Theory and intuition in psychotherapy

Abstract

This study is an account of the development of a personal, intuitive epistemology for psychotherapy, and an exploration of some possible implications thereof for a general professional epistemology. Initial analysis of the author's problematic clinical cases revealed that assumptions regarding the nature and process of therapy predisposed the author to a reliance on rational, theoretically founded therapeutic praxis. When rationality was perceived not to be achieving the desired ends in therapy, the author experienced escalating, critical self-consciousness, and worked ever harder at improved rational problem-solving. This constituted a self-reinforcing problem cycle during 'stuck' consultations. The premise that effective action is rational was seen to constitute a weltanschauung of the therapist, and understood to be inconsistent with the postmodern frame of ecosystemic theory. A hermeneutic .action research process was initiated, its concern to accommodate spontaneity as an antidote to rigidifying rationality in the author's clinical and academic praxis. The exploration of spontaneity and intuition was massively influenced by the author's unexpected immersion in shamanic tradition, itself predicated on mythological and intuitive construction of "a" world, rather than denotive description of 'the' world, as is the case in logocentric practice. i'he social disjunction and existential challenge occasioned by immersion in such tradition occasioned angst in the author, and it took years to find an uneasy rapprochement between the different contexts of the author's life. Nonetheless, a change in the author's epistemology and clinical praxis were effected, and the initial problematic clinical situation - partly a consequence of a relational stance entailed in notions of objectivity, a hidden concomitant of logocentrism - has not recurred. A case which evokes the revised epistemology and cognitive-affectiverelational stance of the author is presented. The possibility of an intuitive psychotherapy and its coherence with ecological thought and the tenets of postmodernism and narrative therapy are explored.