IPSA

“You visited Carl Jung’s only Son, the Late Franz Jung, and told him about sycho-Systems Analysis?”

Yes, on May 2nd 1992, at Carl Jung’s family home in Kustnacht, Lake Zurich, Switzerland. After we’d written to him, Franz invited us over to visit. He said: “I get many requests from psychotherapists, to visit my Father’s house. Usually, I decline, but an intuition from the Unconscious told me that I should invite you both”.

He then asked us about our nocturnal dreams, from childhood, we told him, and how we were working to bring his Father’s work into the reach of ordinary people, through primary health-care, and acute and chronic psychiatry. We told him too about how the founder of the Biopsychosocial Medical Model, Professor George L Engel of the University of Rochester, in New York (a professor of medicine and psychiatry and a Freudian psychoanalyst) had approved of our synthesis of his model with that of Carl Jung. Also, that our approach had been supported by the leading Jungian analyst and psychiatrist – Dr Anthony Stevens.

Franz Jung said “My Father would have been very pleased to have seen your synthesis of his work with scientific holistic-medicine, and bringing it within reach of ordinary people”.

A personal friendship with Franz followed that lasted until his death in 1996.

“When did you start studying Carl Jung’s work?”

I began studying Freud, rather precociously, at age 11, in 1968, having beenintroduced to his work by my elder brother. I took up Carl Jung in 1973 aged 16, having at last found someone who could ‘explain me, to me’.

“When did your clinical experience begin?”

That was in 1980, at a local psychiatric out-patients department (Arrowe Park Hospital on The Wirral). I was mentored by a psychotherapist there: Molly Dobson, which was approved by the then professor of psychiatry, at that department: Dr F J Roberts. Thereafter I followed an extended, but eclectic course of professional training and study, but with everything referred back to my now core Jungian approach. The culmination of my clinical experience was working in the Cardiac Rehab department at Charing Cross Hospital in London, where an inspirational team of medics and therapists had pioneered humanistic, systems-based medicine. They introduced me to Professor Engel’s work, and personal contact with him followed.

I later became involved at the heart of Psychotherapy in the UK as it moved to organizing itself, professionally. I was a delegate to the Consultative Council of the British Association for Counselling (BAC) – which is now the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP). I was also a member of their media team. I was a delegate to the United Kingdom Standing Conference on Psychotherapy (UKSCP) and later to the Humanistic & Integrative Psychotherapy Section (HIPS) of the re-named UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP). Also, to the Personal & Constructivist Section (PCS) of UKCP. IPSA became a founder member of the European Association for Counselling (EAC) and was appointed to the Professional issues Working Group (Standards and Ethics) of the EAC. I was also involved in preparing for the development of National Occupational Standards (NOS) for hypnotherapy – working with the UK Government on draft standards. Further, I worked with the Complementary Medicine profession in the UK, again on standards for Psychotherapy and Hypnotherapy.

With my Wife, Pauline, I was involved in developing the discipline of Respiratory Psychophysiology – as introduced to us at Charing Cross Hospital, London. This led to our presenting a paper on the results of testing 500 NHS referrals (from primary health care settings) at the Welcome Centre, in London, to the XIIth International Symposium on Respiratory Psychophysiology, in September 1993. We were pioneers in applying Jung’s model to this exacting scientific discipline, in primary health care.

“You use the term ‘Psycho-Reductive, what is meant by this?”

Psycho-Reductive' means reducing to psychology. Any system of psychotherapy that makes a claim of 'holism' for itself cannot be truly holistic if it only addresses the psyche, or even just the psycho-social levels of human functioning. Holism is not a 'wood or trees' thing, it's both: you have to be able to work at any and all levels. A 'whole' is not the mathematical sum of its parts, but it is, all of its parts.

Most psychotherapy schools are psycho-reductive, so to work at only a psychological level is still a form of reductionism, not holism.

“What about the Spiritual or Transpersonal in Holism?”

Many 'holistic-therapists' assume that they work at this level naturally. Some transpersonal-psychotherapists assert that it needs special training. Others regard it as a quality that arises gradually out from the therapeutic relationship. Working at a spiritual or transpersonal level can be a very powerful experience. Some holistic therapists believe that this is sufficient in itself, and that the body (for example) will heal itself if the spiritual and transpersonal are worked with. There is no doubt that this can and does happen, but it’s also true that very often it is not enough to work only at this level. Holism that only sees the transpersonal is still a form of reductionism. Nevertheless, holistic-therapists must be able to work at this level, and in the case of Psycho-Systems Analysis, the transpersonal must be synthesized with the biomedical. 

“You say that your practice is scientific, what is meant by this?”

Psycho-Systems Analysis psychotherapy, is informed and educated in its practice, by science. General psychotherapy often refers to statistical research methods or to the social-sciences, but what sets Psycho-Systems Analysis apart is its synthesis with bio-medical science. It has been said by leading members of UKCP that: 'Psychotherapy is NOT a medical practice'. In reply it was said that: 'Psychotherapy need not be a bio-medical practice, but, it can be a holistic-medical science". To achieve this, the bio-medical sciences must become part of the education and training of psychotherapists who also work psycho-socially and transpersonally. A non-psychological meta-framework for education and practice needs to be in place and then the artificial barriers between disciplines need to be removed: "Dear Steve, Perhaps most gratifying is the support your experience gives to health-professionals sharing a common conceptual framework. The fundamental challenge is for a new scientific model for medicine" George L Engel MD, Psychoanalyst, Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry & Medicine, University of Rochester, New York USA, 1990 (personal communication}.

“I’ve heard it said that holism tries to see the whole-person, how can a science do that?”

Science has been the most successful way of understanding nature, and revealing the truth about the world. This success is due to its methodology. It’s quite common to hear therapists talk loosely about such things as Cartesian dualism, and mechanistic science and then saying that we need the 'new' science of quantum mechanics to understand the complexities of the psyche, synchronicity', interpersonal relationships and healing. Some of these commentators then go very far away from science of any kind, and employ a pseudo-scientific justification for believing anything, and doing anything, all in the name of holism and therapy. The 'whole' is something qualitatively different from the arithmetic sum of its parts, but it is nevertheless composed of those parts. Holistic-Medical science is about an understanding of the parts and the special quality of the whole: it is both whole and part and Holistic-Psycho-Systems Analytic Psychotherapists are trained to work accordingly. 

“So, why should psychotherapists study biomedical science?”

General psychotherapy is largely ignorant of its effects on a person’s physiology. Human beings are very responsive systems: words, simple 'vibrations in the air', can alter a person’s physical and mental health, and not always for the positive. ischemic changes in the heart can be detected on electro-cardio-graphs of patients simply asked to think passively about emotional subjects. "Death by abreaction" induced by well-meaning therapists who extract emotional release from vulnerable clients is a serious potential risk, particularly where damage to the heart adds up over a period of time, and may only become obvious well away from the therapist's consulting room. Psychotherapists need to be trained in scientific mind-body interrelationships. They must know how disease processes occur, and can be modulated by real, scientifically understandable psycho-physiological processes. This is the truly great challenge to general psychotherapy: to become holistic in the fullest sense, and that means re-discovering the science of mind-body relationships. 

“What has hypnotherapy got to do with holism?”

Hypnotherapy was the original form of modern psychological and psychosomatic therapy. For historical reasons, it largely became separated off from general psychotherapeutic practice. Nevertheless, it uses the natural learning modalities of the psyche to effect positive change, both psychologically and physiologically. Of all therapeutic approaches it has the most natural capacity to transduce mental states into physical states and vice- versa. Linked with a clinical knowledge of scientific mind-body pathways: the psycho-neuro-endocrine, the psycho-neuro-immune, the neuro-peptide and the pH regulation of the body, it becomes an essential, integrated approach to therapy. Without the mind-body link, no 'psychotherapy' can be authentically holistic.

Psycho-Systems Analysis follows the work of Jungian Analyst and Psychobiologist, Dr Ernest L. Rossi who is without doubt at the forefront of scientific mind-body interrelationships. Dr Rossi who has pioneered the study of the psycho-neuro-endocrine, the psycho-neuro-immune, and the neuro-peptide systems as far down as the level of gene expression, in psychotherapy, was very supportive and interested in our work in respiratory psychophysiology – and the pH regulation of the bodies internal milieu.

“Most schools of psychotherapy, work through the therapeutic relationship,what does Psycho-Systems Analysis do that other schools,don't?"

The therapeutic relationship has been likened by Carl Gustav Jung to an alchemical process, wherein 'substances' are transformed. This transformation is real, and it is two-way. The psycho-physiology of the therapist becomes attuned through sympathetic resonance with that of the client. Every competent hypnotherapist will understand this - even if only to the relatively superficial level of changes in mental state, and obvious changes in breathing, and skeletal muscle tone. Jung also talked of psychological infections - whereby therapists take on board the distress or depression of their clients. However, the field-phenomenon of the therapeutic relationship can go much deeper - so deep that it becomes a part of the body, and effectively outside of the perceptions of psychology. This is the cross-modal zone between the transpersonal and the physical and it is here that a synthesis of psychology with scientific medical-holism becomes important in the therapeutic relationship.

“Why do you use clinical respiratory psycho-physiology, with psycho-systems analysis, psychotherapy?”

Respiratory psychophysiology is the scientific study of the interrelationships between breathing, psyche and soma. As an applied clinical science, it has a great deal to offer to psychotherapy. In many cultures breath and soul are inextricably linked and modern science has shown that if (as the Greeks believed) psyche is soul then this link is certainly true. Respiratory changes -especially those involving the carbon-dioxide economy of the body's fluids and the resultant changes in the acid-base (pH} regulation of the body, are the medium for change in 'state' in both mind and body. On a physical level acid-base dis-regulation has effects on the endocrine system, on the bodies smooth muscular tubing (including the blood vessels and lungs, and the intestinal tract}. Hypertension, asthma, irritable bowel, and even fatal coronary arterial spasm can follow. On a more psychological level, the first changes occur in the brain and can lead to mental states that resemble an acute psychotic episode. By using a clinical capnograph: an infra-red mass spectrometer, it is possible, in real-time, to view Freudian defense mechanisms, such as 'repression', activating on an unconscious- somatic level, and to watch and record how they react to verbal and imagery challenges. These activations are both real, and subjectively unobtrusive to consciousness. They are also outside of volitional control and reveal a great deal about how psyche and soma interact, and lead to the 'downloading' of psychological 'information' below Carl Jung’s so-called 'psychoid boundary' and into the body, where it takes literal root and disappears out from 'psychology' and into physiological, even 'disease’ processes. Clinical capnography is an ideal methodology for investigating not only Freudian defense mechanisms, but also Carl Gustav Jung's theory of 'complexes’ as psychological systems with: "their own physiology" - that is psycho-physiological systems. Capnography allows a Jungian approach (for example) to penetrate deep into the body, and to surpass what is therapeutically possible with simplistic cognitive-behavioral and narrative-relational approaches. Applied clinical respiratory psycho-physiology is a vital tool for 21st century psychological and psycho-somatic therapy.

“You use a Jungian model in Psycho-Systems Analysis, what has Jung got to do with holism?”

In modern terms Jung was as much a psycho-physiologist as a psychotherapist, and holistic-medical psychotherapy is itself an applied clinical psycho-physiology. Jung was the first worker in the clinical field to make the essential link between mind and body. Jung's theories have become popularized - in particular his 'transpersonal' work, and this has led to many therapists being unaware of his pioneering work in mind-body relationships. Jung was a medical doctor by primary training, and he brought this essential knowledge with him into his psychotherapy. By applying Jung's core psychological theories with modern psycho-physiology you have an essential weave for a 21st century Holistic-Medical Psychotherapy – ‘Psycho-Systems Analysis’.

“How do creative and expressive art-media find a place in a scientific medical psychotherapy?”

Creative-art media in all forms from enactment, through sand-tray worlds to painting dance, movement, and sculpture, are very effective transduction methods between the conscious and unconscious aspects of mind, and, between the mind and body. The medium for this communication is the symbol, as symbols have an enormous informational bandwidth, far surpassing words in carrying capacity and expressive potential. It is possible to use static or dynamic expressive and creative art media, to fix unconscious and even bodily processes into a form with which they can be worked with therapeutically.

It is the capacity of symbols to carry huge bandwidths of information that make them of use in 'medical' science, as not only do these symbols have representational capacity, they also have transducing capabilities, so that to react with them, causes a counter-reaction in the psyche-soma. Psycho-Systems Analysis psychotherapy is a 'renaissance' discipline: mind and body as one.

“What can psychotherapy and complementary medicine have to do with one another?”

The term "Psychotherapy" is made up from two Greek root words: psyche denoting breath, life and the soul: and therapeutic meaning to wait-upon, and to heal. So, the term psychotherapy means to heal the soul, and it also implies a special form of service through relationship. There is a dignity in this special contract of healing service and it necessarily brings forth the 'soul' - whether called upon, or not.

Complementary medicine is taken to be many things: to complement meaning to make complete or whole, as in 'holism', and also to complement another approach: in this context biomedicine, or psychologically-reductive 'therapy'. 'Medicine' as a term, is derived from Latin and denotes a physician, but also the act of 'healing'. Any holistic therapy must address the issue of the body, for nothing affects psyche without also affecting soma.

Psycho-therapy, if it is at all holistic - and psychotherapy is holistic in its effects - whether recognized as such by practitioners or not - is a form of medical practice - because it is a healing practice.

For some general psychotherapy practitioners - this cannot be true, but then they conflate bio-medicine with holistic-medicine. Biomedicine is the reductive science of medicine grounded in the biological sciences. Holistic-medicine, is a complementary medical practice, and may be just as scientific as biomedicine, but with the additional relational aspects of the traditional healing arts. The new-paradigm medical models, such as the biopsychosocial model of Professor George Engel, and the info-medicine model of Dr Laurence Foss have shown the way forwards to a scientific medical-holism.

So, Holistic-Medical Psychotherapy is both a science and a healing art. It is entirely appropriate therefore that its membership is drawn from practitioners who consider themselves to be 'psychotherapists' and also from those who consider themselves to be within complementary medicine.

“By using the term ‘medicine’ you imply that you see people as ‘patients’ whereas humanistic psychotherapy refers to people as ‘clients’?”

Dr Peter Nixon FRCP, a former senior consultant cardiologist and pioneer in Humanistic- Medicine at Charing Cross hospital in London, had a motto for his department: "turning patients back into people". This, without losing the dignity of being a patient. Dr Nixon taught me a great deal about healing, in particular about the transcendent relationship that's at the heart of holistic-medical therapy. To be a 'patient" is seen as being someone who is passive, and who has things 'done· to them. To be a person however, is to have an identity, and to be treated with respect and humanity. Many psychotherapists avoid the term 'patient' because it implies a biomedical relationship. Instead, they use the term 'client' as in an individual who receives a paid-for service. Many such services are offered to 'clients' by many different professions.

Not all of these suggest a healing or therapeutic relationship.

However, the term 'patient' is derived from the Latin patientia, and pati, meaning to suffer or to be a sufferer. It has the same meaning as the Greek: pathos. Some regard this as yet again implying a medical relationship - in that the person is ill or diseased.

'Client' does not imply illness or suffering; it suggests a purchased relationship from a professional. In origin it is derived from Latin: cliens - nitis and cluere meaning someone who 'hears and obeys. The power relationship between client and professional is clearly implied.

The Jungian analyst Dr Harry Wilmer, suggests that there is a dignity in suffering, and, in being acknowledged as being a 'patient' - a sufferer.

In comparison, I would add, that being a 'client' seems like a commercial transaction.

Treat people as people.

“You list evolutionary anthropology as an essential core discipline, why?”

Anthropology is the science of human-kind. Like psychology, it’s a broad-based discipline, but for the psychotherapist, it offers things that psychology does not. Evolutionary anthropology specializes in the origins of the human species, including the evolution of culture, language and the brain. The effects of this evolution are with us still, written into our genetic heritage and hard wired into the structure of our brains. Anthropology asks big questions, such as what is it that makes us human? It also uncovers the evolutionary psyche and helps the psychotherapist work with human instincts, with lifespan development, with symbol, ritual, religion and death. For 'depth psychologists', anthropology offers new perspectives on basic ideas and assumptions. The evolution of consciousness' necessarily poses questions about long-held psychological theories of the 'un-conscious. The natural history of the reflexive-mind, the apperception of its own ontogenesis, and the myths of meaning that it generates, make themselves known if only we but listen. In another sense, evolutionary anthropology is grounding. It finds our past in the earth, and gives us a place to stand upon the earth. Contrasted with the transpersonal concerns of some psychotherapists, it offers a gritty dialectic and an almost Buddhistic detachment from self-preoccupation.

“You’ve used the term ‘clinical psycho-physiology, and suggested that Psycho- Systems Analysis is somehow synonymous with this?”

Psycho-physiology is the science of mind-body interaction. This is not a Cartesian statement, rather it describes a systems continuum, a spectrum that takes a psychological level of analysis, description and explanation at one level, and a physiological level of analysis, description and explanation at another. Psyche and soma, mind and body, are opposite sides of the same coin. However they are reduced or divided, both are always present, and what affects one, affects the other. Psychology sees one face of the coin, physiology the other. Psycho-physiology approaches from the rim, and can tilt the coin to see either face. The key is how information takes shape and form, and how it transduces from one systems-level to another. Information substances, including messenger molecules, communicate from a sub-cellular (and genetic) level, up to the level of the nervous system and brain. Psychology arises as an apperceptive, phenomenological and psycho-social expression of these transductions. The pathways are two-way however, and may interact simultaneously and at many different levels. It isn't top-down, nor is it bottom-up, it is both.

Knowing how the psyche roots itself into the body, is to know how psychological or psycho-social information transduces itself into biology: how it crosses Jung's psychoid boundary. Many transductions go deeper than that which analysts used to call a symbolic conversion hysteria; they actually disappear into real, physical representation. At this point, they may become unreachable to ordinary, psychological methods. Similarly, changes at a physical level can transduce into psychology, with no obvious, bodily cause. Without a knowledge of how these transductions take place and are modulated, a therapist cannot develop the sympathetic resonance necessary to re-work the whole: solve et coagula.

“Some analytical schools use alchemy as a metaphor for self-actualization or individuation. Isn’t ‘alchemy’ what you mean by psycho-physiology?”

General psychotherapy, being psycho-reductive, lacks a knowledge of how psyche and soma interact. Medical-holism, as a systems continuum model, requires that a holistic-psychotherapy be an applied clinical psychophysiology: mind and body as one.

It was said by some analysts that the medieval and renaissance alchemists projected the psyche into a material-process, a chemical working with external physical substances. Their al-chemical work and writings were held to be symbolic representations of their own psychological processes and development.

psycho-physiology is a kind of alchemy, in the sense that there are real transformations, and not metaphorical ones. The opus is a whole-of-life relationship between mind and body. What emerges from that process, or what is trapped within it, is the story of a life.

“Cognitive, and Cognitive-Behavioral approaches to psychotherapy, are often cited as being ‘scientific’, what does Psycho-Systems Analysis do, as well, or better, than they do already?”

The cognitive and behavioral approaches have been very successful as economical and limited time-frame therapies, certainly when contrasted with lengthy analytical therapy, and some of the more indulgent humanistic methods. Their reputation for being scientific comes mainly from the behavioral approach’s emphasis on observable behavior and on the application of simple techniques aimed at achieving specific outcomes. The cognitive therapies are certainly rational and overlap with the purely behavioral, but with an increased reflexive dimension.

However, had Carl Gustav Jung continued with his early work on 'complexes' and associative learning, then there would have been no historical need for the later development of behavioral and cognitive-behavioral therapy. All the essential ingredients for these approaches are prefigured in Jung's model of complexes, but it has the additional dimension lacking in cognitive-behaviorism of psycho-physiology. In this sense, Jung was not a psycho-reductionist. He understood the key fact that the soma 'behaves' and can do so independently of consciousness. Behavior is not just 'emitted' as the behavioralists believed, it is visceral, molecular, and even genetic. Jung's scientific studies on changes in galvanized skin response, respiration, blood-pressure, chest-wall movement, and heart rate in response to word association protocols revealed the surface of the somatization or transduction process in psychophysiology. He certainly intuited a deeper process, but he had to operate within the limits of the psycho-physiological knowledge of his times. That knowledge has since been advanced by the disciplines of psycho- neuroendocrinology, psycho-neuro-immunology, and respiratory psychophysiology. It is now possible to understand the operation of mind-body inter-relationships, and how these function within a wider social and natural-environmental continuum. The psychological level is still the humanistic level of contact with another person, but it can now be seen as only one of many facets to the whole. Mind and body truly are one: spiritus insertus atomis. Jung's transpersonal work shows that he knew how intimately linked psyche, soma and the wider world were: unus mundus; but too many of his followers took the abstraction of his alchemical metaphor way too far and lost their connection to the realities of the body altogether. Even transpersonal psychology can be a reductionism. If Jung's model of 'psycho-genic complexes' is brought up to date with advances in psycho-physiology, and if the same is achieved with his transpersonal work, then there is no need for reductionistic cognitive-behavioral approaches, as Psycho-Systems Analysis - medical psychotherapy can achieve all that they can achieve, and much more.

“Does Psycho-Systems Analysis subscribe to the so-called ‘Core-Conditions’ of Person-Centered Therapy?”

This will depend upon the individual practitioner, and their core psychotherapy model. Whichever model is used, it must be consistent with the fully integrated bio- medical sciences and the scientific-holistic medical framework. If a psychotherapy model is inconsistent with these, then, there would be a fundamental incongruence between the elements of practice. This would contradict the person-centered approach, and, that of holistic-medical psychotherapy.

It is open to practitioners to syncretize their own working-psychotherapy model, but it must be seamlessly consistent with the other elements of their theory and practice.

This syncretism is an on-going dialectic as a practitioner evolves. With the person-centered core-conditions, a fundamental dialectical prompt would be: 'are these core conditions really necessary and sufficient for therapeutic change?' If the answer is no, then the core conditions themselves are neither necessary or sufficient.

For example, empathy can be faked. Any salesperson knows this. What a person responds to is the perception of empathy, rather than the truth of it. Congruence is a matter of apperception: if a person’s outward manner is congruent with their intended goal - then that is congruence, regardless of whether the external manner and internal state match, or if outer manner and inner intent is the same.

Unconditional positive regard is an unrealistic idealism. Nothing in human nature is without conditions, only a god could be free of limitations and constraints, and only an ego-centric psychology could think itself so definitively free of conditionality.

The older term rapport: the sympathetic resonance with another, better describes a healing relationship. Rapport, unlike empathy, cannot be faked, its either present or not. How rapport is used is another question, and that is down to the state of the individual therapist. Many analysts and humanists for example, are uncomfortable with the openly manipulative nature of the hypnotherapies. Hypnotherapy is intrinsically honest however, in that its aim is to create change, and, if necessary, to act as advocate for a person against another part of them.

The real medium of communication between people is suggestion and the reality of this is un-grasped by many therapists. As far as love or warmth are concerned, Buddha Gautama Siddhartha (Shakyamuni} counselled (when to counsel still meant to give advice} that compassion is the only safe emotion, because it asks for nothing in return.

Compassion and rapport are the true core conditions.

"You’ve used the term Syncretism" doesn’t this imply a blending of things that don’t actually go together? Wouldn’t eclectic or integrative better describe what psychotherapists actually do when they bring-together different theories and practices?"

Over the recent decades, there has been much debate about eclectic and integrationist practices in psychotherapy. Eclecticism has been seen variously as lazy and unsystematic, or pragmatic and natural.

Integration as a dynamic in psychotherapy has been about joining together one or more specific schools, sometimes for reasons of complementarity, sometimes for ownership.

Syncretism comes from the Greek: sunkretismos literally: 'an alliance of the Cretan towns', an unexpected coming together of elements hitherto not connected with one-another. Throughout the history of religion and philosophy, syncretism has been the most creative of dynamics. Not eclecticism, not integrationism. A dialectical syncretism is a rigorous testing of the syncretic blend, and any individual holistic-medical psychotherapist should apply this dynamic to their on -going personal and professional development, including their model of professional practice.

“Aren’t holistic therapists supposed to be healers?”

Yes, and the special personal and inter-personal qualities required of healers are required also of Holistic-Medical Psychotherapists. It is the synthesis of these personal qualities with psychotherapy and bio-medical science that make Psycho-Systems Analysts so effective as 'healers".