The domain of ideas is entered whenever we attempt to generate a proposal intended to move from the current to the desired state. Ideas are sometimes fragile, often misunderstood, and easily lost. While information exists everywhere, we often ignore or misinterpret it. However, we can usually go back and retrieve it. Similarly, even though intentions may be ignored or distorted, they resist extinction. Their resistance to change is often a source of frustration: old values linger as do old visions and purposes. Good ideas, on the other hand, are easy to lose and hard to recover. We are easily stranded in plotting out our career and life course by the scarcity of viable options.
Settings must be created in which ideas can readily be generated and retained. A set of life planning sessions, such as Dr. Freud is providing, can be invaluable. Two processes are essential. Divergence produces creative ideas. Divergence requires minimal censorship of ideas, minimal restriction on clients offering their own dreams, exploring risky propositions, and minimally adhering to the usual ways of generating new ideas. The second process is Convergence. Clients must be encouraged to build on ideas that they have expressed tentatively: “And if you went ahead with that plan, what would happen?” Or “How would you make that work?” The effective life coach will also help their client identify similarities in their ideas. Diverse courses of action are identified. The domain of ideas often requires that we display a subtle and skillful interplay between convergence and divergence.
While Sigmund Freud’s life coaching work aligns with the three domains identified by Agnes and me, he seems to approach each domain more deeply than many coaches do. Specifically, Dr. Freud is assuming what is often referred to as an ego psychological perspective on human functioning. While Sigmund Freud had not yet embraced this emerging perspective on psychoanalysis during his actual lifetime, his daughter, Anna Freud, was one of the founders of this sub-school of psychoanalysis.
We know from many sources that Sigmund Freud was closely aligned with his daughter and often conferred with her during their years together in London. At this point, I bring in Armand Nicholi (Nicholi,2002), who wrote a book on the hypothetical meeting of Sigmund Freud with the noted philosopher and novelist, C. S. Lewis. Freud’s Last Session, a play that is based on Nicholl’s book portrays Sigmund Freud as often calling Anna during the day to see how her work (often lecturing) is going. It is not hard to conclude that Dr. Freud would have begun aligning with his daughter’s ego psychological perspective.
What then is this perspective, and how did it show up in Dr. Freud’s work with Daniel? Specifically, ego psychology has to do with the way we human beings adapt to our challenging environment. What are the defensive structures we create in seeking to bring about this adaptation, and what are the motives that drive our behavior on behalf of this adaptation? It is worth noting that Anna Freud specialized in the description of defensive structures (A. Freud, 2018). When asking questions in the domain of information, Dr. Freud is not just finding out about Daniel’s current status; Freud is inviting inquiry into how Daniel’s ego is transferring experiences from the external world into his internal world.
