QUÉ ES EL DÉFICIT FISCAL?

As we observe, one of the de®ning characteristics of recent philosophy is a particular interest in language. Postmodernism (Norris, 1995, p. 708) is speci®cally interested in language `as the object of its own scrutiny', an

interest which can lead to a `dizzying rhetorical regress' in which nothing seems to make any sense. At the same time postmodernism and con- structivism have challenged and sharpened our appreciation of the impact of language in therapy. In concluding this chapter we consider the signi®cance of the language we use to describe therapeutic processes.

We're interested especially in metaphor, which is a condensed, econ- omical and therefore powerful way of describing one thing in terms of another. In strict rhetorical terms, a metaphor (Rogers was a pioneer) is a more concentrated or elliptical form of a simile (Rogers was like a pioneer). For our purposes, and consistent with one of the original meanings of the word, we're using metaphor in a wider sense to mean any ®gure of speech that works by associating or comparing one thing with another.

Psychological accounts of brain functioning, consciousness, motivation, personality, the therapeutic relationship and so on are shaped by the metaphors used, a subject explored in Leary's (1990) major work on Meta- phors in the History of Psychology. Also, it's not just that some us are more interested in language than others; our capacity for metaphor may have a neurophysiological basis. Synaesthesia is a phenomenon whereby looking at numbers or listening to tones for some people evokes the experience of a particular colour. Based on his research in this ®eld, Ramachandran (2003) suggests that this re¯ects the functioning of the angular gyrus, the part of the brain where the occipital, parietal and temporal lobes meet and which is responsible for cross-modal synthesis. He goes further to suggest that the angular gyrus may have evolved precisely so that the ability to engage in cross-modal abstraction could allow the emergence of other, more abstract functions such as the construction and use of metaphors. This provides a neurological basis and location for cross-modal symbolisation which, from a person-centred perspective, is a necessary process in the understanding of experience and experiencing (see Chapter 2).

`Language' says Keen (1983, p. 233) `governs perception.' He goes on: `The metaphors we use limit what we can see and experience. The category into which we place a thing determines how we will deal with it. An entire logic and philosophy is smuggled into seemingly innocent words.'

We would add that `seemingly innocent words' then smuggle that `logic and philosophy' into any discourse or conversation of which they are a part. Given this, we think it's important to attend to the words we use to describe the work we do. We've already pointed out that Rogers uses mainly linear, scienti®c and modern language to describe experiences and processes that are, rather, dynamic, organismic and postmodern. Making the same point on a larger scale, Ellingham notes (2001, p. 96) that the person-centred approach is `a mix of concepts deriving from two disparate ``paradigms,'' two fundamentally different guiding visions of the world'. He identi®es one as deriving from Descartes and Newton, and as underpinning `our contemporary common-sense understanding of reality'; and one as still

emerging, and characterised by such terms as holistic, organismic and process. Our current interest in this is that Ellingham identi®es the root metaphor of the ®rst paradigm as a machine, and the root metaphor of the second as a living organism. Both metaphors make statements about the way we see the work we do, and carry implications for the way we think about our work. They also, therefore, inform how we work. We contend that metaphors are freighted with meaning and implications, and that it's important to use metaphors that are consistent with the root metaphor and therefore with the nature of the work we do. If sensitive dependence on initial conditions applies, the metaphors we choose to describe aspects of therapy carry powerful messages and unforeseeable implications.

In our view, person-centred practice is, in its nature, organic rather than mechanical, seminal rather than technical. If they're to be helpful, the metaphors we use to describe the work, and to further the development of practice and theory, need to re¯ect this nature. The approach begins with natural images. Rogers (1979, p. 100) uses organic images to describe different aspects of the approach: potatoes in a cellar (1979, p. 100) describe an organism's tendency to actualise; seaweed on a rocky outcrop (1963, pp. 1±2) illustrates an organism's resilience in the face of an inhospitable environment; white blood corpuscles dealing with an infection describe (1970/73, p. 50) a group's capacity to deal with `unhealthy elements in its process'. Given what Van Belle (1990, p. 47) calls Rogers' `almost religious reverence for growth', the metaphors he uses to carry his thinking can only be natural ones. Compare Rogers' images with this from Freud (1926/62, p. 142):

we picture the unknown apparatus which serves the activities of the mind as being really like an instrument constructed of several parts (which we speak of as `agencies'), each of which performs a particular function and which have a ®xed spatial relation to one another. Freud's image is mechanical rather than seminal, lifeless rather than vital, man-made rather than natural. His metaphor comes from and is symbolic of a different paradigm, and is neither meant to carry nor capable of carrying the idea of inherent growth or actualisation.

More recent writers have used particular images to describe aspects of their work and thinking. From a person-centred perspective, Mearns (1994) writes about the `dance' of psychotherapy. Whilst this has some merit, as a metaphor it is too general. Is the dance a slow waltz, an enticing tango, a disco dance, or what?

Brazier (1995, p. 27) describes therapy as surgery, and the therapist as surgeon. He makes the point that the therapist, like the surgeon, must be scrupulously clean so as not to introduce any infective or contaminating material into an open wound. Although we might disagree with this, it's a

legitimate point of view and the metaphor carries the idea vividly and persuasively. Push the metaphor a little further, though, and its limitations become clear. The patient, or client, is not in a position to effect his own change, and puts himself passive, prostrate and anaesthetised, into the hands and under the knife of an expert technician who acts upon him. The surgeon, or therapist, must not introduce anything of her own into the surgical ®eld for fear of infecting the wound and compromising the health and recovery of her patient. Even if we recognise that Brazier is using this metaphor for limited ends, to make a particular point, we suggest that its implications are at odds with the spirit of the approach and therefore problematical. Rogers, for instance, (1959b, p. 221) says that `psychother- apy is the releasing of an already existing capacity in a potentially competent individual, not the expert manipulation of a more or less passive personality'.

Wyatt (2001) describes congruence as a diamond. Like Brazier, she's making a local and legitimate point: that the practice of congruence has many facets. Outside of its locality, though, the metaphor becomes unhelp- ful. Although diamonds are originally organic, by the time they become diamonds they are ®xed, hard, impermeable and not living at all. We suggest that this metaphor risks encouraging a belief in congruence as a ®xed attitude, desirable and expensive, as diamonds are, and dif®cult to attain.

Other metaphors in the generic ®eld of therapy de®ne and dominate discourse. A major example of this is the term `depth psychology', from the German Tiefenpsychologie, originally coined by Eugen Bleuler. This term generally refers to those psychotherapies which are based on notions of the unconscious. The topographical metaphor indicates a geological and archeological structure to the personality (see Chapter 5). It is also exclusive in that it implies that those psychotherapies which don't place the uncon- scious at their centre or bottom are shallow and irrelevant. Within person- centred therapy Mearns (1996) talks about working at `relational depth' with clients. This metaphor carries the same risks, we think, as the term depth psychology.

We deconstruct these metaphors simply to endorse the truth of Keen's point above, that `seemingly innocent words' can carry unforeseen and unhelpful implications. Ellingham (2002) suggests that the person-centred approach may be suf®ciently supple and comprehensive to provide the conceptual vocabulary for a new paradigm which will unify the current variety of psychotherapies. If that is to happen, we think it's important to pay close attention not only to the images and metaphors we use, but also to the ways in which those metaphors and their secondary implications cohere with the root characteristics of the approach, which are organic, holistic and vital. `Of course,' says Sontag (1989, p. 5) `one cannot think without metaphors. But that does not mean there aren't some metaphors

we might well abstain from or try to retire.' In terms of their use in therapy, both Gordon (1978) and Barker (1996) discuss the practical manifestations and applications of metaphors, including the use of anecdotes and short stories, analogies and similes, and relationship metaphors.

The person-centred approach draws philosophically from several streams: Christianity, empiricism, humanism, phenomenology and existen- tialism. The assumptions contained in each of those streams carry impli- cations for the language we use. Learning the discipline of the language may be a way into more congruent and therefore more effective practice. Having laid out the philosophical ground of our enquiry, we now turn to the heart of organismic psychology: the organism.

Organism

Biological knowledge is continued creative activity, by which the idea of the organism comes increasingly within reach of our experience.

Kurt Goldstein

No organism is self-suf®cient. It requires the world for the grati®cation of its needs . . . there is always an inter-dependency of the organism and its environment.

Fritz Perls

We must recognize that the human organism is not an isolated entity, suf®cient unto itself. Every individual is born, lives, and dies inseparably from the larger contexts of physical, social, political, and spiritual in¯uences. The laws governing the physical universe are not separate from those governing the functions of living organisms . . . we must begin by comprehending clearly the setting in which the human being is found, how it in¯uences him, and in turn how he affects it.

George Vithoulkas

The person comes to be what he is, as clients so frequently say in therapy. What this seems to mean is that the individual comes to be ± in awareness ± what he is ± in experience. He is, in other words, a complete and fully-functioning human organism.

Carl Rogers

At the heart of the person-centred approach and the theory and practice of person-centred therapy lies the organism, a pulsing biological entity and a signi®cant and enduring image. Spielhofer (2003, p. 80) clari®es Rogers' use of the term: `Rogers does not see ``organism'' either as a metaphor used to present and explain our experiencing and acting, or as a theoretical construct like the self, but rather as a real, given entity.'

Rogers' use of the concept signi®es both a uni®ed concept of human motivation and a focus on all organisms, and in this sense it may be more

accurate to talk about a people-centred or even species-centred approach to life and to therapy. The use of the concept `organism' means that our approach to working therapeutically with people emphasises the nature of the human organism, and the integration of the person and personality, more than it does notions of the self. As Rogers (1953/67a, p. 80) himself put it:

. . . one of the fundamental directions taken by the process of therapy is the free experiencing of the actual sensory and visceral reactions of the organism without too much of an attempt to relate these experiences to the self. This is usually accompanied by the conviction that this material does not belong to, and cannot be organized into, the self. The end point of this process is that the client discovers that he can be his experience, with all of its variety and surface contradiction; that he can formulate himself out of his experience, instead of trying to impose a formulation of self upon his experiences, denying to awareness those elements which do not ®t.

This also addresses the traditional and mainly Western separation of mind from body. We think that Rogers' point is a particularly important one as, in our view, both person-centred psychology and practice, and generic theoretical and meta-perspectives on the ®elds of psychoanalysis, psycho- therapy and psychology, have tended to sideline the organism in favour of the more popular concept of the self. For instance, in his work on psy- chology and psychoanalysis, Pine (1988, 1990) identi®es four conceptual domains: drive, ego, object and self. He omits organism and organismic psychology. Even within the person-centred approach and person-centred therapy few books list `organism' in their index, let alone as a central consideration. To date (in addition to our own work), we have found only ®ve: Rogers (1939, 1969), Barrett-Lennard (1998), Thorne and Lambers (1998) and Wilkins (2003). In four of these `organism' is only a one-line entry. In their major work on Theories of Personality, Hall and Lindzey (1970) acknowledge Rogers as adopting an `organismic orientation', although they do not categorise him as an organismic theorist as such. In the third edition of their work they revise this signi®cantly. `It is clear from his recent writings' they say (Hall & Lindzey, 1978, p. 279) `that the emphasis should fall on the organism, not the self.'

Hall and Lindzey acknowledge, alongside Rogers, a number of other psychologists who have also expounded organismic theory: Kantor (1924), Wheeler (1940), Murphy (1947) and Werner (1948), to which we would add Brunswik in his early work (Tolman & Brunswik, 1935). More recently, Brown (1990) writes about organismic psychotherapy from the perspective of neo-Reichian body psychotherapy and, on the basis of the centrality

given to organismic experience, Fernald (2000) claims Rogers as a body- centred counsellor.

We too view person-centred therapy as based on an organismic psy- chology, as distinct from a self psychology, an assertion we discuss both here and in Chapter 4. Whilst Rogers' contribution to the development of self theory may be better known, we view his contribution to organismic theory and psychology as more signi®cant in that it marks person-centred psychology as one which consistently views the organism as a whole, and as the source of subjective experience. In this it differs, for instance, from early gestalt psychology, as developed by Wertheimer, Koffka and KoÈhler, which tended to restrict its attention to the phenomena of conscious awareness, a discussion developed in Chapter 3.

Organismic psychology also emphasises the indissolubility of organism and environment and, therefore, the inevitability of interpersonal relation- ships. The organism cannot be understood outside of its environment. Angyal (1941) makes this point strongly throughout his work. `Any attempt' he says (p. 89) `to make a morphological separation of organism and environment fails and necessarily leads to endless hair-splitting dialectic.'