It took me years to dig through Freud, and Jung's work. It's confusing and time consuming so I asked for help in the forums for much advice from college professors who taught Freud and Jung, Adler, Plato, Socrates, Kant, etc. The Collective Works for Freud and Jung were $1200 each. I agree that it's better to read the synoptic translations, unless you're fluent in German and can read the originals.
My favorite of Jung's books, by far, was The Tavistock Lectures. People in America were begging him to come here and he was fascinated by the Pueblo Indians, so he came over. So he gave his first, or one of his first lectures in English. Those were insightful notes. People here were ready to challenge him on many fronts of what he was asserting across the ocean. But he had great answers for all of them, even embarrassed a few who tried to take him to the psychology woodshed. He defended himself with words.
The psychology used in healing seems to be irrelevant, although Freud appears to be the name people associate with psychology, probably because sex was involved. Sex sells. He never created the term unconscious and he didn't invent the "talking cure." He observed how well Josef Breuer was doing with getting his patients to heal from simply talking about their concerns. As the first page of my book says, "We all need to be heard." Does anyone get how key that is to healing?
Some people are heard through voicing opinions openly, others through writing, music, painting, dancing, singing, achievements, illness, pain, and even by killing innocent babies in kindergarten. These things are all outward expressions of what's going on deep within. If people are not being heard, they will turn outward in anger and to possibly harming others, or inward to possibly harming themselves, in what we call TMS. The TMS prevents the expression of the self, it is a protector to you, and to those around you. This harming of the self is not on purpose, it's just a way of coping through, for good people, when there's no outlet for self expression. Good people don't harm others, so we were taught early on, and persecuted by superego if we dared think otherwise. The pain is the unconscious talking where the person cannot or does not know how to. Pain is the virtual language of the unconscious. A good therapist can read that language and interpret it for the individual. El speako unconscio?
We all need to have the position of our hearts known, to feel connected, avoiding isolation which is our biggest fear--and by yin yang default, our greatest enrager because panic is involved. As the good doctor so rightfully points out; anger is the social reaction to overcoming the source of the fear/panic. It seems that communication is the main ingredient in the soup of good health. So good health involves good communication.
Jung even stated that it seemed as though the method (type of psychology used) wasn't important, but more important was that the person needed to feel comfortable with the therapist. If the person liked and trusted the therapist then the results were far more successful. So on the surface it looks like the hiring of a therapist is simply buying a best friend for the day. Healing from pain and illness often have some form of expression in them, beyond the awareness. That expression also includes new life goals where the inner self finally gets freed.
Therapy is in essence the freeing of the self, both the good and the bad sides. It's the hiding of the inner self that causes pain and disease. I mentioned before that Ayurvedic science has some basic tenets and one is that people get sick and pained because they can't show their true faces. I agree completely. The stifling of true self, instinct, and impulses, etc., is the cause of TMS. These things that are being "stifled" are aspects of the person, and they are stifled because of familial or societal shame and guilt. Jung called this inferior side the shadow and we don't like that part of ourselves, it's shameful to us, so we hide it from the light. The shadow, as Jung declared, is "that part of ourselves which we have no desire to be." But in the denying of this part of self, we give it power over us to control us even more. So the truth does set us free. The truth is light of course.
This is one reason I liked Alder's work because he wouldn't force people into "groups" because he felt they were all unique individuals. It's also true that no two people heal from TMS in the exact manner. I also believe in teleology so Alder's work is interesting. But you cannot discount that we are all cut from the same cloth, from the singularity of life (big bangs, creation; same thing), and so Jung's work is also true with his collective unconscious, archetypes, and shadows, etc.
I never focused on one healing method or type. I liked Freud because he was easy to understand. I think Jung was more brilliant and hit more home runs than Freud with persona, shadow, collective unconscious, mandala, on and on..he was highly prolific. I read Karen Horney's work because I saw Dr. Sarno mention her. Her book Our Inner Conflicts was good. Before editing I had a subtitle called "Jung and Horney....my favorite group." But my editor said it may insult some people so we pulled it out in what I called "Jungus interuptus." We redacted all kinds of silly things I first put in there to keep the topic more serious. I prefer the silly to seriousness, obviously because silly breaks tension. It is a survival mechanism. But it's the humor that people often tell me they enjoy reading in GPD. Humor adds flavor to a vanilla life.
So I personally never chose any type of method or famous psychotherapist to adhere to. To me, Freud, and Jung and Horney, were just literary devices to explain what was occurring within the psyche. That's all I felt people needed to know in order to heal. There's an inner undeveloped selfish self, and an outer core of persona and superego that is a false self that does what others want, and finally the ego that is the face presented to the world, which is a compromise between the needs of the self and those of the outer world. I never saw the need to break it down into more details of the psyche, very boring to read, so I just went straight to examples of things people run into in life, and how these "cores" of the person were interacting to create what the good doctor called "the divided mind."
I think Dr. Zafirides is also onto something with existentialism. It is the problems we experience by simply existing. We live, so we don't want to die. In between is what we call life. How we deal with that life is up to us in the long run. But in the beginning there was darkness. That means we were pure, but had initial experiences that began to shape us in murkiness. These early experiences are the things most powerful in the formation of TMS later in life. The later half of life that Jung called the "cultural phase" is where we begin to pivot, and to look backward at those early years to see what the hell just happened there. He called this the midlife crisis but it can occur at any time after the 30s.
We begin naive in the natural phase of life. Then at "crisis crunch time" from existential worries we begin to look inward--the hunt for the real self under all those layers of guilt. So we move from concern with the outer world to concern with our inner world. As a Christian I know that means "being born again of the spirit." Natural is of the flesh, cultural is of the spirit, or spirite.
There's generally no right or wrong when it comes to therapy as long as the focus is on the person and not the monthly fee. All healing comes from within, but sometimes it takes an outsider to show us what's within. From there the person has the lightbulb moment and life begins, again.
I'm fascinated by the ISTDP therapy of Davanloo. But they told me I needed some type of degree in therapy before I could get into the training. It's like that time I tried to be a Playboy photographer, they told me I couldn't just stand there, I needed a camera.
This year is the year to heal. It takes understanding and a deep desire to heal. Anyone can do it. I never thought I could, but I did.
Good luck,
Steve
