The Accesses to Oneself
4.9 The Natural-Scientific Access to the World of the Self
Academic psychology and all forms of psychotherapy adopt an unequivocal approach to lived experience. The therapist who bases his orientation on natural- scientific psychology and takes this as his starting point for engaging with life sto- ries in his everyday practice is not interested in lived experiences as such but only in those lived experiences that can be turned into knowledge—knowledge, that is, governed by a theory of knowledge.
It makes little difference, then, whether the theory of knowledge guiding the therapist’s analysis is oriented by criteria that lead him to distinguish between rational and irrational thoughts; whether his guiding principles are motivational systems such as attachment, sexuality, and intersubjectivity; or whether what he is seeking to discover in the daily lives of his patients are inadaptive beliefs and thoughts and inadequate narratives. Certainly, this list could further be expanded;
but in all cases, the mode of access to phenomena and their predetermination is always ensured by the kind of theoretical attitude that enables the therapist to conceive concrete experience in terms of objects of knowledge. In other words, in all cases, experience—uprooted from its original contexts—is assigned meaning on the basis of a priori categories, in line with the ideals of knowledge guiding one’s investigation.
This mode of access to lived experience and life stories on the one hand removes experience from that background of living actualization within which it is embedded, dehistoricizing it, and stripping it of its meaningfulness; on the other hand, it recomposes experience within an impoverished dimension by presenting the patient with a filtered and resignified view of it. Thus one’s relation with the experience under investigation is mediated and marked out by the theoretical orientation imposed upon the patient in the
“therapeutic” relationship. In other words, what has happened in the life of a patient is grasped by the therapist objectively, according to a given theoretical determination.
The patient’s way of relating to his own experience is therefore made to coincide with the actualization of a theoretical context (relative to the tendencies of the thera- pist’s school), whereby what is understood as personal experience is actually found to be the correlate of the therapist’s theoretical idealization. Consequently, even though the knowing subject—the patient focusing on his own history—is completely absorbed by the relation with his own lived experience, this occurs in such a way that while he epistemologically grasps himself in an objective way, he rules out any pos- sible renewal within his own actual life. The patient knows himself very well, and precisely for this reason nothing changes, as may be inferred from the following notes taken by Mr Smith, a 70-year-old man who underwent a CBT therapy for 25 years.
4.9 The Natural-Scientific Access to the World of the Self
Jun 2, walking 2 min in hot 36 deg, weightlessness/lost equilibrium-would have fallen if my son was not next to me to hold onto-triggered Panic Attack for several hrs.
Since then living in constant fear of falling off somewhere in street or alone at home.
2nd type but similar: for several months have had and deteriorating the following.
From end of most meals till 2 h afterwards—sudden feeling of fainting (not weightlessness), mouth watery, ext fatigue, nausea trouble focusing—
Occasionally with hi twisting pain—feeling the pain as it goes down from stomach to abdomen—must lie down immediately.
Happens also after snacks in between meals.
Need to have snack between meals—hunger craving: must eat even in the street.
Cardiologist rules out the heart—Vestibular specialist does not think it is vestibular now –
They think it is a digestive problem—Vegal parasympathic nerve—or dumping syndrome—
For 25 years world renowned professors, vestibular specialists, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, using the latest meds with my limitations, not only have not produced meaningful results, actually I feel worse.
To be fair part of my problems are due to advancing age with major diseases.
Professors and medical professionals agree and have come to the conclusion that all of my problems are serious diseases or chronic, with no remedy.
Since none of the attempts to cure, alleviate, the symptoms have worked, clearly need to look at my deteriorating problems from a different angle.
A more fruitful endeavor would be not to try to cure the diseases, but to accept/embrace and live as well as possible while having the symptoms. It is ext difficult.
Do you agree?
*Have come up with this mental argument to tell myself whenever I feel dizzy with feeling of passing out, several hours daily now. Repeating this several times per day.
There is no cure for your dizziness, vertigo, GAD, IBS, MRV, incontinence, etc.
“You are not unconscious, so accept, Get used to and embrace your dizziness with other ailments that will be with you the rest of your life with advancing age.
Learn to live and function without having control”
This way (if you can really accept your most uncomfortable hrs of daily symptoms).
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The solution is to start to become/to practice, in being without anx when with yourself.
Difficult to stay alone without anx because, only way you know yourself is being anx.
To try to accept the state of relaxation that is unsettling to me, particularly when alone.
The more I try, the more anx shoots up. The result is feeling even worse than before trying your method. Am becoming conditioned now to feel worse when trying your system.
Is there a way to do this without being conditioned for a worse experience the next time? Should we still try graded exposure therapy of CBT for the above?
Thu 23 Oct at 6 PM.
New developments—while you say I have no OCD, the following thoughts have come up.
Impulse Phobia
3 wks ago, at the end of dinner, wife had to turn her body and head back very close to me.
Suddenly got the frightening thought of hitting her on the head –
Becoming terrified of the thought, triggered immediate hot flash and mini panic.
Thinking, what if I go crazy and act irrationally.
Asking myself, why am I thinking like this especially regarding someone so dear to me?
Remembered/repeated mental arguments given to me by Mme. XXXXXX 20 yrs ago when I had the same impulse several times. The arguments were:
Phobia of impulse is never acted upon.
You have never tried to physically act on anyone in your life except to defend yourself.
This is just a weird thought.
These arguments comforted me immediately and the thought passed in a few min.
Discussing it with Prof. XXX. She said
• You call it impulse phobia.
• In fact that is an absolutely classical obsessive thought.
• What if I act on an impulse and harm someone. Particularly a loved one.
• Which would be the last thing you would want to do –is harm your wife.
• Also called a taboo thought—being the thought of causing harm.
• And your response was the absolutely correct one –
• Is to challenge it—to reality test it—and to dismiss it.
4.9 The Natural-Scientific Access to the World of the Self
In accordance with this attitude, factual experiences are not conceived in terms of what they actually are in people’s lives, but in the light of those determinations imposed by the theoretical perspective through which they accessed. The view which is presented to the patient interprets lived experience as though it were the particular instance of a general law, and in doing so inevitably discards or flattens all effective occurrences. In the light of an a priori systematics, the therapist identi- fies broken mechanisms and distills other people’s experiences as though they were the constitutive elements of an unbroken process: the self in process. This unfolding of this process in time is guided by fundamental meaningful trajectories that the therapist alone is capable of recognizing.