Some Thoughts on Therapy
This morning I spent upwards of two hours attempting to redress an issue with my healthcare plan. Most of the endeavor was spent on hold.
I was reminded (as I often am) of a scene from The Sopranos. In the (very humorous) segment, Tony, encouraged by his therapist Melfi to explore his anger, rants about the inconvenience of waiting on hold and the imperfections of modern life in general. Dr. Melfi, as is her educated prerogative, responds by quoting Yeats’ “Second Coming” (center unstable, falconer missing falcon…), which further exasperates Tony.
Recently, I had the privilege of speaking in a group setting with a renowned Jungian therapist, who, when questioned on the current social and political situation in this country, responded in part with lines from the same poem. The seduction of the poem is palpable. The imagery in the poem’s first stanza vividly conjures a pervasive sense of impending collapse. Given the inherent fallibility of human institutions, the relevance of Yeats’ words seems secure.
I believe that there are two lenses through which a person can understand this famous stanza. The first, which I infer the renowned therapist mentioned above ascribes to, takes the observations of “mere anarchy unleashed” and “the worst … full of passionate intensity” as an individual mandate. Put simply, this interpretation concludes the world may be going to hell, but you are still responsible for yourself and others. The line which follows the latter quotation, that “the best lack all conviction,” buttresses this reading, provided it is taken as an admonishment.
The other lens, a lens I think the show makes clear Dr. Melfi prefers, assumes a more blasé, relative attitude. The world, from this vista, is forever and always going to hell, and since blaming any one person for an infinite concatenation of poor choices would be ridiculous, you are therefore free from responsibility. However, in exchange for this acquittal, you must rescind your indignation. Decrying, or even criticizing, an existence in which individuals lack agency comes off as sanctimonious.
The difference in interpretation relayed above can be, among other things, an avenue for analyzing therapeutic quality. The Sopranos (and my) position is that Dr. Melfi is an ineffective therapist. She spends countless hours processing with an unrepentantly baleful man. While she appears to favor less clinical, more humanist references (likely to accommodate the show’s writers), her general therapeutic vision is flawed. She believes that a patient can fundamentally change via a pathological model which avoids direct confrontation with deeper ethical and existential concerns. A model that is representative of the misguided ethos of mainstream psychology, at least in my experience. Under this schema, it is of no concern to the patient or the practitioner that “the center,” individually or collectively, “cannot hold.” It never will and the appropriate recourse is therefore, much like a programmer sees his lines of code, to view the human psyche as an operating system which can be optimized piecemeal in the interest of harmonious conformity.
The Jungian previously mentioned, who is a collaborator with my own therapist, is representative of what has become, for me, valuable therapy. This approach, as I have experienced it, is highly attuned to the interdependence of the seemingly disparate elements of our individual psyches, as well as the interdependence between our personal psychology and the wider world. Under this schema, imagery such as the “blood dimmed tide” and “the ceremony of innocence…drowned” are not abstracted descriptions of an impervious external world. Instead, they are external manifestations of the shadows which reside in all of us. This means that we are responsible for the world, in its misery and its beauty, but also, crucially, that our psychological development is not simply the myopic pursuit of individual efficiency, but rather an avenue for fulfilling that responsibility. A means of stemming, in our own small way, the “mere anarchy…loosed upon the world.”
The second, far more mysterious stanza of “The Second Coming” illustrates the power of my preferred psychological approach. While the imagery in the first stanza is certainly ominous, it retains an appealing concreteness. The dispossessed falconer, crimson shore, and cynical social analysis are tailormade for any random citizen’s laments. While on hold with the insurance representative, I googled the company upon whose whim I waited. It is easy and cathartic for me to take the billion-dollar profits of a company and industry I feel contribute nothing of value to our healthcare system (and who apparently cannot be bothered to hire a few extra bodies at a call center) and connect them first to a generalized decline and then to the first stanza’s evocations. Just as a person with a different political or philosophical bent could do the same.
The second stanza of the poem does not retain this topical functionality. Which is likely why it is quoted less often in the culture. The titular second coming is presented as an abstract and terrible amalgam of imagery from Revelation and Near East mythology. This “rough beast” lumbering towards us through the centuries represents an atavistic darkness which supersedes rational analysis. No matter our critical acumen, regardless of our skilled prognosis, at the root of our collective foibles lies this awful but perhaps invigorating mystery.
Mainstream psychology reacts to mystery with indifference. That which cannot be sufficiently quantified and efficiently modeled is beyond its purview. The problem is that the elements of life which matter, the pieces of existence truly dispositive of our human condition, are often ambiguous and abtuse. Birth, growth, love, and death will forever occupy and befuddle us, actively and psychically, no matter the neatness of the explanations offered. If, as the poem suggests, humanity is indeed trending towards catastrophe, then what is relevant, for both the individual and the culture, is not the hubris of another answer, but instead a willingness to accept the beast or the savior, within and without, on its own uncertain terms. This is the gift I have received in my therapy.
