The client can gradually begin to dismantle partial-object shadow expectations. This is particularly useful in working with addicted or substance-disordered clients, who have an entire repertoire devoted to maintaining an early failed empathic bond. This method can also be used with narcissistically organized patients and can break through defenses such as grandiosity, projective identification, and splitting. Patients will often present with confusion when the depression they have kept at bay begins to weaken these defenses. The imposter syndrome is seemingly at the other end of the spectrum, although it is effectively a shadow syndrome of narcissism. This syndrome often is accompanied by “gaslighting,” and pathological accommodation in relationships that are distinguished by abuses of power or power imbalances. The point at which the holding environment provided by the therapeutic alliance has become sufficiently strong to contain the client’s anxiety is the point at which ownership and responsibility can start to create an authentic, organic identity and the process of ego-personalization can begin.
The Social Field and Consensus Consciousness
In Adler’s social field theory, soft determinism leads to his premise that psychopathology is created by the individual in order to evade basic life tasks. In my work with BPD patients on methadone maintenance, many issues arise at the point at which the success of the therapeutic dyad begins to arouse anxiety around a sense of striving that can cause panic for these patients. Idiographic orientation (Adler, 1938) concerns the specific triggers of the diagnosis. Question arise regarding what circumstances (in what field) the diagnosis manifests.
These always take place within the “consensus consciousness” that our society elevates to the status of the real (Almaas, 1996). Part of discovering the nature of the field can be achieved through the use of therapies such as those of Eugene Gendlin. Using experiential focusing, Gendlin explores the “felt sense” of a given emotion at both the bodily and cognitive levels. This sense is fine-tuned through a process of ongoing reciprocity between patient and therapist. An additional mechanism of change includes recognizing and acknowledging behaviors that are maintained within the therapeutic dyad. As Adlerians (Maniacci et al, p.59) point out:
People form maps of their worlds. They then act “as if” those maps were accurate representations of reality. The extent to which they cling to their maps is what is of interest to Adlerians. No map ever can be more important than the terrain itself, or survival is at risk. … Adlerians tend to analyze how useful people’s maps are, given the particulars of their lives. … Psychopathology can be conceptualized (in part) as a matter of “goodness of fit” between the terrain and the map. The better the fit, the less likely behavior will appear as maladaptive.
A protégé of Viktor Frankel, and founder of his own brand of existential analysis, Alfried Längle proposes that psychopathology exists when goals and identity are at odds: “something doesn’t fit” (Längle, 2014) and dysfunction arises. Another way of thinking about this is in terms of assimilation and accommodation to external stimuli that emanate as either authentic synthesis or inauthentic appropriation. Appropriation creates a “bad fit” between the map and the field, or between the legitimacy of the environment and the authenticity of the self. What happens when forces beyond our control alter the terrain? What is the impact of loss, illness, economic downturns, war, exile, the destruction of a way of life, or a radically altered political system? What factors predispose some people to self-destruct and others to show resiliency? Methods work in the field of psychotherapy that promote a therapeutic alliance—especially when this alliance produces a safe holding environment. To borrow Bowlby’s phrase, (Bowlby, 1988)) a “secure base” helps to create a climate in which the patient learns to take responsibility for “what is.” The secure base enables a patient to view “things as they are” in the present. They are able to distinguish this view of reality from self-recrimination. They leave a world that is based on shame.
