Looking for Insight?
http://www.therapist-psychologist.com/psychology_article/articles/72/1/Looking-for-Insight-/Page1.html
Susan Meindl
Susan Meindl is a licensed psychologist in private practice in Westmount, Montreal. She practices in a Jungian inspired psychodynamic style By Susan Meindl
Published on February 11, 2009
People often enter therapy wanting to figure out what has happened to them… how they got into this state of depression, anxiety or hopelessness. They want to know if there is something they did and something they can do to make things better. If we see meaning making as a kind of agency learning, it becomes clear why psychotherapy therapy with its insistence on uncovering and re-discussing the past is effective. Like an infant who learns which actions create what events, so an adult in therapy becomes able to choose attitudes and behaviors which create new situations that fulfill their deeply felt needs and desires.
Looking for Insight?
People often enter therapy wanting to figure out what has happened to them… how they got into this state of depression, anxiety or hopelessness. They want to know if there is something they did and something they can do to make things better. A psychologist might say they are looking to re-capture a sense of agency, a more philosophical thinker might say they are looking for “meaning”
Agency could be defined as having a “can do” attitude. Infants begin to learn about agency from birth. Even the tiniest baby can control the amount of stimulation that they will tolerate by shutting their eyes, or turning their head away or falling asleep. Infants experiment, first by flailing around and making things happen and then in a more and more sophisticated way, by whacking, pulling, pushing dropping things and making sounds to see what will happen. They repeatedly observe that environmental happenings do not occur without action and they gradually begin to learn when and how it is their own action that makes things happen. Experiences in which events happen without clear action are confusing and down their learning. The full nature of the relationships between actions and outcomes remains hazy for infants for a long time. “Stuff happens” between actions and an outcome. Time delays occur which disconnect events in the infant mind. Multiple forces act on outcomes in incomprehensible ways so that it is not always clear what is controlled by whom. As infants become more capable of manipulating and understanding connections, their sense of agency grows. This is especially true in the material world of things that can be picked up, sucked, shaken for noise, toppled or summoned by crying.
Since very young infants especially are so limited in their physical abilities a great deal of the satisfaction of their needs and desires happens through the responses of the adults around them. As a result very young children learn that their emotionally expressive behavior (smiling, crying) has effects on others around them through which they can produce desired outcomes but this puts the actual achievement of the desired outcome into the hands of another. Nonetheless, most of the time children figure out the relationships between their emotions and other’s reactions and their actions and other people’s emotions and eventually they use these understandings, however partial and imperfect, to guide future actions
To summarize, in order to interact effectively with the world a child must learn personal agency. They learn that outcomes flow from actions, that actions come from the self and that they can regulate their behavior intentionally to create actions and reactions in others and in the world. This means being able to understand what the physical and social world will permit or forbid, and at the level of personal goal setting and desires they need to learn which actions contribute to which emotional outcomes...happiness, sadness, pride, shame etc.
Our ability to access these feelings of “can do,” both in the sense of being able, and of being permitted, has an enormous impact on our life outcomes
As adults we have many opportunities to act on our environments but like infants we have the perennial problem of not knowing until long afterwards what the full results of our actions will be. Whenever we try to judge the long-term results of our intentional actions we have to bring together mental and emotional experiences which are often widely separated in space and time in order to assess the outcome.
Meaning making helps make it better.
Therapeutic meaning-making shares with agency learning a consideration of what outcomes have followed from which events and which actions have been caused by ourselves. Meaning making requires the integration of complicated and ambiguous material. Uncertainty is often created by the fact that things in our personal past are complexly interrelated. But it is for exactly those same reasons that meaning making is most effective as a retrospective act. It is often impossible to fully appreciate the fall-out from an event until many years have gone by. It requires, moreover, an active effort to recall, sort, integrate, associate and draw appropriate lessons from past experience.
A study by Wood and Conway (2005) shows that there is a tendency for retrospection and meaning making to reduce the level of negative feelings surrounding an experience the researchers point out that after some time has gone by, most events are experienced as having both positive and negative components.
If we see meaning making as a kind of agency learning, it becomes clear why psychotherapy therapy with its insistence on uncovering and re-discussing the past is effective. Disparate events and attitudes are unpacked in the therapist’s office and considered passionately or dispassionately but finally together in space and time so that relationships and connections can be seen and examined. The therapeutic relationship provides support and encouragement for this labor of understanding. Cognitive-behavioral, Client centered "talk therapy" and psychoanalysis all use this principle in their own ways.
What is Insight?
The final effect of psychotherapy is that the events and feelings from different times and places swim together. Therapy is often a slow process. Not all the relevant thoughts and feelings can be forced conveniently to arrive in one session, but with the therapist’s help, they are brought out of memory and are increasingly brought together in the present time and space of the therapist’s office. They come close enough together, often for the first time, for connections to be seen. This is what the prized, and somewhat romanticized, therapeutic goal of "insight" consists of…. a very personal understanding of what and how things have happened and continue to happen in one’s life.
And just like an infant who learns which actions create what events, so an adult in therapy becomes able to choose attitudes and behaviors which create new situations and which fulfill their deeply felt needs and desires.
References:
Wood, W. & Conway, M. (2006). Subjective Impact, Meaning Making, and Current and Recalled Emotions for Self-Defining Memories, Journal of Personality, pp. 811 – 846.
Agency could be defined as having a “can do” attitude. Infants begin to learn about agency from birth. Even the tiniest baby can control the amount of stimulation that they will tolerate by shutting their eyes, or turning their head away or falling asleep. Infants experiment, first by flailing around and making things happen and then in a more and more sophisticated way, by whacking, pulling, pushing dropping things and making sounds to see what will happen. They repeatedly observe that environmental happenings do not occur without action and they gradually begin to learn when and how it is their own action that makes things happen. Experiences in which events happen without clear action are confusing and down their learning. The full nature of the relationships between actions and outcomes remains hazy for infants for a long time. “Stuff happens” between actions and an outcome. Time delays occur which disconnect events in the infant mind. Multiple forces act on outcomes in incomprehensible ways so that it is not always clear what is controlled by whom. As infants become more capable of manipulating and understanding connections, their sense of agency grows. This is especially true in the material world of things that can be picked up, sucked, shaken for noise, toppled or summoned by crying.
Since very young infants especially are so limited in their physical abilities a great deal of the satisfaction of their needs and desires happens through the responses of the adults around them. As a result very young children learn that their emotionally expressive behavior (smiling, crying) has effects on others around them through which they can produce desired outcomes but this puts the actual achievement of the desired outcome into the hands of another. Nonetheless, most of the time children figure out the relationships between their emotions and other’s reactions and their actions and other people’s emotions and eventually they use these understandings, however partial and imperfect, to guide future actions
To summarize, in order to interact effectively with the world a child must learn personal agency. They learn that outcomes flow from actions, that actions come from the self and that they can regulate their behavior intentionally to create actions and reactions in others and in the world. This means being able to understand what the physical and social world will permit or forbid, and at the level of personal goal setting and desires they need to learn which actions contribute to which emotional outcomes...happiness, sadness, pride, shame etc.
Our ability to access these feelings of “can do,” both in the sense of being able, and of being permitted, has an enormous impact on our life outcomes
As adults we have many opportunities to act on our environments but like infants we have the perennial problem of not knowing until long afterwards what the full results of our actions will be. Whenever we try to judge the long-term results of our intentional actions we have to bring together mental and emotional experiences which are often widely separated in space and time in order to assess the outcome.
Meaning making helps make it better.
Therapeutic meaning-making shares with agency learning a consideration of what outcomes have followed from which events and which actions have been caused by ourselves. Meaning making requires the integration of complicated and ambiguous material. Uncertainty is often created by the fact that things in our personal past are complexly interrelated. But it is for exactly those same reasons that meaning making is most effective as a retrospective act. It is often impossible to fully appreciate the fall-out from an event until many years have gone by. It requires, moreover, an active effort to recall, sort, integrate, associate and draw appropriate lessons from past experience.
A study by Wood and Conway (2005) shows that there is a tendency for retrospection and meaning making to reduce the level of negative feelings surrounding an experience the researchers point out that after some time has gone by, most events are experienced as having both positive and negative components.
If we see meaning making as a kind of agency learning, it becomes clear why psychotherapy therapy with its insistence on uncovering and re-discussing the past is effective. Disparate events and attitudes are unpacked in the therapist’s office and considered passionately or dispassionately but finally together in space and time so that relationships and connections can be seen and examined. The therapeutic relationship provides support and encouragement for this labor of understanding. Cognitive-behavioral, Client centered "talk therapy" and psychoanalysis all use this principle in their own ways.
What is Insight?
The final effect of psychotherapy is that the events and feelings from different times and places swim together. Therapy is often a slow process. Not all the relevant thoughts and feelings can be forced conveniently to arrive in one session, but with the therapist’s help, they are brought out of memory and are increasingly brought together in the present time and space of the therapist’s office. They come close enough together, often for the first time, for connections to be seen. This is what the prized, and somewhat romanticized, therapeutic goal of "insight" consists of…. a very personal understanding of what and how things have happened and continue to happen in one’s life.
And just like an infant who learns which actions create what events, so an adult in therapy becomes able to choose attitudes and behaviors which create new situations and which fulfill their deeply felt needs and desires.
References:
Wood, W. & Conway, M. (2006). Subjective Impact, Meaning Making, and Current and Recalled Emotions for Self-Defining Memories, Journal of Personality, pp. 811 – 846.