Doctor - make me better!

As therapists we are frequently called upon to find a response to this plea. Even if it doesn't get spelled out explicitly, it is hardly ever absent. All therapies and therapists (as well as the medical profession) can be accused of making money from other people's pain, exploiting the unhappiness of others, feeding off the helplessness and desperation of those who entrust themselves to our care. If we're blunt about it, we recognise that as therapists of whatever persuasion the engine of our practice runs on the fuel of this plea. We make our living through it.

For complementary therapists there is a more specific twist to this: often we earn our money on the back of our patient's earlier disappointment in the medical system. This does not make the plea disappear - it usually intensifies it.

So what do we offer in response to this plea ? What kind of promises do we make ? How big is the carrot we're holding out, or at least allow ourselves to be seen as holding out ? Do we guarantee improvements, relief, cure ? Who will want to turn up if we don't make promises ?

When we advertise and offer our services, we want to communicate that we believe in what we're doing. But is what we are doing 'making people better' ?

It's a dodgy thing to question the promises we put out as therapists, isn't it ? Do we want to cut off the hand that feeds us? I suggest that: yes, we do ! Because if this hands feeds us on the basis of an illusion, then ultimately it's not a reliable hand, and it isn't really feeding us.

There is a basic question in reponse to the plea which as therapists we cannot get away from - that question can be formulated like this: "Why should I take it upon myself to make you better when I feel perfectly capable of loving you as you are, with all your symptoms, sickness, pain ? What is 'better' ?"

Gestalt psychology has formulated a precious principle which they call the 'paradoxical nature of change': change happens when we accept what is. By this we don't mean paying mental lipservice to some idea of acceptance, but a heart-felt and embodied embracing and surrender to the complexity of the moment, to the mystery of being, to the unacceptable and maybe unbearable reality of what IS. And if there is pain, it doesn't matter whether we like it or don't like it. It doesn't matter why it's there. The pain IS. Fritz Perls used to say: a rose is a rose is a rose. It IS.

For the client to come to a starting point of accepting 'what is', the therapist needs to accept 'what is'. Acceptance of 'what is' is a paradoxical beast as it needs to include non-acceptance, it needs to include the fight against 'what is'. It needs to include both 'the symptom' and it needs to include the person's reaction to or against the symptom.

Accepting 'what is' needs to include the pain, and the hatred of the pain, both. So whilst we accept that the client wants to get rid of the symptom and is trapped in a fight against it, the bottomline is that as therapists we will not be able to be helpful if we blindly and automatically join the fight against the symptom, against the pain. Because there's a good chance that some essential part of the patient lives in it, expresses itself through it. We don't just get paid to get rid of the symptom, annihilate the pain, conquer the suffering. We also get paid to love it, be interested in it, follow it, learn from it, honour it; above all: relate to it.

As therapists we can only do that if we have found some kind of living, loving relationship with our own pain. That's why the notion of the 'wounded healer' is so important to our work as complementary therapists, counsellors, psychotherapists. The 'wounded healer' loves the soul in illness, through attending to illness.

I'm not sure which psychoanalyst coined it, but I always remember the phrase: "There is only one kind of person who gets attracted to doing this kind of work: that's somebody in pain. Once they have got into it, there are two kinds: those that deal with it and those that don't." He was talking about psychoanalysts, but it applies to all helping professions. His way of putting it is rather all-or-nothing, but it does make the point.

We all deal with our pain as far as we can and to some extent avoid it. The extent to which we manage to deal with it is not entirely our choice; sometimes it's not at all our choice because a lot of is is unconscious. Therapy can be used to deal with the pain, and therapy can be used to avoid it. Being a therapist can be an avenue into dealing with it, but just as surely being a therapist offers superb opportunities for avoiding it. The notion of the 'wounded healer' is the other side of the omnipotent, omniscient doctor, and therapy inevitably involves some paradoxical tension between the two.

Carl Gustav Jung once said: "the ancient gods have become diseases." In that sense we can say that some portion of our soul is hiding in illness. Using the word 'soul' these days is not a straightforward matter. But apart from other meanings which the word evokes, it also carries a sense of meaning, depth, interiority which arises out of that living, loving relationship with pain. The soul has depth and pathos because it pathologises our waking reality. I'm reminded me of that John Lennon line: "life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans". If that's the case, the neglected soul then makes itself known through puncturing our strategies, goals and ambitions and reminding us of the gap between the life that is and the life we try to create. Illness lives in that gap. A too frantic attempt to get rid of illness is inevitably also an attempt to get rid of soul. Our culture is as good an attempt at this as humans have managed to create, but fortunately it is not at all possible to get rid of soul.