However, clinical experience sometimes takes us to look at
the sense that some clients have of damage. Perhaps this is the “Basic Fault” (see
M. Balint) that can’t be repaired.
Wilfred Bion, a brilliant and
original developer of psychoanalysis, came up with a theoretical formulation of
the functions of Love, Hate and Knowledge in both positive and negative
forms. Negative Knowledge (K minus) is
the core part that actively doesn’t want to know and destroys knowledge and
awareness. Its forms can be very
destructive of any goodness in the internal world and of any attempts to help.
There are many other ways of conceptualising this. Unless you have led a charmed life as a
person and as a therapist , you will have met people who seem impossible to
help and who perform the alchemical task of turning gold into shit. They twist everything good into a force
against themselves or others who try and help.
Melanie Klein gave another way of understanding this through
her use of the concept of envy. Where
someone perceives good qualities in another they try and destroy them rather
than emulate them or use the gifts being offered. If they receive any goodness
into themselves then they turn and try and destroy that through self-attack. The very qualities and experiences which could help them,they seek to destroy. It is very primitive and very real in some
people. I am sure there are Christians
that would say that it is the Devil at work. Jungians may say these people are in the grip
of an archetype such as The Witch or The Judge. Other forms of understanding
this in different cultures can be of possession of the person by a spirit that
requires exorcism; a variety of shamanic process. In its positive form this is
sometimes called soul retrieval.
Shamanism and psychotherapy are close together as an increasing number
of books now recognise such as Christa Mckinnon’s Shamanism
and Spirituality in Therapeutic Practice , recently published.
The irony is that this work all requires some sort of
positive therapeutic relationship; and that is precisely what negative K seeks
to destroy. Sometimes therapy and life requires a process of hanging on to this
relationship even when results and common sense suggest otherwise. In this
respect working as a therapist is an act of faith against a sea of unknowing,
unreason and darkness. The struggle to maintain the therapeutic relationship and get agreement to name and work on the trauma ( which can be very effective using energy psychology methods), is sometimes the bulk of the work. As a committed
therapeutic relationship is now against the cultural norm of instant
gratification and moving on; this is particularly hard. The boundary in therapy and life between commitment
and masochism is sometimes very hard to discern!
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