Neurosis & Treatment: A Holistic Theory Chapter 3       

Andras Angyal

 

3. The Psychological Functions

 

The Symbolizing Function

 

It is the symbolic nature of psychological processes that distinguishes them from all other phenomena in the world.  Symbolism is a triadic constellation whose terms are: the object A, the symbol B, and a third member-the subject-for whom the symbol means or represents the object.  The crucial factor is this third member who has to be endowed with the capacity of meaning function, that is, of "mentation."  The connection between symbol and referent is set up by him, and if we eliminate this third member, the symbolism is destroyed.  Thus the symbolic relationship is unique to the psychological realm and actually defines it.  We may rightly say that the symbolic relationship is just as general and fundamental for the humanistic sciences as the casual relationship has been for classical physics.  Psychological activity may be called the symbolizing function of the organism.  This implies that no only some but all psychological functions can be understood as processes of symbolization.  To demonstrate this we shall briefly review the principal groups of psychological functions, following for the moment their conventional classification into percepts, images, concepts, emotional and conative phenomena.  First, however, a few words should be said about the general issue raised by the existence of conscious states as such.

 

Mental phenomena and their relation to physiological processes are frequently looked upon as a sort of miracle.  That conscious phenomena, such as the "raw feel" of sensation, do exist is no more miraculous than the existence of physical phenomena or of anything else in the world.  Conscious states are demonstrable data and beyond the domain of reasoning.  Difficult problems arise only when we consider the possibility and mode of interaction between mental and physical phenomena.  The holistic view bridges this fundamentally artificial gap between mind and body by recognizing the psychophysically neutral total organism.  The person is neither physiological nor psychological but is a holistic unit, which implies the capacity of both physiological and psychological functioning.  If we do not identify the personality with the body alone, it is no more miraculous that the person can produce ideas than that he can produce bile-although, in a sense, both are miraculous enough.  We do not have to answer the question of how two such different "substances" as mind and body can act on each other, since we do not assume that such an interaction occurs.  The total organism is active, in all its manifestations, but in some of these activities psychological features are prevalent and in others, physiological features.  Thus, for practical purposes, the two fields can be distinguished.  Neural processes cannot produce ideas, and thoughts cannot make the muscles contract, but the total organism, the person, can do both.

 

Symbolization in Cognition

 

Turning now to the phenomena of perception, we may say that the organism elaborates perceptual mental images on the basis of tangential engagements with the environment in the physiological sensory processes.  We call these contacts tangential to distinguish them from direct and obvious forms of interaction such as taking nourishment or avoiding danger.  After the perceptual data have been produced and actively elaborated by the organism, they are used as symbols for objects of the environment.  Each of these environmental objects is far richer in traits than the perceptual datum that indicates the object for the observer.  When one sees a white bird, what is visually given is only a white spot of a certain form, but one perceives through it the object "bird." When we state that the bird is an animal, that it lives, flies, eats, etc., we are obviously referring to something different from the visual datum, the white spot.  The visual datum will vary if one sees the bird from the front or the side, when it is at rest or is flying, but the bird will remain the same bird.  The object is incomparably richer in content than its visual appearance.  The visual datum is the symbol for the whole object.  It refers to the object and indicates it for the observer.  In the terminology of F. Brentano, the perceptual datum is characterized by "intentionality" toward an object.  The data given in perception are much simpler than the object itself; hence the great economic value of perception for the organism.

 

Images are still more simplified symbols, and the organism is able to operate with them with still greater ease and freedom.  The advantage of images as compared with perception does not lie in their greater simplicity alone.  They allow the organism to deal also with objects that are not included in the situation of the moment.  Images broaden the perspective and sphere of the organism over spatially distant parts of the environment-as well as over the past (memory) and the future (foresight).  Symbolization is still more effective in thought processes because of the use of very remote, but extremely condensed and simplified, symbols.  A single concept stands for a whole series of objects and relationships.  The symbols involved in thought processes are representative of relations and system connections between objects.  With the aid of these symbols a wide range of intellectual operations of high economic value for the organism is possible.

 

Symbolization in Emotion and Striving

 

Perceptions and images are symbols which refer primarily to the environment.  There also exists a wide range of psychological phenomena that indicate the states of the organism.  The sensations of pain, hunger, thirst, and other internal sensations belong to this group.  The main forms of expression of the state of the organism are, however, the emotions.  The feeling tone of emotions, their pleasantness-unpleasantness component, is the experience of the state and of the situation of the person under the aspect of value.  The biological situations are constantly evaluated by the organism from the point of view of their significance for the life process.  The emotional tone is the experience of such significances, an experience not embodied in detached thoughts and judgements but given in a very intimate and immediate manner as joy and sorrow, depression and elation, pleasure and pain.  Because of the immediacy and "ego-closeness" of emotional experiences, their symbolic nature is not as obvious as, for instance, that of perceptions, in which the symbol and the referent are more clearly distinguishable.  It may be useful, therefore, to clarify what is the symbol and what is the primary fact to which the emotional experience refers.

 

The primary fact is a situation having a positive or negative value for the person.  Success, failure, threat to one's personal security, disappointment in one's expectations, the loss of a close friend, or, on the other hand, the opening up of new opportunities, an attained goal, a lucky constellation of events creating a fortunate turn in one's personal affairs are examples of situations that have a distinct positive or negative value for the person.  Such ego-relevant situations are in themselves not experiences but actually existing biospheric constellations.  They are the primary facts which function as referents in the formation of a symbolic relation.  The value aspect of these situations is experienced in the form of emotion.  In other words, emotional experiences are symbols of value-laden, personal-relevant facts.  Emotion is an evaluative experience, the most immediate form of personal evaluation. Explicit value judgements may precede, accompany, or follow emotional experiences, but they are by no means indispensable to them.  A person may feel sad, anxious, or happy without any reason known to him.

 

Conative processes are no less symbolic in character than any other class of psychological phenomena.  The organismic total process is characterized by a directional trend leading from states of lesser autonomy to states of greater autonomy and by the homonomous trend toward participation in larger wholes.  Both trends branch out into a number of specific manifestations such as drives and urges, which in themselves are not psychological but organismic, psychophysically neutral.  These basic organismic urgencies and their specific ramifications are elaborated symbolically and experienced by the organism as conscious conative processes: wishing, craving, willing.  The referents both for emotional tone and conation are not physiological but totalistic organismic states and processes, in which environment is always a participant.  In conation these processes are translated not only into psychological processes but frequently also into gross bodily action.  As concretizations of the organism's basic trends, drives and urges are neither direct causes nor effects of emotions, but there is a connection between the two.  When the vital relevance of a situation is not only acknowledged in thinking but also experienced in the form of emotion, this evaluation is much more likely to result in action.  Whether or not the action will be adaptive depends, to a large extent, on the integrational state of the organism.  Given a state of chronic conflict, emotions may reflect contradictory evaluations and have disorganizing rather than energizing effects.

 

If emotions are evaluative experiences, we cannot view any of them as energies stored within the organism, which must periodically have an outlet if the person is to remain healthy.  Anxiety and hostility are not present in anyone in fixed quantities; they are emergency reactions to circumstances that interfere drastically with the realization of the basic human strivings.  In the neurotic, these emotions always lurk in the background and erupt on frequent occasions because neurotic life is a threatened life.  A healthy person rarely experiences disorganizing anxiety or rage; in his case fear and anger, which symbolize more moderate and circumscribed threats, often have an organizing effect on behavior.  These two emotions reflect two ways of dealing with threat.  Which is "chosen" depends on the magnitude of the threat and the person's confidence in his capacity to deal with it.  When the confidence level is high, one can deal with an obstacle either by effectively molding it or by alertly avoiding it, and either activity can be pleasurable.  When the threat is stronger, or confidence weaker, anger that can lead to courageous fighting is aroused, but will still greater threats anger is replaced by fear and anxiety. Still, the alternate emotion is never far off.  Our anger is aroused only by what we fear, that is, by dangers with which we may not be able to cope, and we are apt to be enraged at whatever drives us into anxiety; this rage can also be turned against oneself-for being weak, inadequate, cowardly.  It makes good sense in some contexts to consider anger and fear as two forms of the same emotion, but anger, when it remains outward-directed, is the more constructive of the two because it implies greater self-confidence. And self-respect.

 

Defects of Symbolization

 

Because human life is carried out partly on a symbolic level, psychological functioning provides the organism with new means of expressing its inherent tendencies.  Symbolic activities greatly widen the field that can be brought under the autonomous government of the organism or used for homonomous integrations.

 

The symbolic representations of the environment and of the individual are not perfect.  The psychological phenomena are not always entirely reliable indices of the primary objects to which they refer.  Illusions of perception and falsifications of memory are examples of distortion.  In the field of emotion and conation we also find distorted pictures somewhat comparable to illusions.  We may experience as pleasurable a state of our organism which is harmful for its welfare, at least in the long run, and we often wish to strive for things that we do not need.  Conscious intention frequently misses the real target of one's deeper urgency, a fact of which psychoanalysis has made us keenly aware.  The "mind," the ability to have a symbolic grasp of things, is the greatest power given by nature to some of its creatures, but it is also the deepest source of error and suffering.  One of the important tasks of an organismic consciousness-transcendent psychology should be to shed light on the processes of distortion brought about by the "mirror of the mind," and to indicate the means for correcting the imperfect pictures.

 

The Self-Image

 

Of particular interest to us are the limitations and distortions of symbolization which concern the self-image.  We have defined the subject, or the self, as those factors or processes in the biosphere that stand under prevalently autonomous government; this is the person, or the biological self in the broad sense of the word.  When this self is psychologically elaborated it appears as self-awareness, or consciousness of self; this is what psychologically we experience ourselves.  Since self-awareness is the conscious image of the biological subject, the features which can be observed in this conscious phenomenon are good indicators of what is going on in the biological subject.  Nevertheless, these indicators are often unreliable and insufficient.

 

With the conscious elaboration of the biological subject-object relationship, a peculiar split appears in the subject organization.  It is a remarkable fact that we exclude from self-awareness certain factors which are very important components of the subject.  I do not refer here to pathological exclusions like compulsive phenomena, loss of ego reference, and the like but to a fact which is characteristic of the human personality organization in general.  When we act under the influence of strong affects, we feel that we do not have entire control over our actions but seem to be carried away by the affect or "passion" as by a foreign force.  The word passion has a definite reference to passivity.  When we later account for such actions we may use expressions like "I was not myself" or "I was beside myself."  A similar example is that state of inspiration in which ideas seem to come from the outside while one experiences oneself as a passive receiver.  Such states have often been ascribed to supernatural forces ("divine inspiration," "intuition").

 

It is beyond that affect, inspiration, and similar experiences originate in our personality, that they are activities of our organisms.  Why then does one not experience them as part of one's self?  The important fact is that such processes-although determined by the autonomy of the organism-are not governed by our will.  The conscious self which is only a part, namely the conscious or symbolized part of the biological subject, tends to establish its own autonomous government.  What we call "will" represents autonomous determination, the self-government of this narrow conscious or symbolic self.  The symbolic self becomes a state within a state.  Thus a split is created within the subject organization.

 

This split is greatly aggravated by the fact that the symbolic self tends toward hegemony, tends to take over the government of the total personality, a task for which it is not equipped.  Symbolic processes have a high economic value.  Many problems of living are solved not by direct interaction between concrete individual and concrete environment but between symbols indicating the state or characteristics of each.  Because of the high economizing value of the symbolic function, the organism tends to utilize it to excess-hence the trend of symbolic functioning toward a hegemony over the total personality.  But the psychological self is not equipped to govern the total organism.  Only a small part of the biological subject reaches the level of symbolization; and that which is symbolized may be distorted in the process.  Some parts of the total biological process may appear only in hazy images, and about the environment, is not an entirely true picture of reality and is never complete.  When the psychological self attempts to govern the biological total process on the basis of this unreliable and insufficient information, it may become a destructive factor and bring about great damage to the organism.

 

The discrepancy between the biological total process and what is symbolized is partly due to an inhibition of symbolization of certain personality factors.  This inhibition may be a part of a useful selection between relevant and irrelevant factors; it may accompany the automatization of a previously conscious activity, or may be due, as in repression, to the incompatibility of a personality factor with the psychological self.  Lack of symbolization, however, is not caused merely by inhibition.  Such a lack represents a more fundamental incongruity between the total organism and the psychological self.  Only part of the biological total process is symbolized by man in his present state of evolution.

 

The split between the conscious self and the total organism becomes even more marked because certain factors elaborated on the symbolic level remain segregated on that level and do not penetrate into the depths of personality.  This phenomenon of resistance of the total personality against accepting certain symbolic facts may be viewed as the counterpart of repression, or of the inhibition of symbolization.  Although we may know quite clearly that something is not good for us, or that it is unreasonable, we still sometimes cannot help doing it.  This is an extremely important and difficult problem in the therapy of personality disorders.  We see again and again that the patient has perfect insight, but that this insight does not penetrate sufficiently into the personality to change his behavior.  The relative segregation of the symbolic self within the organism is perhaps the most vulnerable point of the human personality organization.

 

I have deliberately avoided using the term unconscious in the foregoing discussion of organismic versus conscious processes.  Psychoanalysis, which has popularized this term, is in fact a study of the manifestations of the integrated organism, of the biological total process; it has contributed more to our knowledge of the total personality than any other single system.  However, the mentalistic terminology in which psychoanalysis describes all personality process can be confusing and at times misleading.  Rather than speak, e.g., of "unconscious wishes," I prefer whenever possible to use different terms for those dynamic trends that are not elaborated symbolically, although they may be revealed by the person's behavior.  Attitudes, or sets, which refer to the organism's readiness to behave and perceive in certain ways when certain situations arise are good examples of such holistic, psychophysically neutral concepts.  Attitudes can be active without being conscious; although they may become conscious through an additional symbolic elaboration.  I shall not be pedantic about terminology, however, and shall occasionally use mentalistic terms, designating, e.g., as unconscious or implicit fantasies those patterns of cognitive sets or attitudes which, if symbolized, would fall in the category of fantasy.

 

Effects of Symbolization

 

The description of symbolic processes given so far makes them appear as passive states, as mere reflections of external or internal reality.  It does justice neither to the activity involved in the elaboration of symbols by the organism, even in the case of simple perception, nor to the far-reaching effects that symbolization in turn has on reality, on the total course of biospheric events.  When, in a symbolic act, we give meaning to an event or an item, defining or identifying it as useful or harmful, loving or unloving, difficult or easy, we do not merely grasp or mirror these features of the biosphere but also potentiate them.  This holds true both for the environmental situation and for the person himself.  It is not the presence or absence of hostile, loving, fearful, envious, generous, etc., tendencies that distinguish one person from another, or distinguish between the neurotic and the healthy state of the same person.  All these potentialities are part qualities of the person at both times, but they are organized in different ways.  This organization is not only reflected in the symbolization of the self but is also influenced by it.  What the person will be and how he will conduct his life depends primarily on the patterns with which, or in terms of which, he identifies himself.

 

Self-identification, or self-definition, e.g., as loving, or hateful, or inadequate, is a process which is only partially symbolized; yet its conscious aspect is not a mere epiphenomenon but can have dynamic effects.  In therapy this aspect provides means for the preparation of deep-reaching changes, and sometimes it can provide leverage for crucial shifts.  A great many therapeutic insights can be described as "renaming,"reidentifying one's impulses, strivings, purposes, attitudes.  One of the significant results of these redefinitions is the recognition by the patient of his constructive tendencies and possibilities, of alternative ways of conducting his life.  These changed significances may prepare the way for a decisive shift in self-definition, for "throwing in one's lot” with the newly recognized constructive alternatives.  In all stages of this process, significant events can be at least partly steered, and sometimes triggered, by conscious deliberation.

 

The attribution of definite meanings to external events has similar far-reaching effects; situations tend to become what we name them. "Fortune" and "misfortune" may seem to pursue a person throughout life, or at least through long periods until the trend changes in some "miraculous” way.  On close inspection it may be observed that one person sees opportunities in a variety of events (both good and bad) while another sees in the same events only contraventions, obstacles, threats of misfortune.  The second type of person, out of fear, misses opportunities which the first recognizes and grasps.  These selective expectations have an extraordinary power in interhuman relations.  Everyone consistently calls forth, or invites, only a certain selection from the many attitudes and action potentialities of other people.  In analyzing this process of inviting certain reactions to ourselves, we usually find a priori expectations which imply a view of the other person as hostile or helpful, understanding, stupid, belittling, or exploiting.  These expectations produce results.  There are few people who are so inveterate in one of their modes of behavior that they can be impervious to the other person's conception of them, if this conception is vividly expressed in the mode of interaction he tends to establish.  The selective invitation of reaction to oneself is a striking demonstration of the interactional nature of the biosphere and of the extent to which the person creates his environment. 

 

Imagination

 

The act of defining or identifying is essentially a function of imagination; correspondingly, the shifts in definition and self-definition with which therapists are concerned reflect an imaginative process.  We shall therefore consider the workings of imagination in some detail, taking the term in the wide sense which includes thinking and evaluating processes along with the production of concrete images.

 

The term "imagination" evokes contradictory connotations.  When the layman talks about "mere imagination" or says, "It is all in his mind," the implication is not only that the imagined things are not true, but that fantasy as such is a negligible event, not deserving attention, because it produces no tangible results.  Another aspect of the popular conception is that imagination has no concern whatsoever for truth, that everything is possible in fantasy, and that in general the production of images is a purely arbitrary affair, a matter of whim which has nothing of substance behind it.

 

We know, of course, that none of these assumptions are true in this extreme form.  Images are not produced out of nothing.  There is behind them the energy of a drive which determines their quality; without a need or a wish no image will arise.  Nor is it quite true that, given a definite wish, we are free to pursue it in imagination just as we please, without any concern about the realistic possibilities of its fulfillment.  There are limitations to this freedom and they exist not only in the case of realistic or semi realistic planning in which imagination is subjected to strong controls.  It is difficult, and under certain conditions impossible, to visualize clearly and vividly something that is contrary to reality.  In one of my studies of space orientation the subjects were asked to imagine the room in an inverted position.^[1]  This seemingly simple task proved impossible to accomplish for most people.  Though their eyes were closed, the subjects' knowledge of their factual position in relation to the room interfered with the visualization of the "wrong" position.  In studying daydreams we find that the dreamer often expends considerable effort in attempting to surmount obstacles that would realistically present themselves, to resolve difficulties in a quasirealistic fashion.  Arbitrary turns, deus ex machina, do occur, but a daydream is not satisfying if too many incongruities are left; one tries to resolve them and to make the whole story as plausible and consistent as one can.  Concern for reality is not completely abandoned in fantasy.

 

The assumption that fantasy is ineffective appears to be totally wrong.  Imagination has numerous effects.  It can produce or affect other mental states-e.g. arouse or allay emotions or stimulate decisions; it can lead to somatic changes of various kinds, well substantiated in psychosomatic medicine; imagination can also produce vital changes in the person’s environment, especially the social one.  Neurosis provides perhaps the most obvious and striking example of the potency of imagination, particularly of the implicit assumptions not symbolized in consciousness.  Yet the conception of imagination as ineffective, as a mere nothing, also has a basis in fact; we have only to think of the futility of most daydreams.  This contradiction points up that images may vary from zero effectiveness to extraordinary potency.  What are the conditions which make of imagination either an insubstantial reverie which adds little of essence to one’s life or a powerful agent which can both help to maintain the status quo and induce transformations in the direction of sickness or health?

 

Effective Imagination

 

For an image to be vivid, strong, and effective, two conditions have to be fulfilled; they are interrelated, both referring to the integrational state of the process connected with the production of the image.  Let us assume that behind the image is a need, or a wish, i.e., an incomplete Gestalt which, in accordance with the principle of system action, tends to completion.  The stronger the need, the more vivid will be the image, and the more it will prove effective as a step toward the fulfillment of the wish.  The strength of the need in turn depends on its position within the personality system and its subsystems.  The more directly the need is connected with the central invariable trends of the person, the stronger it will be.  If, because of some disturbance of integration, a specific wish is not connected with the deeper more general trend, to which it could serve as an adequate expression, this wish may lack substance and energy, be almost farcical.  It might be entertained, e.g., because its object is held desirable by others.  Someone may dream of becoming a writer, not because he has the need to write, but because of the prestige of this vocation, of the fame he would like to achieve.  The need for fame (which may be a particular formulation of the need to be loved) is present, but the need for writing is not; the surface whish does not correspond to any real need.  The real need for writing arises when the person has something to say.  When this is behind the wish, the activity of putting one's thoughts on paper is supported by a powerful structure which this activity serves to complete.  But shadowy wishes, not supported by any directly connected need structure, may be satisfied by such shadowy things as daydreams.  In the neurotic life there is a great deal of apparent need, desire, ambition, and too little activity to lead toward real fulfillment.

 

The second condition required for the production of dynamically effective images is wholeheartedness, or absence of conflict and doubt.  This is where the imagination's concern with truth serves as a pointer to the central feature of its dynamism.  For the image to be effectual its content must be pictures as true, with the conviction that it can be and will be.  One could say that only those things that are possible are fully imaginable, i.e., can be imagined with belief.  The presence or absence of belief determines whether or not the image will be effective.  What we have strong implicit faith in we expect to happen, and this expectation facilitates its own realization.  But if we doubt the reality value of the image, it has no dynamic leverage.

 

If conviction of truth were based only on factuality, convincing images would be mere translations of known facts, and "imagination" would be a meaningless and superfluous term, a duplication of perception and memory.  But the "reality," or convincingness, of a given item is based predominately on an integrational constellation, namely on the consistency of this partial item with the system principle of the whole.  The lack of consistency, the conflict between a given experience and the principles governing reality as we know it, leads to doubt and disbelief.  For an image to become strong and potentially creative this inconsistency, this contradiction or opposition arising out of our established system of beliefs, must be somehow eliminated or reduced.

 

Achieving Consistency: Restriction and Extension

 

Reduction or elimination of inconsistency is possible because reality, the range of what is believed to be factual, is not fixed but variable.  A doubtful item, contradicted by reality, can become consistent with it if the field of factuality is changed in one or two ways.  Its range can be restricted, so that what is contradictory to the image is obliterated; or it can be extended to include, as lawful possibilities, factors that had formerly been excluded and that would support the given image.

 

Strong vivid images can be produced through a narrowing of the total field, such as occurs in dreams, in hypnosis, or in experiments involving sensory deprivation.  In dreams not only the criteria and controls provided by perception fall away, but the known lawfulness of the world recedes into the background, is "forgotten," so that imagination can take over unopposed.  In hypnosis the realm of the "factual" is essentially restricted to the suggestions of the hypnotist,  conflict and doubt are eliminated, and strong effective images are produced accordingly.  In sensory deprivation the environment is artificially impoverished to such an extent that imaginative processes can take on hallucinatory proportions.  Sensory deprivation is only a specific example of a much more general phenomenon, that of the narrowing of the field by dissociation from familiar reality toward which one has a habitual vital orientation.  This can happen not only through impoverishment but also through a drastic change from the accustomed environment to one which is quite alien and therefore initially devoid of any cues to its possible biospheric relevances.

 

Those daydreams that carry some "conviction" which is expressed in excitement and gratification also achieve this effect through a dissociation from one's actual life, particularly from one's own conduct.  Thus a man may dream of becoming a great scientist though he cannot bring himself to sit down with a book for ten minutes.  If his present state were ever so distant from the dreamed-of goal, but included some activities leading toward it, his fantasies might approach constructive imagination and planning.  But daydreams as such can give gratification only insofar as one can forget everything else.  In fact, the more the person feels deficient and despairs of success in the particular area he chooses to daydream about, the more vivid and satisfying the dream.  In delusions, the strength of the pathological conviction arises from its consistency with the underlying need, but to maintain the delusion one must exclude all contradictory evidence.

 

The increased vividness and potency of images produced within a narrowed field can be utilized to bring about specific changes, e.g., in the case of hypnotic suggestion.  Since, however, the restriction is temporary and the contradictory aspects of the accustomed reality eventually reappear, these changes are often impermanent.  Even if a specific image remains effective, this effectiveness is limited; it cannot spread, because to remain undoubted it must also remain isolated from its possible roots and connections.  If someone has been "cured" of his fear of cats by having accepted, under hypnosis, the image of cats as lovable animals, little has been achieved.  It was not cats as such that he was afraid of, and whatever it was has not been discovered and changed.

 

An elimination of inconsistencies and doubts that leads to a revitalization of imagination can be achieved in a more real and enduring fashion by a process which is the opposite of restrictions or dissociation.  An extension of reality, of the range of lawful possibilities, may lead to the realization of the spuriousness of previously perceived contradictions and to a changed patterning of experience.  Within the new pattern the previously doubtful image or thought may become systemconsistent and consequently convincing and effective.  The extended vision of what is real or possible concerns both the image of the external world and the person's image of himself, usually in an interrelated fashion.

The extension of the range of lawful possibilities differs from the opposite process, the narrowing of reality, in that it must needs be a prolonged gradual process.  Reality as we know it is not a conglomeration of unrelated items to which new ones can be easily added but a system governed by definite principles which exclude contradictory evidence.  Thus we find ourselves faced with seemingly unsolvable circular situation.  For an image, a new thought, to become credible and effective, the existing system of belief has to be loosened, extended, modified; this, however, cannot happen if any new contradictory evidence is automatically excluded.  The history of science shows how often even repeatedly observed facts are neglected because they contradict established theories.  Revolutionary changes and new hypotheses may be required to extend the field and scope of science.  Similarly, if someone's individual world is so structured that to be loved unselfishly is impossible in it, is excluded by the "laws" of the world, contradictory observations may remain ineffective, permanently or temporarily.  On the other hand, if through a variety of loosening and modifying processes the person reaches a state in which he can have at least a tentative glimpse of this sector of reality, this first vision can open new horizons and gradually lead to a reliable extension of the range of what is believable and imaginable.

 

The various stages of the process of extension and reorganization of the assumed "lawful possibilities," and the means that can be used to facilitate these consecutive steps, will be discussed in detail in the chapters on theory.  To make the patient receptive to the new contents, the therapist attempts to reduce or relax those personal states that express and maintain the rigid established definitions by which the patient delimits both his world and his self.  In relation to the self these efforts are directed against the autonomous position of the conscious self, against its segregation from the total self.  As this segregation is partially overcome, and the previously definite outlines of the self-image are blurred, those contents and processes that have remained outside the self-image becomes symbolizable and emerge into consciousness in various forms: as dreams, fantasies, memories, unfamiliar impulses, novel self-observations, and eventually realizations of connections and patterns not previously seen.  Some of these experiences are akin to intuitional states and to certain stages of the creative process in that they may appear to the subject to come from somewhere outside, while he himself is merely a passive recipient of the message.  As new, fresh symbolizations, these experiences may possess to a higher than usual degree the feature of all symbols-that of pointing beyond itself, an openness to the referent which is absent from our limited everyday "truncated" symbolizations.  Convictions that are gained through such processes of extension are not logical or labored, they are founded on an experience which is self-transcendent as such.

 

The therapist cannot produce new symbolizations in or for the patient but he can assist their development, can help "translate" nonconscious personality processes into consciousness by such means as noting and emphasizing new experiences, interpreting dreams, or brining together material that might lead to the discovery of a personal pattern.  The extension and reorganization of consciousness, of the "I-connected" highly differentiated realm of existence, will in turn exercise an influence on the total organismic process out of which it arose.  In cases of successful therapy or of a similar spontaneously developing process, the reorganization that has been achieved on the symbolic level through redefinitions, re-evaluations, insights, does not remain just a new view, a changed perception of oneself.  It may actually recede into the background of consciousness, but the evidence of personal changes (such as changes of mood and of somatic state) going far beyond what can be deliberately achieved indicates that through some kind of “back absorption” the conscious processes have contributed to the enrichment and reorganization of the biological total process.