The Therapy of Self-Actualization

• — What is the relationship between self-actualization and therapy?
• — Can the processes of self-actualization provide therapy for wounded people?
• — Can a person use “coaching” for the work of therapy?

These and many other questions regularly come up whenever I present the Neuro-Semantic models of Self-Actualization. Why? Well, in part because every presentation has been in the context of Coaching, and in that context, I have always attempted to communicate a clear line of demarcation between therapy and coaching.

And, why have I done that? Primarily because of where the field of Coaching is today. Having recently emerged from a mixture of disciplines (mentoring, therapy, training, consulting, hypnosis, etc.), Coaching as a movement is only now becoming a “field” and is still a long way from becoming a Profession. So in adding what we can to support that movement, in Meta- Coaching Michelle and I have created a “space” for Coaching that’s apart from, and different from, the other disciplines. [You can see some of this on www.meta-coaching.org and diagrams of the difference in the two volumes of Meta-Coaching, Volume I is Coaching Change, Volume II is Coaching Conversations.]

When I made the presentation in Paris a few years ago, several people began asking questions about the possibility of doing “therapy” by using the “coaching” methodology and enabling a person to self-actualize through the healing principles. And of course, the short answer is “Yes, of course.”

In fact, this has been a major direction and movement in the field of psychotherapy for several decades. Beginning with the Cognitive Psychological Movement (initiated in 1956 by George Miller and Noam Chomsky), and then the Ellis – Beck forms of cognitive therapy, the Ericksonian therapies which led to Solution-Focus Therapy, Brief Psychotherapy, Narrative psychotherapy, even NLP psychotherapy (now called NLPt in Europe and England) along with many others, psychotherapy as a discipline has been breaking with the past and has been increasingly moving to a more collaborative and facilitative approach.

As such therapists have been setting aside the role of the expert of the client, doing less diagnosis (esp. using the DSM-IV) and working to enable and empower the client. This was the dream that Carl Rogers began in the 1950s and which he developed into the Client-Centered Therapy approach. [If you want to examine a whole book on the 14 “personality disorders” of the DSM-IV, see our book The Structure of Personality. It offers a therapeutic facilitative approach using NLP and Neuro-Semantics.]

In fact, most of the developers of the Human Potential Movement were in the field of therapy when the paradigm shift of modeling healthy self-actualizing humans and using the principles of self-actualizing psychology in working with clients. This was not only true of Carl Rogers, but of Viktor Frankl (Logotherapy), Roberto Assagioli (Psycho-Synthesis), Rollo May (Humanistic Existentialism), etc.

Maslow was the major exception. He was not a therapist and so he did not do therapy. He was a college professor, researcher, and life-long explorer into “the farther reaches of human nature.” And yet (here comes the good part) Maslow did speak and write about the relationship between self-actualization and therapy. In fact, he used his meta-motivation theory of the hierarchy of needs to correlate the relationship between illness, pathology, and the experience of self- actualizing human needs.

By working forwards from the actual biological and physiological needs of humans, Maslow created a paradigm shift as he challenged the assumptions of the old psychologies. First he questioned comparing human needs to “the bad-animal model” of our inner nature. “What about the good animals?” he asked. “Why not identify with the better, or at least the milder, animals like deer, elephant, or dog, or chimpanzee?” Next, he questioned the whole idea of “instincts” in humans. While animals have instincts that are “powerful, strong, unmodifiable, uncontrollable, unsuppressible, this is not true for humans.” At best, we only have instinoids which are “easily repressed, suppressed, controlled, and that can easily be masked, modified, or suppressed by habits and culture.” (1954 Personality and Motivation, p. 80). He wrote that when we—

“. . . recognize instinctoid needs to be not bad, but neutral or good, and a thousand pseudo problems solve themselves and fade out of existence.” (p. 87)

Maslow then declared that when we recognize that pleas for acceptance, love, admiration, meaning, order, etc. are legitimate demands or rights, “of the same order as complaints of hunger, thirst, cold, or pain,” we then move to gratify them rather than frustrate them. And in doing so we exert a healthy therapeutic force. In fact, to frustrate such basic needs is what causes illness and pathology. For Maslow “therapy” means “a pressure toward breaking controls and inhibitions” against our basic needs (p. 103).

Maslow also distinguished two kinds of deprivation: an unimportant deprivation and a threatening one. This is where he came very close to recognizing the critical role of meaning as I mentioned in previous Reflections.

“Deprivation is not psycho-pathogenic; threat is.” (p. 107)

Self-actualization, as the forward movement of growth, stands in opposition to the hurt and pathology that needs healing (e.g., “therapy”). Therefore anything that hurts, wounds, traumatizes, and inhibits growth creates pathology and needs healing. Anything that facilitates the growth of actualizing one’s best is therapeutic. And because we are born without instincts as such and have to learn how to be human, this includes the cognitive distortions that creates erroneous maps that we try to use to navigate human experience. Again, Maslow,

“The neurotic is not emotionally sick, he is cognitively wrong!” (p. 153)

Maslow even asks and answers the question about what is psycho-pathological.

“What is psycho-pathological? Anything that disturbs or frustrates or twists the course of self- actualization. What is psychotherapy? Any means of any kind that helps to restore the person to the path of self-actualization and of development along the lines that his inner nature dictates.” (p. 270)

In The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, Maslow (1971) wrote that neurosis

“. . . is a failure of personal growth; falling short of what one could have been. Human and personal possibilities have been lost. World has been narrowed, capacities have been inhibited.” (p. 30)

“The people we call ‘sick’ are the people who are not themselves, the people who have built up all sorts of neurotic defenses against being human. Learning to break through one’s repressions, to know one’s self, to hear the impulse voices, to uncover the triumphant nature, to reach knowledge, insight, and the truth— these are the requirements. To become more, more actualizing, more realizing what you are in potentiality.” (p. 51)

What then is the relationship between self-actualization and therapy? The self-actualizing dynamics and processes are inherently therapeutic processes. And, as you can undoubtedly tell, there’s a lot more to be said about al of this. So until the next Reflection — here’s to your own self-actualizing your highest and best!