Psychotherapeutic Paradigms – Dominant-submissive vs. Ecological Cooperation
Many of those who adopt psychoanalytic theory contend that it is important for the socially constructed ego to maintain control over the emotional impulses of the id and other emotional impulses stored in the unconscious mind. The connections that can be drawn from the personal to the larger, environmental and social spheres are that the ego can be allied to Western European culture and the id and other unconscious processes to the less technological cultures (living more closely to their primal or mystical origins). Depression and other modern psychological ailments are signals from neglected, oppressed and abused parts of our mind-bodies that our way of life is not fulfilling, just or sustainable.
In an ecological psychology the conscious mind and rational thinking does not have a dominant-submissive relationship with the unconscious and emotional intelligence, any more than the sky does with the clouds, fungi with insects, men with women, or heaven with Earth. Rather it is in the delicately orchestrated interplay and servitude of the various elements of our psyche, like the rich bio-diverse symphony of life on our planet, that we thrive in our essential wholeness.
As true democracy and other nonhierarchical forms of government, along with economies, become more globalized, it will become increasingly more difficult for so-called “first world” nations to exploit the labor of developing nations. It is becoming increasingly imperative that, we don’t exploit people of other nations, or our natural world. The whole ecological and environmental movement is built on our understanding that all of life’s relationships are essentially circular, and must be treated so, if they are to flourish. The illusion that people can do what they want with the natural environment or other people without concern about how it affects them just doesn’t hold up anymore.
Humans have been caught in the belief that somehow we exist separately from nature, from one another, and ourselves. The mistaken perception that we are separate is what supports treating nature (or other humans) as the enemy or as something to be exploited. Within our own psyche this sense of separation leads us to neglect, abuse and exploit natural aspects of the essential wholeness of our own psyches. Consider this quote from Albert Einstein:
A human being is part of the whole, called by us the universe. A part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures.
To play its part, psychology today must embrace the full diversity of human nature and the community of parts our essential wholeness.
A new paradigm is emerging in which the observer cannot be separated from the observed, where the doer cannot be separated from the “done to.” Rather than the Earth being something that we have to do with as we wish, we belong to the Earth and we must also honor the Earth’s wishes. We humans are simply a part of the biosphere and our wellbeing is dependent on the wellbeing of the entire planet. There is no break in the circle of life, just an interconnected web of relationships between Earth, air, water, radiation from space, heat of the Earth’s core, cold of the polar icecaps, gravity, a vast diversity of flora and fauna (including humans), the microscopic and the macroscopic, birth, life and death, oceanic currents and the changing of the seasons.
The entire planet and all life are mutually dependent on one another. The wellbeing of the whole is dependent on a harmonious balance of all the parts of creation relating in mutually supportive ways. It is a circular process by which, as we learn to live in greater harmony within our individual selves (especially with the parts of us that suffer), we learn to live in greater harmony with others. Finding greater harmony with others (people and the rest of nature) also helps us to experience greater inner harmony.
We are realizing the limitations and fallacies of thinking about the universe, let alone our minds, in objectified mechanical terms. Gregory Bateson, one of the seminal contributors to General Systems Theory, presented a very simple example to demonstrate a change of thinking. Think about kicking a ball and kicking a dog. If we kick a ball with an exact amount of force and that force is directed in a specific direction, we can predict with great accuracy in what direction and how far that ball will roll. It is also fairly easy to replicate the results (especially if the kicker is a machine rather than a person).
However, when kicking a dog, there are probably an infinite number of possibilities of how the dog will respond. In addition, balls don’t learn, dogs do. The way the ball relates to the kicker would not change over time, whereas the way the dog relates to the kicker would. Living systems aren’t as easily described in mechanical (or chemical) terms. Of course advances in physics, most notably quantum theory, have also shown us the limitations of that model even in the realm of inanimate objects. What metaphorical context can best support the healing of suffering and evolution of consciousness?
The social scientists have been looking more to discoveries made in the life sciences, in particular biology, to better understand what it means to be human. The field of family therapy was one of the first embrace this new paradigm. Early on, theorists considered the structure and functioning of a cell a useful metaphor for understanding the structure and functioning of a family system. This metaphorical context has been expanded to describe human communities as similar to ecosystems –– with different individual and organizations engaged in interdependent relationships with one another.
Enneagram as Map
The Enneagram is a symbolic map of how living systems evolve. The circle represents the global/circular/inclusive nature of our whole being. The numbers around the circle represent the phases of the evolving cyclical process of evolution. Each phase is regulated by its respective part. The internal lines represent the interconnected web of the mutually interdependent relationships between different parts of the whole self. Each point encodes the dimensions of the developmental task, basic function, neurological network and essential quality that engage in each phase. The nine parts are, in a sense, sub-personalities, or different sub-systems of the ecology of our essential whole self. Instead of thinking of the various aspects of our psyche in a hierarchical manner, in which one part needs to gain dominion over the others, we see that all parts support a circular evolving sense of self.
It is when one part of us starts to dominate over the others, that we become more compulsively trapped by the rigidities of a personality type. Taken to extremes this leads to personality and other severe psychological disorders. With a better understanding of our essential wholeness and the evolution of consciousness we can, more ably, free ourselves from unnecessary suffering and manifest our greatest potential.
[i] Suzuki, David & McConnell, Amanda (1997) The Sacred Balance, Rediscovering our Place in Nature. Vancouver: Allen Unwin (p. 26)
