MY INTEGRATIVE APPROACH part2

An archetypal image of one’s fullest potential and the unity of the personality.

The self is our god within ourselves. 

The process by which we achieve the goal of realisation of self is individuation.

The person who is all animus or all anima is like an egg without a yolk.

This refers to our ‘balance’ a need for healthy individuals and society is that of being balanced, if not disturbance can manifest itself into physical symptoms. 

The ideas that I have incorporated or integrated from Freud are those of transformation and education, though Jungians may suggest that four stages of Confession, Elucidation and education and transformation, I would suggest that confession and elucidation are typical formations in all therapies in that clients may come to confess and to be urged to find clarity.

My preferred focus is that of education and transformation; informing

my clients of their individuality but not ‘aloneness’ eg being part of the collective or community and providing information on issues that they may be unaware of. 

Transformation I believe follows from  this and the aforementioned core beliefs of Person Centred Theory.

Transformation occurs when the client moves toward ‘individuation’ this can is a life long process whereby the person become all that they can be.

Below is Nelson Mandella’s inauguration speech.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. 

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. 

It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. 

We ask ourselves: “Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?”

Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God, Your playing small does not serve the world. 

There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that the  people won’t feel

insecure around you. 

We are all meant to shine, as children do. 

We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within

us. 

It’s not just in some of us:  it’s in everyone.

 And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people

permission to do the same. 

As we’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

NELSON MANDELLA

Individuation means incorporating and faring up to our ‘negative’ issues, Jung termed this the “shadow”; it is not until this is faced and owned that individuation can begin. 

We also need to separate from the controlling influences of the collective unconscious; this does not isolate people but rather invites other individuated people in. 

I see a link here with Maslow and Rogers self-actualised people, they are autonomous and independent yet also interdependent in their meetings with others rather than dependent or co-dependent.

One of my major difficulties with Freud is his sexualising of instincts, not that I reject completely his understanding of masculinity and femininity but rather I perceive him as quoting and thinking from a cultural and historical viewpoint. 

My exception comes from the view that homosexuality is an immature sexuality. 

Robin Skinner (life and how to survive it – families and how to survive them) suggests a

metaphor of a bridge:  men have to cross completely over the bridge and identify completely with their fathers to achieve sexual maturity (Guardian April 95). 

I reject this and experience clients rejecting this vision of male homosexuality as an identification with the female rather than the male as an outdated and culturally outgrown historical ‘idea of its time’.

Neil Benbow

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