Experiential Psychotherapy
Alvin R. Mahrer
OVERVIEW
Experiential psychotherapy can be regarded as a relatively new addition to the field of psychotherapy. It evolved rather recently, mainly from the writings of Alvin Mahrer1. Based largely upon philosophy of science and existential philosophy, its conceptual system, aims, and goals can be thought of as a substantial departure from previous thought in both the field of psychology and the field of psychotherapy. One of its unabashedly ambitious aims is to enable the person to undergo a radical, deep-seated, transformational change, into becoming the person that he or she is capable of becoming. A related companion aim is for the person to become essentially free of whatever painful feelings and situations are front and center for the person in the session. These two goals are present in every session.
Basic Concepts
1. The conceptual system is a model of usefulness rather than a theory of truth (Mahrer, 2004b). Some theories of truth postulate the reality of such things as egos and superegos, cognitions and metacognitions, basic needs and drives, archetypes and repressed affects, schizophrenia, addictive personalities, borderline conditions, and pathological depression.
In contrast, models of usefulness are rare in the field of psychotherapy. They differ from theories of truth in at least two main ways. (a) Theories of truth generally presume that their basic concepts are real and true; whereas the basic concepts of models of usefulness are merely convenient fictions and pictorialized representations that are invented because they are useful (Chalmers, 1982; Einstein, 1923; Mahrer, 1989a, 1996/2004, 2004b; Rorty, 1991; Skinner, 1938; Whitehead, 1929). Such things as schizophrenia, metacognitions, basic needs, and pathological depression are pictured as neither real nor true but merely convenient fictions. (b) Whereas theories of truth emphasize greater and greater approximation to truth, models of usefulness put a premium on usefulness in helping to achieve designated ends, tasks, and uses. The question is, “Is the model useful?” rather than, “Is this theory true?”
2. Personality is pictured as made up of potentials for experiencing in relationship with one another. The experiential model of a person is relatively simple, made up of potentials for experiencing and their relationships. Each client is pictured as a relatively unique system of possibilities or potentialities for experiencing that the person is capable of undergoing. For example, a given person may be described as comprised of potentials for experiencing tenderness, gentleness, softness; playfulness, silliness, whimsicalness; strength, firmness, toughness; wickedness, devilishness, adventurousness; docility,
1 Although a number of approaches are called experiential, this chapter focuses on the experiential psychology and psychotherapy developed in the writings of Alvin Mahrer.
compliance, giving in; ripeness, fruition, creativity; rebelliousness, defiance, opposition; domination, power, control, and many other potentials.
Some potentials for experiencing are relatively close to the surface. They help determine the way a person acts and interacts, thinks and feels, lives and exists in his or her personal world, as well as how the person functions and operates. These are called operating potentials for experiencing. There is also a domain of potentials for experiencing that are much further from the surface, deeper inside the person, essentially unconscious to and sealed off from the person. These are called deeper potentials for experiencing.
In addition to operating and deeper potentials for experiencing, there are relationships between potentials for experiencing. These relationships may be friendly, accepting, welcoming, harmonious, positive, or integrative, or they may be hateful, rejecting, distancing, disjunctive, negative, or disintegrative.
3. The client is pictured as thoroughly engaged in building, creating, fashioning, and organizing his or her own constructed personal world and in determining the nature, content, structure, and meaning of that world (Mahrer, 1989a). The personal world is constructed to include situational contexts that are fitting and appropriate for the person to experience what is important for the person to experience, for better or for worse. In addition, the personal world is constructed to include externalizations of the deeper potentials for experiencing, also to enable the person to experience what is important for the person to experience, for better or for worse.
People use a number of methods to construct their personal worlds (Mahrer, 1989a, 1995). In some cases, the real external world presents itself to the person, and the person then receives it, uses it, and gives it sense and meaning, in whatever way that is important for the person. Sometimes, the external world is merely available, a rich marketplace or warehouse for the person to select from and to use in whatever way is important for the person. In other instances, the person and the external world work together, cooperating with one another, to construct the kind of personal world it is important for the person to construct. In still other instances, the person actively and creatively fashions and brings to life whatever real or unreal world it is important for the person to fashion and bring to life.
In each of these ways of constructing one’s external world, the person can use building blocks that are exceedingly real or that are utterly unreal, or that are a creative combination of both real and unreal building blocks.
These principles apply to the construction of a personal external world. They also apply to the construction of a personal internal world of bodily phenomena, functions, states, and conditions. If it is important for one’s world to include a cold merciless killer, one’s external world can include a deadly terrorist, or one’s internal world can include a deadly cancer.
These principles also apply to the ways in which a group, community, or society can be understood as creating their own collective social worlds out of their own collective potentials for experiencing and their relationships. In this picture, the constructed social worlds are created to enable the kinds of experiencing it is important for the collective people to experience. The social world thus created may include powerful forces or alien outsiders, peace and harmony or war and suffering, order and stability or lawlessness and chaos.
4. The origins of the infant lie in the parents who create and construct the infant (Mahrer, 1989a). There are two ways that the parents are the origins. (a) When a parent experiences loss, abandonment, and rejection, a deeper potential for experiencing loss, abandonment, and rejection develops concomitantly in the infant. In other words, the parent both creates and is the infant or child. (b) The origin of the infant also lies in the nature of or role for the infant that the parents create. For example, if the same parent described in (a) creates an external world that includes the infant as the close confidante/best friend/ally, then the infant originates with a potential for experiencing loss, abandonment, rejection, as well as a potential for experiencing being a close confidante/best friend/ally.
The bottom line is that a skeletal framework of who and what the infant is, of the infant’s personality, is already present in the parents who create and construct the infant-child and in the nature of the infant-child whom the parents create and construct.
5. Personality development is mainly the function of the original framework of deeper potentials for experiencing and their relationships, which tend to remain essentially stable and unchanged over the course of the person’s life. This underlying framework can give rise to (a) a working set of operating potentials for experiencing, which in turn can give rise to (b) the person’s explicit ways of being and behaving, and also to (c) the creation of a fitting and appropriate personal external world. Once the operating potentials for experiencing, the concrete ways of being and behaving, and the personal external world are established, the course of the person’s life typically consists of their maintenance and continuation, with occasional refinement or modification.
For example, if the infant-child’s original deeper potentials for experiencing include the experiencing of dominance and control, childhood development may involve the initial development of an operating potential for experiencing meanness, maliciousness, and hurtfulness; ways of being and behaving that include physical aggressiveness, malicious lying, stealing, and destruction; a family of people who judge and reject; and a neighborhood of hateful victims. In adolescence, the same underlying deeper potential for experiencing dominance and control may give rise to an operating potential for experiencing sexual attractiveness, appeal, and seductiveness; ways of being and behaving that include natural sexual forwardness and a physically attractive body; and a personal external world of sexual playmates and admiring and manipulated sexual partners.
6. Pain, unhappiness, and suffering are mainly the result of hateful, negative, antagonistic, disintegrative relationships between potentials for experiencing. Regardless of what potential is being experienced, other potentials relate negatively, and the accompanying feelings are painful, unhappy, hurtful, and bad. When relationships between potentials are disintegrative, potentials for experiencing tend to occur in a form that is painful, twisted, and hurtful. For example, when relationships are disintegrative, a potential for experiencing leadership, command, and strength can become a painful experiencing of pushiness, aggressiveness, and domineering control; a potential for experiencing independence and autonomy can become an experiencing of painful aloneness, rejection, and isolation.
When relationships between potentials for experiencing are disintegrative, the person is inclined to use (a) painful ways of being and behaving in constructing (b) a painful external world with which the person relates (c) in pain and unhappiness, and in which the person undergoes (d) painful potentials for experiencing accompanied by (e) feelings that are painful, hurtful, and bad.
7. Deep-seated personality change can come about in two related ways, each of which calls for genuinely hard work rather than occurring naturally or normally over the course of life. One consists of achieving a major qualitative change in the relationships between potentials for experiencing, from negative to positive, from hateful to loving, from disintegrative to integrative. This way of achieving deep-seated personality change is referred to as integration.
The second way is the achievement of a landmark radical shift in which deeper potentials become operating potentials for experiencing. What had been deeper inside the person becomes an integral new operating potential, and this literally transforms the person into a radically new person. This avenue is referred to as actualization.
Other Systems
The experiential system is similar to other systems in some ways.
1. The experiential system includes a domain of deeper potentials for experiencing which are pictured as beyond the conscious awareness of the person. This deeper domain bears some resemblance to the unconscious proposed by some dynamic systems although, on closer inspection, there are some substantial differences. (a) In psychoanalytic and analytic therapies, 2 the unconscious is made up of its own distinctive material such as primitive impulses and drives, repressed memories, and (in Jungian analysis) the collective unconscious. In the experiential model, the deeper potentials for experiencing and the more on-the-surface operating potentials are both made of the same material, namely sheer potentials or possibilities for experiencing. (b) In psychoanalytic and analytic therapies, much of the content of the unconscious is thought of as universal, as basic and fundamental in most people. In the experiential system, each person’s deeper
2 The term “analytic” is used here to refer to Jungian analytic psychology and psychotherapy.
or more basic potentials for experiencing are likely to be unique. This uniqueness usually becomes evident when the potentials are carefully examined and described. Accordingly, discovering each client’s world of deeper potentials can be an exciting, individualized adventure. (c) In psychoanalytic therapies, the unconscious can be accessed by a client in the conscious state. That is, the conscious person can find and discover what lies in the unconscious, especially if the person uses the right methods with the right therapist. In the experiential system, the deeper potentials for experiencing are beyond reach of the conscious person in the conscious state, regardless of the methods used by the person or by the psychoanalytic therapist. Instead, the client must be able to leave the ordinary conscious state and enter into a new state in which the person can touch and be touched by the deeper potentials for experiencing. (d) In psychoanalytic therapies, the emphasis is on preserving and enhancing the person, including the person’s defenses against an encroaching unconscious. In the experiential system, the scenario is essentially reversed. Instead of building adequate defenses against the unconscious, the deeper potential for experiencing is welcomed and invited into becoming an integral new component of the qualitatively new person. Instead of preserving and enhancing the client, the person is invited to undergo radical transformation into becoming the qualitatively new person, and this includes the risk of extinction of the old client.
2. A number of the basic concepts of the experiential system emerged from the writings of existential and Eastern philosophers, although these philosophers may not recognize what their conceptual offspring have become in the experiential system. In any case, this body of writings was the primordial soup for basic experiential concepts such as potentials for experiencing, ways of constructing a personal external world, the possibility of becoming the qualitatively new person that the person can become, and the therapeutic power of a radical shift out of, a disengagement from, one’s continuing person, and the cataclysmic plunge into being the utterly new person.
3. Some therapies are looser and more flexible, with rather general principles and guidelines, whereas other therapies, such as rational emotive behavior therapy, behavior therapy, and cognitive therapy, are more structured and systematic. Experiential therapy is likewise more structured, systematic, and organized in that each session is to follow a given sequence of relatively identifiable steps.
4. Some therapies, especially rational emotive behavior therapy, behavior therapy, multimodal therapy, and cognitive therapy, emphasize the importance of postsession homework assignments. Going even further, each experiential session culminates in the qualitatively new person leaving the session and continuing as the new person after the session ends (Mahrer, 1996/2004, 1998a).
Here are some ways in which experiential therapy differs and departs from many other therapies:
1. The goals of each session. Each experiential session offers the client an opportunity to undergo two changes that may be distinctive enough to qualify as a new departure.