Applications of a Psychospiritual Model in the Helping Professions

Principles of InnerView Guidance

Cedric Speyer, John Yaphe

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000295887
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicología
• Subtopic: Asesoramiento psicoterapéutico

This book brings together the historically separate domains of mental health and spiritual awareness in a holistic framework called InnerView Guidance. Building on strength-based and solution-oriented approaches to therapy, the InnerView model offers a unique psychospiritual approach which can be applied in any of the helping professions.

InnerView recognizes the individual's need for internal cohesion between psychological growth and spiritual development. It is a principle-driven paradigm that foregrounds 'soul work' as a central evolutionary task. The book presents the core concepts and methodology involved in the alignment of ego with soul. Chapters explain the theoretical roots of the model, explore practical applications in therapeutic settings, and introduce InnerView as a rich synergy of psychotherapy and spiritual guidance.

Taking an original and cutting-edge approach, this valuable text will be essential reading for scholars and students, as well as practitioners in the fields of psychotherapy, counselling, life coaching, social work, and spiritual care.

1
InnerView Landscapes

Overview of New Horizons in Psychology

InnerView Guidance evokes a wide-angle view of the landscape of therapeutic theories and situates the model within the context of positive psychology – the study of the strengths and virtues enabling people to thrive. Parker J. Palmer speaks to this perspective when he says: “I was already standing on the ground of my new life, ready to take the next step on my journey, if only I would turn around and see the landscape that lay before me. If we are to live our lives fully and well, we must learn to embrace the opposites, to live in a creative tension between our limits and our potentials” (Palmer, 2000).

Psychology, originally meaning knowledge of the soul, had its roots in philosophy before making its claim as a science and being established as a branch of medicine. InnerView puts the emphasis on mental health, without discounting what has been learned about the causes of mental illness. When it comes to the limits of psychology, “The soul has been given its ears to hear things that mind does not understand” (Rumi & Barks, 2004).

Individually and collectively we are called to align our lives with an expansive, ever-evolving sacred story. When it comes to grappling with ground level issues in the lives of clients, this means we are always looking for the healthy, big picture context in which the presenting problem takes place, that is, the life behind the life situation. This involves a vision of the inclusive self beyond the confines of the problem-saturated story (O’Hanlon, 2003).

InnerView guidance is designed to bring seekers of all kinds into alignment with the best of their human nature. When conducted on a short-term basis, it plants the seeds for long-term soul work. It is a matter of realignment with the feelings, needs, values, and purposes which allow our inner and outer worlds to be congruent. That integral coherency in turn opens our limited personal selves to transpersonal and archetypal realms and we come to see our life situation from the broader, more meaningful perspective known as wisdom.

InnerView is about what kind of person is having the problem, rather than what kind of problem is discouraging the person. InnerView moves away from the medical model of therapy and towards the pilgrimage path of psychospiritual guidance. That is, from what is wrong with people to what is right with persons, from pathology to possibilities, from an ego-based framework to a soul-grounded perspective on helping and healing. When we encourage people to see the bigger picture of their heroic life journey, it helps them to disidentify with the self-concept of being psychologically damaged goods. An expansive vision leaves a person feeling good about themselves and others, much like the redemptive end of a romantic comedy will reframe all the prior crisis points in the plot.

How Prominent Therapeutic Approaches Inform InnerView

Many coaches, counsellors, and therapists say they are eclectic in their approach, which means they draw upon a variety of therapeutic methods or clinical protocols. A protocol-driven model is one that provides specific guidelines and a case management structure to follow. A principle-driven model outlines general principles, which invoke supportive protocols, which in turn guides progress towards client goals (Watts, 2013). The difference between the two is similar to the difference between a belief system (theological premises) and a spiritual practice (meditation).

InnerView Guidance is a principle-driven approach that integrates emotional, mental, and spiritual growth. It offers a psychospiritual perspective informing one’s own soul work as well as being a way to help and support others. InnerView also offers protocols for problem resolution, yet these are often derived from other models of therapy and can be practised to the extent they align with personal learning styles and resonate with the positive ways emotional, mental, and spiritual growth take place. The following review of the main models in the field intends to show what InnerView has in common with other therapeutic theories and how it differs from them. There is a measure of truth in all these models. No one has the complete picture of the human person, yet all theorists contribute to it. We have much to gain from understanding other perspectives.

Psychodynamic or Analytic Therapy

The traditional approach is sometimes still called Freudian, after Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. More often it is now known as psychodynamic or analytic therapy and has greatly influenced other schools of personality theory. However, it is less common than it was decades ago before short-term adaptations of it gained ground. There are many post-Freudian derivations of this model. In this approach, problems are framed as internalized conflicts between different parts of the personality (id, ego, and superego or child, adult, and parent). These conflicts are repressed (or pushed out of awareness). Therefore, investigating the past is crucial to understanding present problems. Symptoms reflect ways the subconscious mind protects the conscious one from having to deal with the real problem, originating in childhood. An array of defence mechanisms (e.g., denial, regression, projection, dissociation) serve this psychological subterfuge. Problems are resolved when people discover the true motivations for their emotions and actions, and thereby become more conscious than unconscious of their issues. The greater awareness we have of internal complexes, the more freedom we have from compensating symptoms (Duncan, 2005).

From the InnerView perspective, the psychodynamic approach can be a useful way to differentiate emotional programs from the past that still drive the operating system of the psyche in the present, instead of being guided by intentional, individuated motivations. It can also allow for progressive dismantling of the constructed self that is overly identified with outmoded family dramas, unquestioned social conditioning, and unexamined cultural myths. According to this approach, the authentic person can then emerge and flourish.

However, when intrapsychic malfunctions of mind are understood to rule the rest of the personality, clients tend to view themselves as stuck in the rut of what Freud originally termed the repetition compulsion – replaying the same patterns while expecting different results. Neuropsychology research has shown that our brains are wired accordingly, to tell ourselves the same story about life situations and repeat the same coping mechanisms, no matter how dysfunctional. Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist who founded Analytical Psychology posited a different way of changing course.

All the greatest and most important problems of life are fundamentally insoluble … they can never be solved, but only outgrown. This “outgrowth” proves on further investigation to require a new level of consciousness. Some higher or wider interest appears on the horizon and through this broadening of outlook the insoluble problem loses its urgency. It is not solved logically in its own terms but fades when confronted with a new and stronger life urge.

(Lü et al., 1962)

InnerView is about encouraging that life-giving sense of expansion, as a prerequisite to any insights about what has thwarted its full expression. It starts with a steady gaze on the whole person. We can imagine this by reversing the usual figure-ground perspective. Normally we focus on the main object of perception and not on the field in which it is situated. In traditional therapy, the person’s pain is front and centre, thereby taking most of the attention. InnerView guidance emphasizes the positive background and context behind the problematic life situation. Issues in the foreground seem much more painful when fixation on the figure is the only point of view.

Behaviour Therapy

The results-oriented methods of change became popular in reaction to the introspective immersion of psychoanalysis. From the practical stance of behaviour therapy, problems develop when a specific situation becomes associated with distress (as is the case with many phobias). The person has learned to link an intense emotional state with an event, resulting from inadvertent conditioning. Mental health issues can also occur when certain behaviours (e.g., acting out) are followed by consequences (e.g., attention) which reinforce the strength of the problematic behaviour. Again, the behaviour is learned due to the reward or punishment contingencies which surround it. However, if problems are learned that way through such juxtaposition, they can be unlearned the same way. The coping response, like progressive relaxation, then supplants a previously learned reaction, like anxiety, to a challenging situation. Once the adaptive stance is learned, it is practised like a dress rehearsal with increasing exposure to the presenting problem. In this way, the person is reconditioned under similar circumstances to first act and then feel differently (Duncan, 2005).

When it comes to the ways we are hard-wired to repeat conditioned responses, the behavioural approach can help anchor a person in actions that reinforce consciously chosen goals. This approach offers practical ways to break mental and emotional habits that oppose what the soul wants. Yet behavioural freedom from debilitating conditions raises the question of what purpose personal freedom serves. This is where psychospiritual development is differentiated from purely psychological interventions. The former involves liberation from the small self or ego identification and shifts the balance of power to the true self. The ego seeks significance in terms of esteem and approval, belonging in terms of security and affection, and meaning in terms of personal empowerment. All these can be achieved by means of attitudinal adjustments and behavioural modifications. Yet when limited to the needs of the ego, we risk flattening the human landscape to its horizontal dimension alone. We will explore this further in Chapter 4, which presents the 4Fold Path.

The soul seeks its worth in terms of the universal human journey, its belonging in terms of a larger Self, and meaning in terms of its part in the unfolding of a bigger, archetypal story. When the soul gains knowledge, experience, and wisdom, it is in service of self-transcending values intrinsic to its essential nature. InnerView represents a new kind of psychospiritual integration. It goes beyond relief from anxiety and depression or addiction to the expansive awareness and qualities of soul it takes to create new psychological structures overriding dysfunctional ones.

Humanistic Therapy

Coinciding with the rise of the human potential movement and its emphasis on the search for meaning and self-actualization, the humanistic approach became a forerunner of the positive psychology movement. This therapeutic approach had its roots in European existential philosophies. Humanistic adherents do not view people as determined by nature and nurture, or socially conditioned by forces shaping their personalities, however much those influences may lead to emotional symptoms or psychological conflicts. From the humanistic perspective, people have the innate capacity to realize their potential and the inherent freedom to fulfil it. The premise underlying this approach is that the basic goodness of the individual can be trusted. Therefore, the solution to life problems lies within the self, the authentic self whose inner world has built-in integrity and self-healing capacities. Problems arise due to incongruence between the ideal self and the authentic self. The ideal self is the person one feels he or she needs to be or should be. The authentic or true self is who one really is, aside from autobiographical story. The wisdom needed to deal with life’s challenges is found within; the therapist simply facilitates tuning into it. Under the gaze of unconditional acceptance, the true nature of a person emerges, without interference from theories superimposed in the name of mental health (Duncan, 2005).

From the InnerView perspective, the humanistic approach focuses on the person behind the problem and underscores that a person’s life, or what matters most to them, is not defined by their circumstances. It allows for recalibration of significance and belonging based on what is right with the person, and attunement to them based on what is of deepest personal and transpersonal value. The territory of the psyche is like a vast countryside with a river running through it. The polluting or free flowing of that river is the difference between arid soul states and the fruition of full personhood.

Coaching, counselling, and psychotherapy are all forms of learning to become the best versions of ourselves. The Latin root of the word education means to lead out. It reminds us that while exploring the landscape within, people also need to be led out of themselves, from the fixations of an egoic personal identity that sees the world in terms of subject-object polarities, to a unitive consciousness in which the light and dark aspects of human nature are embraced at the crossroads where they intersect. The paradigm shift is equivalent to realizing the earth revolves around the sun rather than the earth being the centre of the universe. For this personal Copernican revolution to occur, we need a vocabulary for the landscape of the soul, one that facilitates psychospiritual guidance. It is important that the practitioner makes space for emotional states such as loneliness, frustration, sadness, and anger, and attends to what those feelings may reveal about unmet needs. Yet a thorough assessment of the client’s preferred state of life engagement is also necessary. For example, what memories invoke the qualities of clarity, courage, joy, compassion, wonder, and lovingkindness? What matters to the client beyond the confines of the presenting issue and related ego motivations: security and survival, esteem and affection, and power and control? When we are able to flip the coin of the predicament to reveal essential values and a guiding vision frustrated by the present situation, it motivates movement towards self-transcending goals. This is the meaning of the InnerView motto: what the soul wants. It is having the capacity to see persons through the view-finder of their well-being and deepest values, the manifesting of which leads to fulfilling a larger life purpose.

Cognitive Therapy

There are many offshoots of the cognitive therapy model, but what they all have in common is that what we think about emotional problems and conflicts is what perpetuates them. Even major issues such as depression and anxiety can be fuelled by self-talk in the form of internal convictions subliminally repeated. These self-statements reflect irrational beliefs and negative assumptions about oneself in relation to the realities of the world, and in turn become automatic self-fulfilling prophecies reinforcing the original schemas (e.g., “people don’t appreciate what I do for them”). This kind of thinking is often characterized by overgeneralization, whereby the part blankets the whole. External events, such as romantic disappointments, are perceived through a filter of preset conclusions (e.g., “I am not worthy of being loved”) which do not follow logically from actual experience. This irrational template leads to exaggerated painful feelings and self-sabotaging behaviours, which become funnelled into a downward spiral. With the help of reality checks from a therapist, the self-talk can be turned around. By becoming aware of counterproductive thoughts and perceptions in reaction to certain triggers, people can choose to consciously change how they interpret those events and produce different, less upsetting emotional and behavioural outcomes (Duncan, 2005).

From the InnerView perspective, the cognitive approach can ensure the head is aligned with the heart and both congruent with what the soul wants. It can also provide sound, self-reliant antidotes to destructive family, social, cultural, or religious belief systems. Yet behind every clinical case study lies a life story. Behind every life story are the histories, tragedies, comedies, and mythologies of humanity itself. Together with the client, we are on an InnerView journey whenever literal sequences are set against far-reaching horizons of evolution and the person is viewed in that context. The Latin origin of the word context, combines con and texere, meaning “to weave together”. The context of InnerView Guidance refers to the process of weaving together physical, emotion...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 InnerView Landscapes: Overview of New Horizons in Psychology
• 2 The Presenting Person: From Treating Problems to Freeing Persons
• 3 Living in a Bigger Story: Life Stories Re-envisioned as Soul Journeys
• 4 The 4Fold Path: A Psychospiritual Map for Navigating Personhood
• 5 The Matryoshka Method: An Inside-Out Approach to Clinical Process
• 6 InnerView Attunement: The Healing Bond in Therapeutic Practice
• 7 The Principles in Practice: InnerView Applied by Helping Professionals
• Conclusion
• Further Reading
• Index