Sometimes, when I’m deep in therapeutic work with a client, I can feel that “something” is happening between us; “something” is being communicated. Of course, this is hardly surprising, therapy primarily involves talking. But this “something” may not be contained in the words they’re using. The heart of it, the soul, the deeper resonance, is somehow hidden, occulted, buried. I notice it most clearly when my senses are alert. When I’m looking, hearing, feeling my body, my heart, my flesh: it’s felt. Getting at this “something” is not always easy; thinking alone doesn’t work. Thinking leads to strategies, preferences, and agendas and this is a different order to that. However, my values are engaged, what is most important to me. I’m in touch with a deep wish for my client to thrive; to move through their difficulties and be able to live with more freedom and fearlessness.
This sense of there being both a surface meaning and something else is well captured by Ernst Junger, the writer. He talked of a stereoscopic vision; a kind of perception where one is perceiving both surface and depth simultaneously. He says:
“Every act of stereoscopic perception produces in us a sense of vertigo, it makes us fathom the depth of an impression which at first offered itself as only surface”
This stereoscopic vision is made up of our intuitions, our emotions, and our “hunches” and yet it’s easy to dismiss these important human faculties. Indeed, many would argue they are not to be trusted. That they inhibit our ability to see things clearly: to see the truth of things. And yet, I feel that if the therapeutic encounter is to be truly transformative, then we need more than our rationality, our thinking mind, as vital as that is. It needs the whole of us: our minds, our bodies, our senses, our emotions, our intuitions and our hearts.
The philosopher Michael Polanyi thought that it was important to bring together knowledge won through reasoned and critical interrogation - what he called explicit knowledge - with what he called tacit knowledge.
When knowledge is explicit, it’s easy for others to see steps that have been taken, whether by mathematical equations, or logical argumentation, to arrive at the conclusions. Tacit knowledge, on the other hand, may involve informed guesses, hunches and imaginings that are motivated by what he describes as “passions”. Tacit knowledge involves the full range of sensory information and images, as well as our conceptual understanding. As Michael Polanyi (1967) wrote in The Tacit Dimension, we should start from the fact that "we can know more than we can tell". This phrase resonates with me when I think about the levels in which psychotherapy can touch. Indeed, for therapy to be truly life-changing, both client and therapist need both their tacit and explicit knowledge.
I sometimes experience this coming together of explicit and tacit knowledge like I might hear a piece of music. People often enter into therapy wanting to tell their story; the story of their lives. What they have done, what they have been through, what their current struggles are; what makes them anxious, depressed and fearful. And what they hope for, how they would like to change, what makes their hearts ache with yearning for something better. I’m honoured to hear these stories and the resilience people have cultivated to survive - and sometimes thrive - in very challenging circumstances. And yet, beneath these stories, it’s sometimes possible to discern something else, some hidden depth; a pattern, a text in a language you can’t yet speak, a conversation heard through a neighbour’s wall, behind or inside their story. Sometimes, however, it’s not so easy to hear this. One can only glimpse the depths; the story creates a fog where only the occasional sign and symbol can be sensed - the secrets remain hidden, at least for the moment.
Gestalt psychotherapy is concerned with the whole person, the whole situation, the whole life, with nothing left out. However, it can be difficult to grasp the whole. It’s, as if, every person is an utterly unique piece of music. Sometimes all you can hear is a single note or instrument. Over time, the therapeutic process can unveil the shape of the music. Both client and therapist may begin to hear the melody, feel the rhythm, and discern the instrumentation. As we begin to hear the music, some clients begin to see how their music wasn’t chosen by them, how they have been repeating the same lines, the same motifs, the same melodies their whole lives, completely unconsciously. At first, this can be shocking. With time, however, it becomes liberating, as the client begins to see that something else is possible; that it’s possible to change the record, to live a different song. For others, we begin to hear a piece of music that feels authentic to them; a yearning melody signalling a road not taken, a “life unlived”, some hidden doorway behind the wardrobe. Over time, we begin to hear this music more clearly and what it might be communicating about how to move forward
Sometimes, when I’m reaching the end of therapy, my client will tell me how transformative it's been; how they understand themselves more fully; and how they’ve been able to change in ways they didn’t think possible. And they will say this with a hint of surprise, as if this has all happened without them knowing, like tectonic plates moving underground. In these moments, I’m reminded that the process of change is often deeply mysterious.
My role as a therapist involves helping clients to listen to themselves, and to sense the pattern of their life, the rhythm, and the music. This requires them to be curious and willing to open to the mystery of their existence, bracketing any preconceptions they might have about themselves and the world around them. And it requires both their tacit as well as their explicit knowledge. Engaging in this way is not easy; indeed, they may end up realising they have been living another person’s life rather than their own. But it can also be profoundly liberating, as they discern that they have a choice, that they can try something different, that they are not perhaps as stuck as they thought they were; that there is the possibility of finding some deeper purpose, some deeper meaning, some soulful music yearning to be sung. Indeed, they may, given time, be able to answer the central question that James Hollis, a Jungian Analyst, suggests individuals should ask themselves when they are in states of acute suffering or meaninglessness:
“What is needing to find expression through me?”
Bibliography
Hollis, James. Living an Examined Life: Wisdom for the Second Half of the Journey. Sounds True, 2018.
Jünger, Ernst. “Some Reflections.” The Atlantic, 1957, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1957/03/some-reflections/641959/. Accessed 29 January 2024.
Lachman, Gary. Lost Knowledge of the Imagination. Floris Books, 2018.
Polanyi, Michael. The Tacit Dimension. University of Chicago Press, 2009.
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