, certainly. But
there is a normal one. I'm going to get up tomorrow morning. What am I going to do tomorrow
morning? No, that's teleology. Uh huh. I guess in a sense, isn't that just as real as as
the present? I would I would ask, why would you say that? And what is the import of that?
I wouldn't deny what you might be meaning. Yeah. Because because earlier when I was talking
about you have your ideal self and all this that you're striving for, you said that the
idea that ideal self is less real than what you're actually doing in the present. So in
my mind, I'm trying to get to aren't they both in some ways just as real or are we going
based on purely like an behaviorist approach? Oh, yeah. Gosh. So enter again McGillchrist.
His latest work, The Matter with Things is trying to help us understand that we are creating
this all around us. And I think he would say to you, it's exactly the same. But with limitations
in this sense, that as we approach our ideal, it shifts with our knowledge, our new experience,
the new people in our life. So whatever we had as an ideal yesterday with that was minus
the knowledge I have today, couldn't be the same ideal that I'm bringing today. See? And
but I can grow toward it in a very real way. And then speaking of Maslow, and dear Karl
R. Yeah, Carl Rogers, you have the congruent issue, you know, that the person who is actualizing
gets a clear vision of the good, the beautiful, and actualizes that moment by moment sometimes.
And so it does become real. And it's not any longer, I do what I don't want to do, and
cannot accomplish what I want. You know, I'm, I'm thinking and loving exactly what I'm
doing. Yeah, giving it my best effort. And that's really enough for me. That's what makes
it a congruent ideal. Yeah. Um, another sidebar, and then I want to get back to the main question
is, um, the teleology then, does the teleological pool? Is it? Is there like an objective constant?
Or does that also shift throughout time? Or both? Well, it depends on how you look at
it, where it's pointing. So Adler said, and you know, that's where I'm coming from. The
scientist should stay out of the decision about God. We can neither deny nor confirm.
It's not our job. The psychological scientist is to aid the person in their journey, but
not determine the end goal of that journey. So for a long time, as we know, psychology
fought and still it's really popular for some of these scientists, and I respect a lot of
them, but they just argue against Christianity and religion all the time, you know, picking
the worst examples, and it's not hard to get them. Okay, fair enough. They give no credit
to the organization of religion over time and humanizing of people. And okay, but science
isn't meant to destroy or to, um, avoid, not avoid, but deny or prove it is there to help
in our understanding. So you asked a good question, but it's to the wrong person in
a sense. Okay, so well, that's a little bit revealing, because I'm curious, my, and what
I had in my mind was, yeah, there's, there's that view that teleology is beyond ourselves
and there's also, I was wondering maybe from a psychological view, is it basically is teleology
based in on psychology or like, for instance, other points is toward community, communal
living, social, social striving. Is that like an objective teleological poll for everyone
all the time is we're all pulled toward that. Um, but maybe there's the path toward that
you have a dip, you have smaller teleological polls that shift.
I'm getting the spirit of it. Yeah. Uh huh. You might be, uh, making it more real in your
mind as a pool even then, then I would work with, uh, in the, in the client arena. We
only know there is tomorrow and it feels like I want to be there tomorrow. So I'm going
to act as if I'm going to wake up tomorrow and get on with my work. And it's just day
by day, minute by minute, et cetera, that kind of thing. But the Tilo's teleological
viewpoint certainly predates, uh, Aristotle and those, those people and Thomas Aquinas,
the theologian picked it up and, and kind of adapted it to the Christian model, which
liked or not. It's a theme that, uh, shows up as heaven and hell and, you know, purgatory
for the Catholics and things like that. But those are all metaphors, according to the
psychologist psychological look, not judging it as only a metaphor if one believes in its
actuality, but there's no proof for it on this side of the issue. And, uh, you know,
people would argue it's in the written word. Therefore that's the proof. Well, that's a
different kind of proof and it's for, you know, different people. But, um, yeah, it's
been around a long time and it was poo poo for a long time. But as science has become
more physics and the like and more expansive physics itself starts to not prove, but at
least approve of this kind of thinking and what's next. What's next is teleological.
Yeah. Okay. Okay. Um, is it too simplistic to say that? So the way I was thinking about
it earlier is you have this ideal version of yourself that you're working toward. And
a lot of times you follow through with that ideal. You, you make a donation, you help
someone. Um, but then you, you go home and you do something against your ideal. Um, and
I was looking at that as kind of like two different parts of yourself wanting different
things. Um, and basically what I got from what you were saying is that we are basically
we are complex. We are more complicated than that and kind of, uh, what we are doing right
now is, uh, cause, okay, so let me backtrack. You were talking about when someone comes
into your office, it's not so much about what they're saying, but about their body language
and then they're, yeah, their actions. So I guess there, there are, I could see someone
in my office and their actions say, maybe I interpret their actions as someone who is,
yeah, a very helpful, genuine person is, um, trying to be honest and transparent, but then
they leave my office and then they go push someone off the sidewalk. Right. So our actions
vary from time to time. Um, so yeah, I'm still struggling.
This is really fair, Daniel. I think I've got the gist of this. Um, you're right in
my limited office. I will only see so much. That's why we do the lifestyle questionnaire
to understand their early memories and their interactions with their family, et cetera.
So we try to see as much as we can see in that regard. If he tells me, I left your office
last week and the frigging sidewalk was so busy and no one was moving, I had to push
somebody off the sidewalk to get home again. I'd be curious about that. And I'd ask that
person to compare that with the kindness I had interpreted when he saw that bug in my
office and he didn't stomp on it. Can you tell me about that? I want to hear them put
that together first because we all have stories. Our left brain will always exonerate us and
tell us this is what, this is the reason I did that. Okay. And then in our work together,
if that person is trying to grow by that, I mean, incongruency and toward an ideal self
that they may have imagined or may not. And I would want to stimulate their thinking along
the idea of a better and better and better self. We then have some baseline to start
with to see how many people he pushed off the sidewalk next week and next week making
light a little bit. But the incongruence is not a puzzle to me. It is the norm in a sense.
If you allow me just a minute, I'll tell you what the depth adlyrients anyway make of that.
Adversaries always look for movement. That's the idea of action, you know, but there's
psychological movement and physical movement, emotional movement, all of this is movement.
It tends in a given predictable direction. And if a person is moving one way, well, I
may have just concluded this, I had more to say, but it's skipping me right now, is that
we want to see if they are being consistent or not. And we will always reference them
in that regard, not just what we're seeing, you know, what their emotional tone is and
the like to see if there is a congruence that is starting to develop. And if they feel they
are, by the way, the ideal, the self-ideal, we've been talking about, ego-ideal or whatever,
we would say it's not very clear to people. The one they can tell you about is not the
one they're going for, as far as going, is the counter-fiction. There is a need for a
person or to look social, even if they're not being social, except for the really sociopathic
mentality and the like, they want to look good. It's a plague nowadays to look good
in front of people because of screens and stuff like that, but they want to look good.
And so he may well just in the office, the person we were talking about, want to put
on the show for me so he can go tell his friends, yeah, my therapist thinks I'm pretty well
put together. So that becomes the counter-fiction, that kind of behavior. It's not at all social
interest, as you and I have talked about before, which is the motivator to accept help as needed
and to do both of those things for the betterment of something beyond. Whether I can formulate
it just then or not, I'm leaning in that direction. So we have to be aware of that counter-fiction
and we look for it all the time because the structure of movement has to do with your
inferior feeling, your fictional goal where you're compensating and going for. The counter-fiction
covers the goal because it's not very social usually, at least in the clinical population.
And then your measure of social interest, and that is metaphorically the direction of
the movement. Is it toward and helpful to people or is it a way or against or somehow
hurting people, your movement? And so this just occurs to me, the counter-fiction is
a part. It could be a part. It could be a bothersome part. People usually don't disown
it. They just say, that's not my better self, or I was just being a rear end. That kind
of dismissiveness goes nowhere to move into a congruent zone where the person would actually
be more happy with themselves.
I guess that you said, maybe I'm just very ignorant, but I'm trying to follow along.
You said that incongruency does not give it any trouble in your conceptualization. And
I'm thinking like, yeah, congruency to me is almost more important than if you are,
like congruency to me is one of the most important things. Maybe I don't know how to explain
it, but so if you are incongruent, how can you be unified but incongruent?
Well it's a million dollar question. You said it earlier yourself, it's not incongruent.
It's just an apparent incongruence. If you get deep enough, you see what is really going
on and where they're really going. And if they say, I want to be this, but there's no
action in that direction, that's a deception that they're putting out because they want
you to think I'm that, but I don't want to make the effort. I didn't want to say,
I mean to convey that, oh, we're all incongruent and what's the heck. My point is, we are all
not there yet and incongruencies likely show up. That is the human error. But to not be
concerned about that and be running the government on one level and going home and beating your
partner on the other, that kind of stuff is a blight on humanity. So we are always working
toward congruence to be sure. But first in the therapeutic area, nobody to date has come
to me saying, presenting problem, I want to be congruent. I want to introduce it to them
and gently and sporadically and see if I can catch their interest in it and get them leaning
forward to tell me more about that. Because it's going to take what we call here a lot
of good hard work. But that's Adler and the reference to the repentant sinner, to Jean
Valjean is that he never tired of helping people. Once he got it straight in his head,
he spent himself in that direction and he enjoyed it. I'm not saying everybody should
be Jean Valjean, but it wouldn't hurt the world if we were going that direction. So
it's that person who understands I have been helped. I couldn't have done it without somebody
else. And I guess since I'm still alive, why don't I pay it back? Or why don't I participate
in that? I can never pay it in a way. I don't know if I have to feel beholden that way.
But I feel loved and I want to love people with this. So what's wrong with that? That's
good, hard work. It's effort, not trying. It's not just trying to be a nice person.
It is making the effort to correct myself, to understand my language, to root out those
things when I see a person that's different from me and I feel repulsed. That's a pretty
good indication that I've got some work that hasn't been addressed. Wendell Berry being
the example of trying to bring white males to an understanding of part of our legacy
without being afraid of it, without being proud of it either. That's not neither are
appropriate. We've got work to do. We've got healing to be done.
Okay, that makes sense to me. I think I understand it. And I think also, as we've talked more
about it, even with like the internal family systems, it makes more sense to me thinking,
like you said, they all have different objectives. But the ultimate goal is for the whole system
to move toward, you might say self actualization or healing or growth. They just have different
objectives on how to get that to happen. How much time do you have? Can I have your off
for a second?
Yeah, I'm loving it. I have two topics. One, you were just talking about like Jean Valjean
and how he got to such a, you might say like a high place, a place of internally motivating
love for other people and helping oriented. There's like, I'm trying to think of how to
explain this, but I've heard, I don't know exactly if I interpret this correctly, but
like the tree with the branches that reach higher into heaven has roots that reach deeper
into hell. I might be saying that wrong, but some that that concept. And like, if you if
you have a whole personality and you have the side that's oriented toward good behavior,
toward doing good things, there has to be some type of a compensation. Like nobody can
and I don't know, almost like the more good the more good that you're able to produce
and send out the more capacity you also have for evil or for wrong. I don't know if that's
I'm still trying to understand that or even work through my misunderstandings of that,
but I was curious what you think about.
Yeah, I would. If I were to assent to that, I haven't thought about such a thing in quite
a while, but it would seem to me from Adler's guidance, he said dichotomies generally are
developmental issue. Kids have to dichotomize as they organize their world. And some people
forget to update that, you know, and so we end up with heaven and hell. Adler said, we
have to remember, all opposites are still in the continuum. They're variants of one
another. They're not true opposites. Okay. So if I took that concept and said that taller
branches represent deeper roots, I would say, but that's within a forest, you have to remember
that and both of them are variable. You know, and I would also say if it's going deep because
it needs that kind of grounding to keep it upright, it's reaching for nourishment and
moisture, etc. Which is to say, who's to call that evil? You see, just because it's dark
and dank and sometimes swampy and full of creepy crawlies. Well, it's keeping the tree
alive. But see, there's a relativity going on there. That's what Adler wanted to bring
us to. So sorry, I've got a phone here. Sorry. The relativity. Yeah. But I would just say
that to look at heaven and hell, or any kind of dichotomy is to put it in, we have to put
it back in a continuum or some fashion of a three dimensional world, or it's, it's a
metaphor gone wrong. So I and you've just given the expression of Oh, gosh, antithetical
antitheticals in Adler's world, we're how we locate ourselves in life, you know. And
we have to watch out for them. If I'm not popular, everyone hates me. If I haven't gotten
an A on the test, I'm an absolute failure. That's antithetical thinking. And and it's
a it's a blight. And it doesn't. It just it makes me self focused. Instead of saying,
I exist in a continuum, or in a three dimensional world, you know. So yeah, okay. And then this
is this is completely separate. But this, I've been thinking about this for a while.
And you mentioned this earlier. So you were talking about restitution and how people would
engage in like self deflation. And you Yeah, you sin and you have to repent and then you
send your pet. And so this is purely from a psychological point of view, my question
might the way I'm trying to understand this currently. If you think about the different
religious perspectives, and I'm going to focus mainly on Christian perspectives, because
I'm most familiar with that at the moment. And maybe the typical like you mentioned Luther
earlier, he came up, I don't know, he came up with it, but his whole was like the penal
substitution. So so God was wrathful, and he needed justice. And then Christ died on
the cross to fulfill that wrath and to pay our sins for us. And then as long as we accept
that gift through faith, then we are saved. And I was thinking, I remember thinking like,
why couldn't God just forgive? Why does why does there have to be a price that was paid
or a blood sacrifice? Why couldn't God just forgive? And then so thinking psychologically
about it, I'm gonna use mixed terms and things. But I was thinking, like, if God represents
kind of our like, individually speaking, our super ego or something like our own morality
of holding us to a higher standard. And and then when are we if you've ever worked with
someone who has what you might call a harsh super ego, the unrelenting high standards
for yourself, and you try to tell them, Oh, just forgive yourself, that's that doesn't
work. And so then, then, okay, well, if if that's represent if the super ego or the harsh
super ego represents God and that kind of framework, what is Jesus? Is he just like
a scapegoat like a defensive projection onto something else that pays the price for us,
which then causes the super ego to be a little bit less harsh for him for a time. And then
that's why we focus on Christ as the scapegoat, and we feel better, the super ego lessons
and then we come back around to realizing how sinful we are and then so that that process
repeats itself. My reflection on that is that the the substitute
substitutionary payment theory, or theology is one among several Christologies. And I
don't mean to judge that I think that's not the best one for today. Because it does make
God the Father into a brutal, unforgiving monster. And it's what the those earlier
scientists I was talking about, glory and that kind of stuff, because they they can't
understand it. And frankly, trying today to understand it, when it was actually a an issue
2000 or more years ago, when it didn't make better sense, because the world was organized
that way. Doesn't mean we have to only embrace that Christology, the book of James and the
book of Peter and the books of john, all say it a little bit differently. And so there's
different ways to say it, you know, because I would not subscribe to God being just a
voice in my head. God is an endpoint. See, my issue would be, God is the fictional final
goal that might not be fictional. That's that's not for me to decide. He is the ultimate goal.
Adler said it was social interest, pure social interest, which means all of us are functioning
for the best of ourselves and others. And it is the harmony of harmonies in the end
that we can never reach, but we can always strive for. And Jesus stands as that that
is the alpha and the omega that one of the Christologies. Okay, he is all in all. And
that's not substitutionary substitutionary. It's a different kind of approach to understanding
Christ, you know, I think that this is where I would go with that. Yeah. Yeah, I see. I
want to share these names again. David Bentley Hart is a orthodox Christian theologian and
philosopher. And he has interviewed McGill Christ, and they have a great mind meld that
it's worth watching. If you can remember those those names. But Ben, the art is no soft thinker.
And he has an idea that is well worth modern or contemporary Christians looking at what
this endpoint looks like. Because his metaphor allows for God to be God, but us not to ever
get there, you know. And there is forgiveness for everyone. That's the nature of God. Everyone.
At some point, in the end, all the horrible people we can think of also, because God's
love would heal anyway, that's a universalism, they call it. I'm just saying it's, you know,
these are good people thinking through ways just like Paul was trying to think through
it and on some of these guys. Yeah, I guess I'm thinking of like what that so kind of
the the repentance center like Jean Valjean or or the kind of the Christian message is
that we have been accepted and we are loved as we are. And that then has such an effect
on us that it promotes us toward doing the same. And for for people who have a difficult
time with self acceptance, even even Christians who I know, I've been familiar with someone
who almost felt like he twisted Jesus's arm into dying on the cross for his sins. And
that was how self critical and harsh with himself that he was someone like that who
has a difficult time feeling accepted. I guess I'm trying to think through so that penal
the penal substitutionary theory, psychologically speaking, that seems to work for some people.
And how does it work? Well, maybe it works through scapegoating or projecting or something
like that. But for someone who it doesn't work for, and they just don't feel any self
self acceptance, how do you maybe move someone toward understanding that they are the way
that they are they're just they're loved and they're accepted? Yeah. I got I'm trying to
think. Great. I mean, these are so challenging. So I go back to John Valjean and I go back
to a not that it's the only thing, or even the best thing, it certainly is the best for
some. But it accepts you as you are, and accepts people who have finally accepted themselves
as they are, you know, and there is a freedom that comes with that ask anybody that attends,
there's a freedom that comes from that. And they are also spiritually based, some people
would argue religiously. But, you know, they've done great things with the higher power and
they've but the idea of being forgiven is only one aspect of the whole thing. And that's
what John Valjean found out that that was an instantaneous thing in his life that he
did not expect. And he didn't worry about it. He just got to work because he was inspired,
literally, to give back. And I think that's the message of Jesus. I mean, sorry, it doesn't
matter what my what I think about it. But there is within the scripture itself. Jesus,
Wow, I don't just Hans Kuhn. Jesus, in a sense deserved to die because he had broken the
laws that said he had broken. And to the authorities at the time, he was a malefactor. You know,
he was he was talking to embrace prostitutes and forgive people and he's not God. So how
can he do that? And, well, there's a lot of stuff that he did that got him crucified.
But that wasn't the last word. That's all I can say about it. I don't think it's so
much an issue that he died for me because I deserve the same thing. I don't know about
punishments today. They haven't worked for it never worked in because you still got criminals
around, you know, and the death penalty that they're still trying to bring in, you know,
step back and in human development. It doesn't work. It is not a retardant. The only thing
that works is love and acceptance and teaching them. I understand incarceration might have
to be helped for some people who feel they cannot turn the corner as criminal psychopaths
and like, but they should not be treated like animals. They should be treated respectfully
as much as possible. So I just set aside that whole thing of substitution. Punishment is
not what God was about. And God was not punishing Jesus, in my opinion. The model is that we
can follow a way that is socially interested in if there was ever an example, and there
has been so have been several examples of people imbued with social interest. Clearly,
Christ was one of them. And how could we deny Buddha that he was, you know, in aspects of
Muhammad, certainly or what who am I to limit it? I don't know all the stories. But I'm
not trying to equalize them. I'm only saying that they have been people on fire with the
idea of the potential of the human being. And with with a personal relationship of some
sort with their teleology. I'm going somewhere with this. I'm happy to take people with me.
You know? Yeah. Yeah. Well said. May I say something about the parts and whole thing
that we started with? You jangled this in me before. I would like to say that I'm in
no way saying that any model today is better or worse or should be outed or not. My message
has always been pay attention to Adler, because you can enrich your field from that point
of view. And I think also, not all theories or techniques or programs today are for everybody.
But they are for certain people. And I'm happy for the richness of the field. You know, having
said they're not for everybody, some people need to go further. And there has to be a
depth psychology, depth psychotherapy, I believe, to take people the distance when that is called
for and chosen, you know, and elected or asked for. And where the parts model, I think it
is a healing element that should be well studied, well applied. And if the person wants to go
further with something, then they should certainly go further. You know, maybe not every theory,
nor is every therapist for every person. So there's a little bit now that can help everybody.
That's my only constant message. Yeah, no, I like that. Yeah, I think this is a good
place to stop for now. Thank you so much. I really appreciate the engagement and the
topics you bring up. Really, we're in tune. No, thank you.