How does the passive style of humanistic methods influence the consultation process? Although they approach defense mechanisms in a completely different way from my favorite methods, sometimes they might even be better. My own experiences as a client are examples of this. I tried to convey this vividly, using as metaphors a scene with Yoda and Luke, and an example from fencing.
At a certain stage in a psychologist’s career, it is almost inevitable that one attends some kind of method-specific training. There, one learns various intervention procedures and techniques; practicing them makes one’s work more effective and, not least, increases professional self-confidence.
But does psychology really work because of the techniques?
Operation Dynamo
The seed of this line of thought comes from a team-building event where I was explaining to a curious layperson how much more our work is than simply talking with people.
I explained the logic of a therapeutic plan as if it were a kind of tactical preparation for winning a match. Gesticulating enthusiastically, I demonstrated when we “flank,” when we confront, and how we retreat to a pre-established line of cover.
It was probably quite funny to listen to, but the message came across: if you understand your client’s problem, you can form a concept about how they will react to different things, and which of those reactions lead toward the goal—so you plan what you will bring into the consultation sessions.
“Damn, then I’m doing it completely wrong!” sighed my colleague Sebi after I had explained “how to win.”
He represents the humanistic approach, whose essence is that the whole process is permeated by an atmosphere of unconditional acceptance. The psychologist tries to get to know and understand the client as deeply as possible, reflects back what they observe, and assures them that whatever enters this space is fundamentally okay. This is done in the belief that the human being is fundamentally okay: even if someone does something that is difficult to accept, if we understand the motivation and reach the root cause, we will find the striving for self-actualization there—and there is nothing wrong with that. So it is not the motivation or the feeling that needs to be falsified; at most, one might talk a little about possible solutions.
The professional achieves the experience that the client can bring anything into this space through a more passive style. Facilitation does happen, but it is not typical here for someone to receive homework, fill out tests, or be subjected to an empathic confrontation. Apparently there are even sessions where nobody says a word for quite a while, until the client decides to bring something up. Humanistic practitioners believe that the therapeutic topic is actually already present within the person—the thing that would be good to say out loud, and from whose shame it would be good to be released. One simply has to wait until the therapeutic relationship is strong enough for the client to bring it up; until then, we’ll see what happens. Typically neither party sits down knowing what the session will be about.
At least, that’s what I learned about the humanistic method.
And as far as I know, that’s the approach Sebi trained in.
The day after the conversation, at some point I mentioned to him that if I were going to a psychologist now, I would probably go to someone like him.
I didn’t really explain why.
And the answer isn’t necessarily self-evident, considering that I consistently choose methods where “it’s okay” and acceptance are important, but where conceptualization is still an integral part of the process.
Once a sketch forms in my mind of possible directions, obstacles, and milestones, we are no longer talking only about a helping relationship, but also about a set of tasks intended to help.
I started wondering what kind of dynamic this introduces into the consultation situation.
One of the most interesting answers, for me, was provided by Master Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back.
Only What You Take With You
There’s that scene during Luke’s training when he and Yoda arrive at a tree, beneath which lies a cave where the dark side of the Force is concentrated. Naturally, the student must enter that cave in order to grow. In the depths of the darkness he encounters a vision: the main enemy, Darth Vader. He defeats him in a duel, but as Vader’s mask disappears, Luke sees his own face behind it.
For a long time, when I thought about this scene as a therapeutic metaphor, I saw its message as Luke encountering the part of the personality Jung called the Shadow. The Shadow is our “evil self,” the collection of rejected psychic processes we would most like to erase from ourselves. But since that is impossible, the only option is to exile them into the unconscious, or perhaps project them onto others. We like to believe that if we triumph over bad people, then we also triumph over the Shadow within us—but in doing so we either deceive ourselves or the audience. The Shadow is still there. It should not be destroyed, but understood and integrated: it is not “him,” it is “me.”
I still think that interpretation is valid, but now the dialogue that happens before the scene caught my attention more.
“What’s in there?” asks the student.
“Only what you take with you,” replies the master. Then, seeing Luke strap on his ammunition belt, he adds: “You will not need your weapons.”
What would this short exchange mean if Luke were entering a therapeutic situation?
In a simpler interpretation, “only what you take with you” means that the session will deal with the client’s topics. The therapist may introduce questions that at first glance seem unrelated, but they do so not out of boredom—rather, because they are trying to understand the problem thoroughly.
In a more complex sense, the sentence also implies that the feelings connected to therapy—and even the relationship with the professional—are things that originate not from the situation itself, but from the client.
In the film, Luke feels that something is wrong and that it’s cold because of the place. In reality, this would be his visceral response to the therapeutic situation: the threat of having to face everything he has suppressed until now.
For the viewer of the film it’s obvious why Luke immediately draws his lightsaber when he sees Darth Vader. In a therapeutic situation we might say that if you tense up around your therapist, it could be a transference situation: you are projecting emotions onto them in order to recreate an old relational pattern. (That idea comes from Freud, though transactional analysis has something similar, translated as “substitution,” a kind of little sibling of the psychological game.) And if the therapist tenses up toward you, that may be countertransference—which again originates more from you than from them.
The passive style of humanistic therapists therefore serves the purpose of making Yoda’s statement truly valid in therapy: only what you take with you is there. You are not bombarded with any kind of “task collection” that might force you to falsify yourself and incorporate foreign thoughts and feelings in the hope that they will make you acceptable and lovable. Not least because, beyond the additional suffering this might cause, you would probably label them ego-dystonic at the first opportunity and discard them anyway.
That sounds good, doesn’t it?
Everyone likes it when people are open to them and accept them.
Yet I can imagine that there is a point where this actually makes going to therapy even harder.
This is where Yoda’s second warning comes in: “You will not need your weapons.”
Because most of us do bring self-defense tools into therapy—we just call them defense mechanisms or coping modes, depending on which book you’re reading.
I once had a conversation with a friend. At the point when we both sensed a therapeutic indication in the topic, he said that he might go see a psychologist—but it would be difficult to find one, because unfortunately he is more intelligent than most of them.
He tries to navigate the world with his intelligence and erudition, and he uses these tools when something goes wrong. And it is a form of trouble when someone in therapy feels that their previously fairly tolerable worldview is beginning to shake.
At that point, it’s even possible that he decides to reinforce that worldview—despite having come precisely to change it. At least it’s predictable, quasi-safe. Coping modes tend to consider it a realistic compromise: you may not get what you truly need, but in return you remain “well compensated.”
These modes can be such integral parts of personality functioning that some of his friends might even describe him through them. So when stability is threatened, he will certainly deploy them. The question is: what can the professional do with that?
I used to think I understood my friend’s concerns: a humanistic therapist might wait half a lifetime, while these modes are built for the long term.
But maybe that’s exactly the trick.
Perhaps the client doesn’t receive a “task collection” because tasks can activate those coping modes. What happens if this passive, non-directive, open, accepting style truly places no pressure on them?
At this point it might start to make sense why I now see more potential for my own psychological development in a psychologist like Sebi than in someone who thinks the way I do.
I have experienced both chairs in this situation.
Naturally, these “battle in 360 degrees” methods come easily to me because I experience the functioning of the personality I know best—my own—in exactly this way.
I have my consultation tactics because I hope they can outmaneuver coping modes. I take it as a given that at some point the client will feel vulnerable and redirect the conversation onto a safer path—one with less developmental potential.
I did the same thing. I didn’t envy my poor psychologist! My coping modes have been training and perfecting their techniques every day since childhood. Sun Tzu said that the one who defends best is the one whose opponent doesn’t even know what to attack—my helper probably didn’t even notice how skillfully I deflected some golden opportunities.
From this perspective, it may be a vain illusion to think that one can reach the authentic self—and step out of the stagnation caused by defenses—by cleverly outmaneuvering coping modes.
The Sebi-style path, however passive it may seem to someone like me, might contain certain possibilities. It seems that humanistic therapists take seriously the wisdom “those who draw the sword shall perish by the sword,” and simply refuse to enter that game in the first place (pun intended). They don’t maneuver, and they give me no reason to maneuver either. They don’t provide stimuli that could activate my psychological defenses.
Brilliantly Foolish Tactics
If you see some logic in what I’ve written so far, you might already be convinced that the best choice is definitely a professional trained in a humanistic method.
I wouldn’t say it’s that self-evident.
At one lunch, my colleagues and I once argued about whether the humanistic approach really counts as a method. A method contains techniques—something tangible. What in humanistic training corresponds to that? Do we really see the professionals who come out of those programs as the ones who will go and solve things? Or could it be that this is more of a mindset than a method?
To this dilemma I would connect the thoughts of the fencing master Joachim Meyer, who said that fencers can be classified into different types. There are those who always attack, those who always defend, those who visibly follow some tactical consideration, and those who fence in such an atypical way that only after the duel can we decide whether we were facing a great martial artist or a dilettante.
The way my colleagues and I interpret the contents behind the word method corresponds to Meyer’s “deliberate” fencer. They have more directive and less directive techniques, knowledge about different situations in both longitudinal and cross-sectional terms, and they learn to adapt to them.
The humanistic therapists we’ve encountered so far mostly belong to the fool/artist category. Some of them are passive and constantly humming in thought because they are exactly the kind of person my friend feared: someone with no independent ideas, who simply channels their everyday openness (= lack of critical judgment) into professional frameworks. But there are others who read the situation very clearly and move with it almost invisibly—like water that does not challenge the rock but flows around it. And somehow, by the end of the story, it’s always the rock that gives in.
Unfortunately, the conclusion of this line of reasoning is that a “Sebi-type psychologist” means less “trained in a humanistic method” than it means “Sebi.” He chose a method in which his character can flourish best—just as I did with mine. Those character traits are what make him, in my eyes, a very credible professional. But those are not traits you’re likely to find listed in a professional directory when you’re looking for a psychologist.
The good news is that however uniquely someone becomes the kind of master Meyer described, individuality does not mean irreproducibility. Somehow it still works out that every student eventually finds a master.
You might just have to go all the way to Dagobah to find them.