Therapy vs creativity

The sign that the intellect has produced something useful is when it becomes embodied in a person. Posture, basic responses and vocal tone are altered. Therapists should be, but aren't, good poets. (This is tied to poetry's origins as a spoken art form).

The limiting factor in psychological treatments is the therapist. The patient forms a judgement about him, which will set the parameters of what the therapy can achieve.

Psychology is concerned with evidence-based treatments, which implies that therapy becomes narrowly logical. Progress slows to the rate of generating explicit, verbal information. This is at odds with a central truth of human communication, that the implicit is more potent than the explicit. This truth is contemptuous of the manmade rule that if you charge money for your treatment it must be "proven" to work.

The Socratic method is the form of conversation which is closest to "science." To use it is to assume a degree of freedom which is difficult to write into any professional charter. It assumes that nothing is off limits, including very disruptive truths. Relentlessly applying the Socratic method to your suffering, you would come to see that you have been led into it by the same thing that led you into your current home, career and relationship. This is incompatible with standard professionalism which optimises for comfort, making the person “feel heard,” respect for boundaries and the overall reputation of the profession.

We do not realise the cost of restricting what two people can say to each other. Imagine you’re a child in a playground surrounded by barbed wire fencing. You know it’s there but because of the decent distance between the fence and the play structures, you and your friends feel free to run around like epileptic pinballs. Now imagine that the wire is brought in by 1 metre on each side. The adults reassure you that this is a minor adjustment, and that you can still carry on as before within the new perimeter. But really everything’s changed. The barbed wire is in your peripheral vision, and now there’s a tiny chance you’ll run into it if you’re careless and unlucky. Similarly, the merest sign of limits to where a conversation can go changes everything.

Creativity is therapy without the concerns with validation and boundaries. It explores root causes, generally without an awareness of doing so.

People are not interested in finding the root causes of their problems, since doing so takes longer and has to compete for attention with distractions, quick fixes and life hacks. And it requires speaking a language which is disturbingly unfamiliar to most. This is what creates a demand for therapeutic techniques.

Therapy is kind of like getting lessons in something unusual when you're on holiday. Your options are either to blindly follow the instructor's guidance or to decide the whole thing is a bloody waste of time. You come back to real life and don't know how to fit it in with everything else. I hear people say things like, "my therapist told me I should…" which shows the gaucheness inherent in prescriptions for life. I don't think anyone ever said those words in a deep and even voice. If you are thinking a situation through, it’s probably already too late.

So what do I recommend? This is a reflexive question. People are slow to observe the asymmetrical truth about life that we have better rules about what not to do than what To Do. If someone involved in a criminal enterprise responds to your censures by asking “how do you suggest I put food on the table?” the best answer is simply: find a more ethical profession. Michelangelo claimed that he sculpted David by removing everything that wasn’t David.

One way or another, a patient must cultivate financial and social independence if therapy is not to be a waste of time. These relate to psychological independence, or lack thereof, in a mutually reinforcing way. If any one job or relationship or belief structure starts to function like an umbilical cord, the person will not have the freedom to change direction and thus any attempt to improve one’s life will be a non-starter.