Vic, I Hope You're Still There

• A Favor-----Please by Doug W., 12/5/98
  • Epilogue by Vic Comello, 2/5/99
    
    

Vic, please know that your contributions here have been valuable and, speaking for myself, greatly appreciated. Your clarity of exposition and depth of thinking are inspiring and helpful. I think you have made some points that may be either hard to grasp or hard to agree with. I may disagree or I may not understand; but at this point I do not know which is the case.

Let me refer in particular to a point where I am inclined to think along the lines of misunderstanding rather than disagreement. The wonderfully perceptive sociologist Philip Slater once wrote something that stayed with me like green on grass. Paraphrasing just a little, he wrote that no word has done more work in the service of mystification than the word "freedom."

I want to be clear that I am certainly not saying that you in any way have tried to mystify. Far from trying to mystify, you have given generously of your time to bring precision and clarity to very important issues. In my opinion you thus have made a valuable contribution here that is extraordinary and admirable. My point, however, is that since I read Slater's remark about "freedom," I have a little alarm going off in my head whenever I hear/read the word "freedom." The alarm asks if we may have inadvertently fallen into an accidental moment of intellectual darkness when using that word. I'll explain what this has to do with anything about CMT and your suggested modifications very soon.

First I want to also say that Slater was not the first person to alert me to the problems associated with the word "freedom." The philosopher of science and renowned critic of psychoanalysis Adolf Grunbaum has presented the most decisive philosophical critique of the notion of human freedom as implied by the notion of "free will." His wonderful influence on my thinking also may be evident. Please pardon my lengthy and seemingly irrelevant prologue. I am taking so long getting to the heart of the matter for what I think is a good reason.

Thus I want to ask that we focus closely on a key sentence in your Epilogue above, Vic, in which you used the word "freedom." Thus you wrote:

"She felt guilty precisely because she had the freedom to undertake growth initiatives, despite the guilt they would generate."

Here is a sentence that, if I understand you, expresses a point of view that is central to your thesis. Thus you presume the existence of a putative freedom we human beings have to pursue growth initiatives. Since you even included the qualifier "precisely" to be more emphatic about your reference to a patient's ostensible freedom, I surmised that you intended us to understand that there can be little doubt of the existence of such ostensible freedom. However I do doubt its existence.

Before I continue, I want to refer to one more philosopher who also wrote about freedom, David Nyberg. Nyberg's analysis of statements about human freedom are found in his book on moral philosophy titled POWER OVER POWER. In this book, Nyberg makes a very useful recommendation in noting that in almost all discussions about an individual human being's ostensible "freedom" we could substitute the word "power" for "freedom" and thereby lend more precision to our ideas.

Consider Nyberg's suggestion applied to the quote I selected from your Epilogue: "She felt guilty precisely because she had the POWER to undertake growth initiatives, despite the guilt they would generate."

If there is indeed guilt generated by undertaking growth initiatives, as you have here acknowledged would be generated, then just how much power does one really have available in order to able to undertake growth initiatives? That power (freedom), what there is of it, is apparently not enough to get the growth initiatives under way before therapy.

If this guilt were somewhat abated, wouldn't one's power (freedom) increase? Presumably the answer is yes according to CMT.

Now my having said that power would increase if guilt were diminished of course does not refute your thesis, Vic, for it is possible that some OTHER MEANS-other than guilt reduction-could be used, according to your theory, to increase the patient's power over her power (to increase the patient's power to exercise her freedom) even while the patient continues to experience guilt. As you wrote in your very next sentence, because guilt is present doesn't mean it operates as an impediment. Good point.

But no matter what means are used to increase a patient's power over her power to initiate growth initiatives, it is self-evident that until those means are put in place the patient is NOT so free (so powerful) as it may appear. The hypothesis that an individual person has an autonomous (i.e., independent-of-others' influence and fully self-regulated) freedom (power) to initiate growth initiatives--while in fact the person acts in so many ways so powerlessly in not initiating growth initiatives--is an hpothesis contradicted by evidence from the person's own behavior.

If however, as you say, the patient's own anger, for example, is the impediment to exercising autonomous power, this, too, is an impediment that the patient surely seems powerless to overcome without assistance. So, I'm basically saying that the appearance of freedom is an illusory appearance. You could present the counter argument that the appearance of powerlessness is illusory. But then if we regarded the patient's hypothetical powerlessness versus power as two separate and incompatible hypotheses, which hypothesis is supported by evidence from the patient's behavior? Of course they are not incompatible because the patient is somewhat powerful and somewhat powerless. But the evidence from the patient's symptomatic behavior leaving him/her stuck without taking growth initiatives would weigh on the side of believing the patient is far more powerless (far less free) than powerful and will probably remain relatively more powerless until some assistance from others (e.g., a therapist) or from elsewhere (where?) is forthcoming.

If I understand you, Vic, you are saying there can be something besides guilt limiting the patient from making better use of her anger. Then, I suppose you would say that whatever stands in the way of a patient making good use of her anger will be removed as a obstacle to growth initiatives if therapy (or some other form of assistance) is successful in giving the patient more power over her power. In a most general sense, what can be said to be standing in the way of growth initiatives, regardless of the therapist's theoretical assumptions, is the ABSENCE of needed assistance of SOME sort. Your point, Vic, seems to be that often, but not always and not necessarily, such assistance comes from the kind of effective interpersonal support given by CMT therapists on behalf of the patient making growth initiatives. If I understand you, it is also your point that one can also find such assistance (1) without any interpersonal support (one picks oneself up by the bootstraps, so to speak) and (2) without having to abate the level of one's guilt about taking growth initiatives. Do I have it yet?

If I am understanding you, would you be willing to comment further to let me know, assuming you are still available for this discourse?

I am keen to know how you think we can explain why a therapist's interpersonal support is typically so important and useful and why patients rarely have as much freedom to act in a self-enhancing manner before receiving that support as they have after receiving it. In short, I still want to question whether patients really do have much freedom (power over their power) to make growth initiatives in the ABSENCE of supportive interpersonal relationships, as your proposed theoretical changes would seem to imply they have It is even hard for me to imagine ANY kind of assistance that would significantly help persons achieve more power over their power to take growth initiatives that did not have a central or key interpersonal component somehow. Well, as I said at the beginning, I'm not sure whether I am disagreeing or not understanding. In any case, I hope that if you are still there you will reconsider your decision to quit and bear with some of us a little longer. Your experience with theoretical physics, after all, gives you a leg up in the area of thinking at abstract theoretical levels. I, for example, don't think I could even devise a definition of theoretical physics, much less any other kind of physics.

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"There is no such thing in anyone's life as an unimportant day." Alexander Wollcott

• Confused and Confusing:The Need for Clarity and Direction by Doug W, 3/13/99
  • Back by Vic Comello, 3/19/99
• Clarity by Vic Comello, 3/20/99
  • About Dreaming and Dreams andOther Things by Doug W., 3/20/99
    • Uncertainty by Vic Comello, 3/20/99
      • Comments on Vic's Comments on Doug's Comments by Jim Duffy, 3/22/99