A Primer of Adaptive Psychotherapy and Counseling:

Theory and Practice by Robert Langs, M.D.

Part I. Basic Concepts

Chapter One. Two Modes of Psychotherapy and Counseling.

This primer is a book for all manner of students and practitioners of psychotherapy and counseling. It offers a compendium of deep psychological and interpersonal insights and precepts that can serve as a solid foundation for any of the diverse efforts at emotional healing that are in vogue today. While its bias is psychodynamic, the knowledge and principles of technique that will be espoused have a bearing on, and can serve to illuminate, the practice of all present-day treatment modalities regardless of their theoretical underpinnings.

The broad applicability of this book stems from its grounding in an approach to emotional life that reaches into the very depths of who we are-into emotional realms where we all share a set of universal features inherent to the emotion-related mind that marks us as members of the hominid species. As such, the book is deeply grounded in the biology and psychology of the human psyche-its adaptive challenges and the rich yet compromised resources with which it responds, consciously and unconsciously, in efforts to meet these challenges (Langs, 1996). These processes are inherent to the human mind and operate regardless of whether they are specifically addressed by a given psychotherapist or counselor. Understanding the evolved biological roots of emotional adaptations will, then, be especially helpful for therapists and counselors who are unaccustomed to explore these realms, but it also will prove vital for those mental health practitioners who wish to deeply comprehend the dynamics and workings of the emotion-related mind and carry out their therapeutic efforts accordingly.

The Search for Basics

Historically, the various schools of psychotherapy and counseling have had little to say about fundamentals and universals. The prevailing trend is to present a theory and its clinical practices in ways that stress its distinctive position and emphasize how it differs from other therapeutic approaches to emotional ills. At best, minimal attention is afforded to concepts and modes of healing that are shared with other forms of treatment. There also is a related tendency to focus on the unique features of each patient or client, and each therapeutic couple, far more than on commonalties that stem from the universal properties of the human mind and its emotional adaptations (see Langs, 1998). Much of this work is buttressed with the use of highly abstract, ill-defined, clinically distant concepts like 'healing,' 'symptom relief,' 'transference,' 'cognitive retraining,' and 'the unconscious'-concepts that tend to discourage the search for, and establishment of, underlying fundamentals.

Model making, an important scientific means of pursuing and establishing the fundamental features of an entity, is seldom used in fashioning a contemporary theory of psychotherapy or counseling. The few attempts that have been made along these lines are quite limited in scope. The prevailing psychoanalytic model of the mind, perhaps the most sophisticated of the mental models currently in vogue, identifies three components (Freud, 1923):

An ego, which is responsible for executive functions, perception, thinking, coping, relating, negotiating interactions between the agencies of the mind and reality, tension regulation, psychological defenses, and the like;

An id, which is the source of instinctual drives and wishes of a sexual and aggressive nature;

And a superego, which is the seat of the conscience and ego ideal.

Each of these structures is said to have conscious and unconscious components. But the model is relatively static and somewhat superficial because the properties of its components are described in straightforward, naive terms. Quite importantly, the model lacks a clear definition of the unconscious dimension-the hallmark of psychoanalytic theory. In addition, it lacks the complexities and intricacies that are needed to fully and deeply explain the vicissitudes of emotional life and the psychotherapy and counseling experiences. Other models, like those that pertain to cognitive functioning and conditioned responses, are even more limited and over-simplified. All too often they confuse and conflate the separate, however inter-related, domains of mind and brain, a practice that muddies the waters quite badly.

The human mind is sponsored by some 100 billion brain cells with up to 30,000 connections per cell, and human life is comprised of the most complicated concatenation of events and emotional stresses that has ever been faced by a living species. We therefore need models of the mind that are commensurate with the social and physical challenges of human existence, models that reflect the richness of the human brain which sponsors the complex mental capabilities with which we endeavor to adapt to these stresses and traumas. We also need models that consider both conscious and unconscious adaptations and that will enable us to account in exquisite detail for the incredible richness and limitations of our extraordinary adaptive gifts. Efforts of this kind will be described as this book unfolds (see also Langs, 1995, 1996).

A Biological Orientation

As psychotherapists and counselors, we seldom think of the human mind in terms of fundamentals and thereby, in biological terms. Nevertheless, the emotion-related, adaptive mind-the emotion-processing mind, as I shall term it-is, by definition, a biological structure and entity. As such, it has an evolutionary history, a basic set of current design features and operations, and a unique set of capabilities and limitations that are, with minor variations, to be found in the minds of all human beings-patients and therapists, clients and counselors, alike. It's generally appreciated that all but a few humans have lungs, stomachs, brains and other organs with similar basic features, and that these basics form the substrate for lesser individual variations. Much the same applies to the human emotion-processing mind.

A biological orientation inherently moves us away from the confusing 'top down' approaches of existing schools of psychotherapy and counseling, in which the aforementioned, high-level, abstract, and somewhat arbitrary concepts dominate the picture. In so doing, it moves us towards a 'bottom up' approach in which the search for, and definition of, basic elements prevails. As a result, empirically definable concepts like 'communication,' 'encoded and unencoded messages,' 'ground rules,' 'unconscious perception,' and the like are brought into play (Langs, 1999b).

While on this subject, it's well to note that the fundamentals that will be described in this book were not discovered through intellectual contemplation or on the basis of informed efforts to apply biological principles to the emotional domain-that is, they did not evolve from a theory-first approach. Instead, they had their beginnings in a psychoanalytically-oriented, mind-centered approach in which clinical observations played a significant role and findings began to emerge that called into question the predominant viewpoint. In particular, the discovery of a means of unconsciously validating-or invalidating-interventions (see chapter 12) gradually led to the rejection of most features of mind-centered theoretical ideas and techniques. With time, this resulted in the development of a reality-centered approach with a strong adaptive leaning-and with that, a focus on both emotional traumas and the coping responses of the emotion-processing mind.

In essence, then, the communicative or strong adaptive approach that informs this book had its origins in a new way of looking at and formulating clinical material and its conscious and unconscious implications. Intellectual comprehension followed rather than preceded the development of fresh clinical impressions and theoretical conceptualizations.

This grounding in unconsciously validated clinical observations will be evident from the vignettes and precepts that follow. Nevertheless, for ease of presentation and to facilitate comprehension, it seems best to proceed by grounding the book in a set of theoretical and intellectual insights which can serve as a basis for appreciating the principles of listening and intervening that will be presented in Part II of this volume.

Adaptation

Let's begin our pursuit of psychological fundamentals with a cardinal set of questions:

As human beings, what is our most essential task? What activities are most basic to our very existence and survival? What are we, first and foremost, designed to do? And how does this central devotion apply to the emotional realm?

To find the answers to these questions, we must turn to biology, the science of living organisms, and in doing so, we discover that biology offers a clear and incontrovertible answer. Granted that there are basic needs for boundaries, nourishment, metabolism, and excretion, nevertheless the most fundamental task for all living beings is that of adapting to their environments. This principle, which is one of the most basic tenets in all of biology, fully applies to us as humans. We too have evolved first and foremost to adapt to our living conditions, our interactions with other living beings, natural events, the state of our body organs and thought processes, and an ever-changing landscape of moment-to-moment incidents, large and small. And we do so, at bottom, largely in the service of short- and long-term survival and the search for opportunities for reproductive success (Langs, 1996, 1999b).

The term environment is used here in a special way. It refers to everything that impacts on an organism from the external world, be it an impingement by a living being or an act of nature. In humans, however, the term has a more extended meaning in that in addition to the outside world, humans also must cope with their inside or internal worlds. This includes both physical sensations and bodily happenings, as well as thoughts, feelings, intentions, and imaginings. Except for serious or life-threatening physical illnesses, however, these internal events are of lesser importance to the vicissitudes of emotional life than those that arise from the external environment. In particular, both fantasies and memories, conscious or unconscious, are far less evocative of major adaptive responses and emotional consequences than disturbing outside incidents-so-called emotional traumas.

Effective adaptation to adverse living conditions and anxiety-provoking events-so-called environmental challenges-are, then, especially critical for the immediate survival of an organism. As such, these incidents are among the most powerful adaptation-evoking triggering events faced by humans today. Coping with the traumas perpetrated by living predators, especially other humans, and by natural disasters are high among the defining tasks for the emotion-processing mind. In addition, as we shall see, this class of events, and the threats that they have posed to survival, have been major selection factors or guiding pressures in the evolutionary history of this adaptive mental module (see chapter 8). This means that coping with trauma is both the primary devotion of the emotion-processing mind and the main architect of its evolutionary history and present design, including the mind's ability to adapt psychologically to emotionally-charged events both with and without awareness-that is, consciously and unconsciously.

Defining The Unconscious Domain

In addition to staking a claim for the primacy of conscious and especially unconscious adaptation in emotional life, there's a second crucial component to the viewpoint that informs this book. It pertains to the definition of the unconscious domain-i.e., of unconscious experience, processing, and communication-and to the means by which we, as therapists and counselors, gain access to this realm.

It seems axiomatic that a fundamental theory of emotional life must include a sound conceptualization of both the conscious and unconscious realms of experience and coping. This certainly is the case for the many psychodynamic forms of psychotherapy and counseling, but it also holds true for non-dynamic forms of treatment as well. That is, regardless of whether a therapist or counselor chooses to explore and work with unconscious processes, these processes exist and constitute an extremely active and powerful influence on the treatment relationship and interaction-and on the so-called process of 'cure.' A grounding that includes a viable understanding of these unconscious forces is therefore necessary for all enlightened mental health professionals.

Current psychoanalytic conceptions of unconscious factors in emotional life are extremely vague and ill defined. Virtually anything that a given person (usually a patient or client) is unaware of at a particular moment that another person (usually a therapist or counselor) observes and formulates has been placed under the rubric of unconscious processes and traits. This includes patterns of behavior, relational trends, self-enhancing and other emotional needs, fantasies, memories, the implications of manifest messages, and so forth. The appellation 'unconscious' has thereby been reduced to a waste-basket term lacking in specificity, credence, or clinical usefulness.

In contrast, the approach that informs this book is based on a specific definition of the unconscious realm and a well defined way of listening to and formulating communicated expressions of unconscious mental activities. These activities are adaptive in nature and constitute unconscious responses to traumatic triggering events. They are differentiated from adaptive efforts in which a given environmental challenge registers in awareness and the individual responds knowingly and consciously to the dangers involved. These two modes of adaptation-conscious and deep unconscious-are of a very different order (see chapters 6 and 7).

Adaptation and Unconscious Experience

The focus on adaptation and the discovery of two modes of coping came about when it was noticed that the stories and dreams that patients and clients tell their therapists and counselors are related in some disguised manner to events that take place in their therapies-mainly, the interventions of their healers. The manifest or direct meanings of these narratives tend to deal with incidents and people outside of treatment, but the themes of these same stories, even as they tell a surface tale, also seem to have a bearing on something the therapist or counselor has said or done.

For example, a woman client, who, consciously and manifestly, is explaining her fear of men to her male counselor, tells him the story of a college professor who tried to seduce her. He became physical with her, and she reacted by pulling away from him and dropping the class. It was an inappropriate and evil thing for him to do. She remembers thinking when he touched her that he was going to murder her. She must be very paranoid.

Present-day, dynamically-oriented therapists and counselors who work within what I shall call a weak adaptive approach (see below), would take this story in and of itself and extract from (or read into) the surface of the narrative a wide variety of unconscious implications that pertain to the clients' inner mental conflicts and state of mind.

The counselor might, for example, see the story as implying an undue, unconscious fear of men or as indicating that that the client has unconsciously identified men in general with this seductive professor and therefore mistakenly mistrusts all men. Another reading of the story might lead to the proposal that the professor is a stand-in for the patient's father and that the incident with the professor represents a repressed, unconscious memory of seduction or harm at the hands of her parent. Yet another implication might be to the effect that the client is blaming men for her own anxieties and fears, and that she's projecting her repressed, murderous rage at men onto them. Or-to cite just one more of many possibilities-the counselor might well decide that the professor is a stand-in for himself and that 'in the transference,' the client is entertaining the fantasy that he wants to seduce and murder her; he might then try to trace this purported fantasy and misperception to an early seductive experience that the client had endured with her father.

All of these formulations take this material as such and considers these themes in their own right. Adaptation is vaguely implied, but the main focus is on the inner mental world of the client and how it's disturbing her relationships with men.

It's well to be clear that the listening and formulating processes used in these approaches gives credence to the manifest story itself and then engages in a search for meanings inherent to the story-meanings that the client is unaware of. This is effected by extracting implications from the surface story per se-the isolated narrative. No other information is needed. Thus, the proposal that the fantasy that the professor wanted to murder her is taken to imply the unconscious projection of the client's own murderous wishes towards men. The attempted seduction by the professor implies a repressed memory of an untoward incident with the client's father. Her current fear of men implies that unconsciously, the client sees all men as if they were the professor-and probably her father as well. Her relationship patterns with men are disrupted by unconscious memories of earlier paternal seductions. And 'in the transference,' these same memories are evoking an unconscious fantasy and mistaken belief that the counselor wants to seduce and harm her.

There is, of course, a degree of logic and some likely elements of truth to these mind-centered, vaguely adaptive, arbitrarily extracted implications of this manifest story. Why then is there a need for something more?

The answer lies with an event or adaptation-evoking trigger that is ignored in these formulations-something that happened in the counseling situation, something that the counselor did but set aside when thinking about the possible unconscious meanings of this material:

In escorting the client into his consultation room, the counselor inadvertently had brushed against her arm.

While many therapists and counselors would think of this as an innocuous event, such an assessment reflects the naivete of, and proneness to the use of denial by, the conscious mind. It's a viewpoint that is not supported by the way in which the unconscious mind consistently experiences this kind of incident (see chapters 6 and 7). It is for this reason that it can be said that this seemingly innocuous accidental act of physical contact actually is a notable triggering event, one that takes the form of a traumatic intervention-a term broadly defined to include everything that a therapist or counselor says, does, and fails to say (see chapters 13 and 14).

Given that the story of the professor is about his 'getting physical' with the client-a theme that bridges from the story to the triggering event, thereby linking the one to the other-it appears that whatever her conscious intentions in telling this tale, the client also told the story in response to the incident with the counselor. Thus, the narrative reflects both her conscious attempt to understand her general problems with men and an effort to unconsciously adapt to, or cope with, the traumatic triggering event created by the counselor.

Once the trigger has been identified, it's no longer possible to be satisfied with formulating the story of the professor by extracting its possible unconscious implications in isolation. Instead, the unconscious meanings of the story must be formulated first and foremost in light of the trigger that evoked the recollection. But in order to do this, and to thereby discover the encoded level of deep unconscious experience, the counselor needs to have consciously noticed and registered the physical contact with his client and to have kept it in mind as he listened to her material. If the trigger goes unnoticed-as is the case with many interventional triggers created by weak adaptive psychotherapists and counselors-then thinly adaptive, intrapsychic formulations hold sway. But if the trigger is noticed-as it should be-then strong adaptive formulations are an utter necessity.

We may conclude, then, that the client's manifest story was told for two reasons-one conscious and the other, unconscious. Put another way, the manifest narrative contains two stories and two sets of messages-one consciously fashioned and stated directly, the other unconsciously honed and camouflaged in the themes of the narrative (see chapter 4).

Had the counselor worked within a strong adaptive framework, how might he have decoded the themes in this story in light of its evocative trigger? The narrative involves a seductive mentor who makes inappropriate physical contact with his student-who does something that's seen as evil and murderous. In light of the trigger, we may decode the story as conveying the client's unconscious perception of the physical contact with the counselor as being a seductive gesture on his part, and as something that was inappropriate, evil, and harmful to her-in plain words, murderously destructive. The incident was so damaging to the client that she was thinking-again, unconsciously-of leaving treatment.

This trigger, for which the counselor must bear full responsibility, is a violation of the ground rule that precludes physical contact between clients and their counselors (see chapter 9)-it is, therefore, correctly seen as an inappropriate and immoral act. And because it involves physical contact, it has a seductive quality and it certainly does emotional harm to the client. Finally, her unconscious thoughts of leaving treatment are not out of line with the nature of the stimulus. The client's unconscious experience is, then, on the mark, perceptive, reasonable, and plainly stated without pulling punches.

As can be seen, this trigger decoded transposition or decoding of manifest themes does not entail formulations that propose that the client made use of imagination, fantasies, projections, distortions, or misperceptions. Instead, the formulation was developed in terms of unconscious perceptions, valid readings of the actual meanings of the traumatic triggering event, and efforts to adapt to the incident by understanding its implications and responding accordingly-all of these cognitive efforts taking place outside of awareness.

It's important to appreciate the extent to which the weak and strong adaptive interpretations of the unconscious meanings of this material are at odds with each other. These differences stem from the fact that weak adaptive approaches extract implications from the story as such, while the strong adaptive approach decodes the themes of the story in light of their activating trigger. In the first approach, the story itself is believed to be sufficiently revealing and no additional information is needed. In the second approach, which is basically adaptive, the trigger for the story must be identified-without it, no unconscious meaning can be assigned to the narrative. In addition, the various weakly adaptive formulations of the client's story stress her inner mental problems, her projections and fantasies, her genetically-based distortions of reality (of what men, including her counselor, intend to do to her), and her own wishes to seduce and harm them. In sharp contrast, the strong adaptive interpretation, developed through a process called trigger decoding, stresses the client's valid unconscious perceptions and unconscious efforts to adapt to the correctly, but selectively, perceived traumatic aspects of the counselor's intervention.

The two views take the counselor and client to very different places-and they will take us to two very different theories of the emotion-related mind and emotional life. As this clinical material illustrates, one significant difference between the two approaches is that contents that are seen by weak adaptive counselors and therapists as reflections of unconscious fantasies and memories, products of the client's imagination, projections, and distortions-as indications of the client's emotional problems-are seen by the strong adaptive counselor or therapist as healthy, undistorted, valid unconscious perceptions of the counselor's emotional problems as reflected in his mishandling of the therapeutic situation.

As for the genetic connection to a likely seductive incident between the client and her father, the weak position has it that the unconscious effects of the memory of that event prompts the patient to mistakenly believe that the counselor is behaving seductively when he's not-the past is viewed as a source of present-day distortions. But for the strong adaptive counselor, it's the other way around: The link to the past takes the form of an unconscious appreciation that the counselor is actually repeating in some form the seductive behavior of the client's father-the past is actually being re-enacted in the present.

The strong adaptive approach has discovered two additional and equally important distinctions that are illustrated in this clinical excerpt:

The first involves the differences between narrative expressions, like dreams, daydreams, stories, and memories, and intellectualizations, like speculations, ruminations, self-interpretations, explanations, descriptions, and the like. The key finding is that narratives are the bearers of two messages, but intellectualizations by and large carry but one-and it's manifest or directly stated.

In the excerpt offered above, the client self-interpreted that she must be paranoid. This speculation stands as stated and does not lend itself to the decoding of an unconscious perception of the counselor. It's an implication that was extracted from the manifest contents of her story about the professor and it belongs to the realm of conscious experience and adaptation.

The second finding is that there are two types of decoding-those efforts that involve thinly disguised images that are easily decoded, and those that involve heavily disguised themes that take a great deal of effort to detect and unravel. The interpretation that the professor is a representation or stand-in for the counselor is an example of the first type. And the trigger decoded interpretation of the client's unconscious perceptions of the physical contact with her counselor as seductive and murderous is an example of the second type.

This distinction is important because the emotion-processing mind is comprised of two very distinct systems-the conscious system and the deep unconscious system. Relatively simple encoded themes are conscious system communications; they stem from an unconscious component of that system called the superficial unconscious subsystem of the conscious system of the emotion-processing mind (see chapter 6). The key point is that relatively transparent encoded expressions reflect superficially repressed contents that are easily brought into awareness and that are relatively weak emotionally. They are not part of the deeply repressed contents of the far more powerful deep unconscious system.

All in all, then, techniques that involve extracting purported unconscious implications from manifest contents, making intellectualized interpretations, and decoding barely disguised images and themes all touch on the contents of this superficial unconscious system. The emotional issues and conflicts that are processed by this system are relatively minor and straightforward, and they exert only minimal effects on emotional life.

The far more difficult technique of trigger decoding involves contents and processes that are deeply unconscious and part of the deep unconscious system of the emotion-processing mind. This unconscious system houses and processes the perceptions, conflicts, and issues that are truly unbearable to awareness and most heavily disguised before entering conscious thinking via encoded narratives. These extremely traumatic inputs exert powerful effects on the vicissitudes of emotional life and the treatment situation, and they regularly touch in some way on issues of life and death.

While these generally unfamiliar ideas and distinctions will be subjected to considerable elaboration in the present volume, I shall pause here to sum up the main points:

1. There's a basic difference in the communicative functions of intellectualizations and narratives.

2. Narratives contain two sets of messages.

• The first are manifest, consciously intended, and usually reflect broad and general efforts to adapt to consciously perceived emotional issues.
  
• The second are encoded, unconsciously intended, and reflect deep unconscious efforts to adapt to the unconsciously perceived meanings of traumatic triggering events. For patients or clients in therapy or counseling, most of these unconsciously registered triggers are constituted as the interventions of their therapists or counselors.
  

3. The manifest contents of all messages are fraught with implications. Some of these implications are unconscious for the patient or client. They are identified by a therapist or counselor through a process of extracting unstated connotations from surface messages. These efforts tend to be relatively undisciplined and are greatly influenced by theoretical and personal biases.

4. The process of extracting unconscious implications from manifest contents takes the therapist or counselor to the superficial unconscious subsystem of the conscious system of the emotion-processing mind.

5. These extractions tend to be formulated in terms of unconscious trends within the mind of the patient or client, mainly in the form of isolated unconscious fantasies, memories, and relationship patterns.

6. The process of extracting implications should be sharply distinguished from efforts to trigger decode the disguised meanings contained in narrative communications. Such efforts are carried out in an adaptive context because the encoded aspects of a storied message reflects efforts by the deep unconscious system of the emotion-processing mind to cope with an emotionally-charged triggering event.

7. This adaptation-oriented decoding process is called trigger decoding.

8. While the extraction of unconscious implications has only one requirement (that of a manifest message), trigger decoding has two (a manifest, encoded narrative and an unconsciously perceived triggering event).

9. In general, weak adaptive approaches deal with manifest contents, intellectualizations, and implied unconscious meanings that are only superficially repressed and belong to the conscious system. In contrast, the strong adaptive approach deals mainly with encoded narratives that camouflage deeply repressed unconscious perceptions which belong to the deep unconscious system.

With these distinctions in mind, let's turn now to a comparison of the two basic approaches to human emotional life and its therapies that I have been alluding to-those that are strongly and weakly adaptive.

Contrasting Positions

The proposition that adaptation is at the very center of emotional life, the psychotherapeutic process, and the operations of the emotion-processing mind forms the basis for a classification of two forms of psychotherapy and counseling:

The weak adaptive form, which barely acknowledges conscious adaptations and has virtually nothing to say about adaptations that are effected outside of awareness, unconsciously.

By and large, these are mind-centered approaches-e.g., classical psychoanalysis and its off-shoots, self-psychology, relational and intersubjective theories, etc.-which view inner mental conflicts, self-nurturing needs, and relational difficulties as the primary issues in emotional life.

As for the critical definition of unconscious processes, typically, these approaches define the unconscious domain in terms of surface phenomena and do so in two ways:

First, by defining unconscious expressions as previously unavailable mental images, thoughts, fantasies, or memories that suddenly break through into awareness, whole cloth. This phenomenon is understood to be the result of the release into awareness of previously repressed or unrealized mental contents.

Second, by viewing unconscious expressions as any tendency, pattern of behavior or relating, or implication of a message that can be inferred by a therapist or counselor of which a patient or client is unaware. Here, the definition of the unconscious domain revolves around any behavioral tendency or meaning of a message that can be extracted or deduced from what a patient says or does.

The strong adaptive form of psychotherapy and counseling puts emotional adaptation at the center of emotional life, with special emphasis on unconscious perception, processing, and communicating.

By and large, this is a reality-centered approach that sees actual events, mostly in the form of traumas, as the primary issue in mental and emotional life. It views the mind as continuously activated by environmental events and rejects the idea that the mind is an isolated entity that goes off on its own and fights its own battles.

Communicatively, this approach is grounded in the view that adaptation-oriented messages from the deep unconscious system of the emotion-processing mind are encoded into the manifest contents of narrative messages. Access to these disguised meanings is gained by means of trigger decoding-deciphering the deep unconscious, encoded meanings of narrative themes in light of their evocative triggering events.

Let's look now more closely at these two forms of psychotherapy and counseling.

The Weak Adaptive Position

There's a natural tendency for us as humans-as psychotherapists and counselors-to adopt a mind-centered, weak adaptive position. That is, by evolved design, the human mind tends to look away from external realities and to think of its troubles as its own. Emotional problems are thought to arise when the mind thinks terrible or conflicted thoughts or has unfounded beliefs, or when it's learned poor ways of relating or has been conditioned to respond badly to certain kinds of situations. It's also believed that the mind's forbidden wishes and fantasies, and the conflicts they cause-much of it occurring outside of awareness, unconsciously-are the root causes of emotional ills. External realities are seen as a backdrop for the mind's struggles or as creating coincidental events that set off inner struggles and then fall by the wayside. It's also thought that at times, reality in the form of extreme trauma, may overwhelm the mind or constitute conditions under which the mind does poorly; the focus here, however, is almost entirely on how the mind is affected by and handles these situations. Communicatively, messages and behaviors are taken for what they say on the surface and for their evident unconscious implications.

Heal the mind-train it to think more clearly, rid it of its bad habits and poor patterns of thinking, behaving, and relating, and/or render its unconscious tendencies and conflicts conscious-and the patient's or client's emotional problems will be solved. And if reality is making trouble for a patient or client, help him or her to modify it in some favorable way-to change the circumstances of their lives.

Given their natural appeal, these kinds of ideas about emotional ills and their purported resolution are quite popular these days and they are part of the foundation of virtually every form of therapy currently in use. But emotional life is made of stronger stuff, of grim and persistent environmental threats and issues that evoke powerful anxieties and conflicts, and cause serious emotional maladaptations. Getting in touch with and consistently dealing with these more horrendous concerns means getting down to basics, to issues of life and death, illness and injury-trauma in all of its many incarnations. This is, as I have indicated, where the strong adaptive approach enters the picture as a new paradigm of psychoanalysis (Raney, 1984).

All in all, it seems fair to say that whatever the validity of the world described through weak adaptive conceptualizations, there's another, far more emotionally powerful world that is addressed through strong adaptive listening, formulating, and theorizing. In this sense, weak adaptive thinking serves, among other functions, as a massive defense against reaching into the traumas and horrors that deeply unconsciously, for better or worse, govern our emotional lives-and our work as therapists and counselors as well.

The Strong Adaptive Position

To the best of my knowledge, the communicative approach, which is another name for the strong adaptive approach presented in this book, is the only school of psychotherapy and counseling that has adopted a primarily adaptive viewpoint (Langs, 1993, 1998). As noted above, its basic proposition is that the single most important function of the emotion-processing mind is that of adapting to inner and especially external environmental challenges, which mainly take the form of blatant and more subtle traumas. It also proposes that this adaptive mental module adapts on two levels of emotional experience-conscious and deep unconscious-and that it is comprised of two relatively independent and distinctive adaptive processing systems-the conscious system and the deep unconscious systems.

All in all, then, in the strong adaptive approach, reality and the psyche are seen as equal partners in determining the course of our emotional lives.

As for the process of cure, the emphasis is on three inter-related factors:

1. Trigger decoded insights that pertain to active triggers as unconsciously perceived, including their links to past traumas and gratifications.

2. The healing qualities of a secured or unconsciously sought ideal set of conditions for therapy-the so-called secured frame (see chapter 9).

3. The salutary effects of positive unconscious identifications with a well functioning therapist or counselor who obtains repeated, encoded unconscious validation for his or her interventions.

These modes of insight and healing enable patients and clients to modify their existing maladaptations and emotional symptoms, and to adapt to future emotionally-charged triggering events with highly adaptive and favorable, non-symptomatic responses.

The following table summarizes the main differences between the strong and weak adaptive positions:

The fundamental differences between the two approaches are the basis for many other important differences as well. With this in mind, let's turn now to the question of where, in human life, lies the main sources of emotional danger.

Go to Top of Page