Epistemology and psychotherapy
So what i want to look at here is the relation between epistemology and psychotherapy, where there is a strong relationship between the two such that, if you have a strongly held epistemological view that would mean you would been drawn to and also drawn away certain psychotherapeutic models.
What then are these terms we use? Epistemology is the theory of knowledge, ie how do we know.psychotherapy, is treating the mind.
Freud, considered by many the father of psychotherapy, saw his as a scientific endeavour, and as such look for strong causal explanations of peoples actions. His theoretical model of the psyche was split into two major aspects, the conscious and the un conscious. The consciousness is our every day awareness, so when i see a table, the this is to have consciousness of it. The unconscience is an area we are not so well aware about, it is the area where the desires surface, freud calls the locus of this the id.many desires or drives well up through the unconscious, and if it is day time then they will seek to be discharged through satisfaction from the world. If the desires happen at night then they get satisfied by dreams. However the picture becomes muddier as there is choice in terms of which of the many desires given to the consciousness are acted on and this is the role of the super ego. The super ego is the locus of values, of shoulds, musts and cants. This then allows us to understand the final major piece of freudian architecture repression. Some of the desires are too terrible to act on, so the superego says, likewise some memories are too terrible to acknowledge says the conscious. These memories are then repressed. That is buried to a shallower or deeper extent in the unconscious. Here the repressed ideas are guarded by anxiety, in that any attempts to bring them to consciousness will evoke the same fearful feelings that put them their in the first place.
So now to the epistemelogical aspect. How does freud justify and construct his theories and what counts for truth in freudian analysis.
The origin of freuds theories i dont want to speculate on but rather i would highlight freudain justification of his theories. These are by observing human behaviour and very often in his consulting room. From these observations then he moved via inductive deduction to his theories. As with any scientist they are working hypothesis and should observations contradict them, then the hypothesis will be revised.
Freudian truth in the consulting room happens like this. A clients symptoms are caused by trying to keep the repressed, repressed. The reason that the items were repressed in the first place was either because the ego was too weak, or there was a striong contradiction between aspects of the super ego. The therapist then needs to ensure that the patient has the necessary ego strength or coherence of the super ego to accept the repressed item.once this is in place the repressed can be re experienced by the client and discharged in the normal way. There are four ways in which the repressed is accessed by the therapist through free association, through dreams, through general avoidance and through transference.
Transference is where a previous unresolved and significant relationship is acted out, where the therapist is given the part of the other in the clients relationship. As this relationship is unresolved it will be either repressed in itself or hold repressed aspects within it.
Freudian therapists are scientists with their who observe their clients, then interpret the clients behaviour in terms of their theory, and present the client back to themselves. As with scientists a causal explanation will be offered. So someone who compulsively washes their hands could be someone who has repressed a sexual desire that they considered dirty.
The key element here on an epistemological view is that you can gain truth of the human condition by 3rd party observation.
That third party observation can be equated to human experience can be challenged by the following example. A scientist would describe vision as light being reflected from objects , hitting the back of the retina, then being interpretted by the brain to form an image. The human experience is far different and irreducible to the scientific. Firstly i see objects of use to me, they come to the foreground as i make the background reced, i use them for my futural projects. To say there is worth in the scientific view is facile but necessay. To say that to understand the human condition from a third point of view by using causal explantion is impossible, whilst being horribly verbose is also necessary.
So if a 3rd party view from nowhere falls short what other possibilities are there? Well the phenomenological approach adopted by existentialists would be one. The one central theorist for existential psychotherapy is heidegger. Of the other sited as existentialists none had the influence that he did, as he was a consummate humanist and phenomenlogist. Nietzsche was not a humanist, his theories of will to power and ubermensch are testament, indeed man was for him something to be overcome. Nietzsche was also not a systematist and his fragmented and contradictory thoughts whislt can be used to many and varied purposes have not got the systemic basis that psychotherapy needs which still has its roots in science and not philosophy or art. The last person kierkegaard whilst a rabid humanist, again lacks a system to hold on and whilst through his subjective angle on theology gave ideas for the existentialist.
So the heidegerrean framework that is used by existential psychotherapy is as follows. Humans are those whose being, whose mode of life is a question to them . The possibilities of their being is enabled through their interpretation of facts of their lives such that they aim to future projects. The facts of their lives are the throwness of their lives things that they are not responsible for, eg that they were born to their parents, that they will die, and also the facts of their historical life, eg i chose a year ago to be a computer programmer. For heidegger there is no final truth all there is is hermeneutics, a continual and never ending interpretation. The other two key aspects of heidegger that are worth bringing out is that we are fundamentally connected pre ontologically by one of use and that it is only when an object fails our desires that we will be conscious of it,in the same way you are only aware of your back when it fails you and then it is all you can think about!
So how does heidegerrean epistemology influence impact existential psychotherapists. Well firstly as each humans life is their own, then they will look to use a phenomenological approach to bracket their own values to allow that of their client come through. The heideggarean world is one populated by objects that are valued that are used, that can be used to enable humans purposes, then a main drive in existential therapy is the endeavour to enable the client to view their current value system and to establish if it is relevant to their futural projects. Throwness is again a big aspect for heidegger as it is for existential therapists, so we are self constructed, we face death, there are no fundamental values are areas which we need to not hide from and are areas that the existentialist will look to explore with a client