Natural Therapy

There are some books that, once I invest in the words, and engage in the text, deeply, I end up in dialogue with the book, with my whole body. These are goosebump books. There's goosebumps, there's back of the neck hackle-raises, there's realising that I'm holding the book like the book has become part of my body - where it ends, and I begin, whither I know not, as I sail through pedestrian crossing, through parkland, into the cafe where I don't have to look up, to place my order. I do not have the book, the book has me, I'm completely in it's thrall. The world becomes vivified, deeply, through the lens of these words, this hardcover.

Thus it is for Robert Kegan's "The Evolving Self: Problem and Process in Human Development". I am enamored with this book. I think it's last chapter should be required reading for every psychotherapist, every psychology undergraduate.

This is an extract that explores the nature of the 'holding environment', or 'culture of embeddedness' relevant to the different psychosocial development stages, for those that Kegan deigns as 'evolutionary guests' (I love this re-frame of the psychology office client). It's worth reading for the call that it places, to psychologists, to take an active role in attending to the presence of these cultures outside of the practice, if not leading the way, in establishing deeper social engagement with them, at a community level. These cultures are the basis for what he calls 'psychological amniocentesis', or, more simply, 'natural therapy'.


'Does the mothering culture attend to the newborn; does it provide a warm, close, comforting physical presence, does it accept the infant's utter dependence upon and merger with it? And does the mothering context, at the appropriate time, recognise and promote the toddler's emergence from this embeddedness; does it resist trying to meet the child's every need; does it stop nursing and reduce carrying; does it acknowledge the child's displays of independence and willful refusal; can it tolerate becoming 'other' to the child? And does it remain in some way that permits the child to recover it as other; does it avoid prolonged separation or psychological abandonment during the period of transition?

Does the parenting culture acknowledge and nurture the child's capacity for fantasy; does it accept the child's intense attachments and rivalries within  the family, can it accept the child's psychological dependence on, and merger with, the interior workings of the parents. Does the parenting context, at the appropriate time, recognise and promote the child's emergence from embeddedness; does it begin to hold the child responsible for her behaviours; locate and designate the source of the child's thoughts and feelings in the child; does it exclude the child from the inner workings of the marriage, from the marriage bed, from the home during school hours; does it acknowledge the child's displays of self-sufficiency and self-possessedness; can it tolerate becoming 'other' to the child? And does it remain in some way that permits the child to recover it as other; does it avoid falling apart at just that time as the child is differentiating from it?

Does the role-recognising culture support and acknowledge the child's tests and exercises of self-sufficiency, competence, and role differentiation; does the family or school give the child and opportunity to speak and be listened to in the public life of that institution, especially in it's decisions; is there an opportunity for personal responsibility, definition, control? Does the family or school seek to discover and support at least one involvement in which the child might have a continuing opportunity for successful self-display? Can it tolerate the child's confusion of it with the maintenance of the child's competence, the prosecution of the child's own needs? And does the culture recognise and promote the adolescent's emergence from embeddedness; does it contradict the validity or acceptability of a self-sufficiency that will not take others into account; does it insist that the adolescent hold up her end in trusts and agreements; does it look for the report of interior states rather than exterior dispositions, can it accept becoming relativised on behalf of a new identity and a new identification? And does the role-recognising culture remain in some way that permits the growing person not only to repudiate it, but to recover it?

Does the culture of mutuality acknowledge and support the person's capacity for collaborative, self-sacrificing, closely attuned, idealised interpersonal relationships? Does it share the person's internal subjective states, moods, feelings, innermost thoughts? Can it tolerate the person's confusion of it with herself? Does it recognise and promote the person's emergence from embeddedness in interpersonalism; does it resist being fused with, insist on recognising the person as distinct while still acknowledging the possibility and value of closeness; does it require the person to assume responsibility for her own initiatives and preferences, for her own psychological self-definition; and can it permit itself to be relativised on behalf of this emerging personal authority? Are  there at least some interpersonal partners who remain during the process of transition to take some role in the new psychological landscape?

Doe the culture of self-authorship acknowledge and support the person's exercises of psychological self-definition; does it confirm the person's gathering sense of herself as the origin of her meanings and purposes; does it recognise her as a player in a public arena in which she can exercise her personal powers, need for achievement and self-enhancement; does it give him work that allows him to exercise influence, wield power, assume responsibility; does it offer the opportunity for loyalty to, and investment in, some system of belief; can it accept the person's identification of its shared meaning with himself or herself?  Does it recognise and promote the person's emergence from embeddedness in independent self-definiton; does it insist on some relationship to the person who is running the psychic administration, refusing to accept mediated, nonintimate, form-subordinated relationships? Does the culture of ideology allow itself to be relativised on behalf of the bigger context which roots and co-regulates forms, systems, organisations? And do the ideological supports remain at the very time the person is separating from this identification with them?

And does the culture of intimacy acknowledge and support the exercise of interdependence (even interdependent self-definition), the surrender of (and play with) the form bound autonomous self, the counterpointing of identities?'


 The italics are mostly mine - it's been interesting to watch my hands, as I've typed this - to watch where I was agitated, where energised, where empassioned. The body, in dialogue.

The ego, to continue to transcend, this in all things, is mine, too. :)

Ref:

Kegan, R. (1982). The Evolving Self. Harvard: University Press.