T-3.VIII – The Essential Goal of Therapy
March 23, 2021
Jesus addresses a touchy subject in this section – the role of teachers, therapists, and parents. The relationship structure inherent to all three is where one person is in a position to give, and another to receive. Conflicts arise when there is confusion over roles or when either person loses sight of the equal worth of both participants. When one person is subordinate to another, there is always room for error or role confusion. What must be remembered is that differences are only temporary. Jesus even applies this to himself: “Temporarily, the therapist or teacher can help in straightening out twisted perceptions, which is also the only role that I would ever contribute myself” (5:4).
When Jesus says that “no one is either therapist or patient” we must recognize that he is talking about within Heaven. All Sons of God are equal, and our inheritance is equally distributed. We should not interpret this as “we are all teachers and students of each other.” The difference is that there is not equality of experience now in the realm of perception. One person is sick, the other is sent to heal him. In the example of parents, one person is developing and has not reached maturity, whereas the other person has been developed, and is therefore guiding the maturation process.
In all cases, he says, “the therapist (hopefully) does have the role of being the better perceiver” (5:1). Better perceiving is the only basis for these temporary dynamics of authority. To the extent that a parent or a therapist is offering better perception, it is right to accept their authority. To the extent the parent or therapist misperceives, their authority should be rejected. This is where conflict usually arises. The parent or therapist may insist, “I am the parent” or “I am the therapist,” adamant that their authority be recognized. But that role is only borrowed and temporary, and authority should be rejected if it is based on misperception. If a parent or therapist has unhealed wounds or unrecognized trauma that has not been fully forgiven, it is likely that misperception will be directed toward the patient or the child and passed down.
In tomorrow’s section it goes further: “Children have an authority problem only if they believe that their image is influenced by the authority. This is an act of will on their part because they are electing to misperceive the authority and give him this power” (IX.4:6-7). We may wonder, what child’s image is not influenced by a parent? What child does not give that power over to the parent? To extent that we do this (and realistically, we all do to an extent) then forgiveness is necessary. No one can ‘make us over’ unless we let him or her (12:6). This is the same meaning we can take from the Gospel message:
“He that loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and he that loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:37).
This passage is often misinterpreted. We think it means we must abandon or reject family love in order to follow Jesus. Really it is to help us love them more. We do not love others by accepting their deprivation (toward us or themselves). That is what we often try to do, holding on to our hatred as we “forgive.” We abandon any chance for abundant love and healthy human connection in this equation. The Course is teaching us a different way to forgive. By loving Jesus ‘more’ (which can be translated to ‘equally’) we accept God’s love of us as the only true authority, not the warped perceptions that others may have of us.
This process is also how the past is healed, including ancestral wounds. We reject warped perceptions that are passed down through generations, often in survival mode. These disorders are part of all our heritage. Of course, we still may need to establish healthy boundaries or space between ourselves and family, but any alienation we experience is our choice. Ultimately, we are drawn closer to others (for some people at a safe distance), by incorporating this teaching that God is our true author (5:5).
The Course makes a controversial statement in line 7:1: “Any form of mental illness can truthfully be described as an expression of viciousness.” A shallow interpretation of this sentence can suggest victim blaming (blaming the patient or child). Victim blaming is a process where conflicts that arise in parental or therapeutic relationships are identified as the result in misbehavior on the part of the child or patient regardless of the direct action of others. We need to interpret this sensitive section carefully. Jesus uses the example of Bill’s relationship to his parents and points out that the “historical approach” of trying to dig into our past is not a necessary therapeutic goal.
“There is little doubt that you can explain your present absolutes attitudes in terms of how people used to look at you, but there is no wisdom in doing so. In fact, the whole historical
approach can justifiably be called doubtful. As you have so often said, no one has adopted ALL of his parents’ attitudes as his own. In every case, there has been a long process of choice, in which the individual has escaped from those he himself vetoed, while retaining those he voted FOR. Bill
has not retained his parents’ political beliefs, in spite of the particular kind of newspapers that constituted their own reading matter in this area. The reason why he could do this was because he believed he was free in this area. There must be some acute problem OF HIS OWN that would make him so eager to accept their misperception of his own worth. This tendency can ALWAYS be regarded as punitive. It cannot be justified by the inequality of the strengths of parents and children. This is never more than temporary and is largely a matter of maturational and thus physical difference. It does not last unless it is held onto.” (Shorthand notes)
This paragraph explains the earlier comment about viciousness. Bill had developed some mental health problems, perhaps low self-esteem, or some variant, based on perceiving himself in light of his parents’ views of him. This internalization, however, was based on a series of choices he made. As an example, he had no problem rejecting his parents’ political views. Yet when it came to his parents’ evaluation of his worth, which was distorted and at least partially unloving, Bill was “eager to accept their misperception.”
This choice to accept their misperception “can always be regarded as punitive” or “simple spite” (13:8). Jesus acknowledges that holding that grievance may make sense at the time it is committed, a time when the child is still dependent on the parent due to maturational difference. But what about when you are 20, or 30 or 40 or 50? Does it still make sense to hold against a person their mistaken perception? The answer is, of course, no. Our desire to hold onto our unforgiveness is rooted in a wish to avenge our injury.
Jesus asks us to look at this dynamic with stark clarity:
“Why should anyone accord an obvious misperception so much power? There cannot be any real justification for it, because even you yourself recognize the real problem when you say, ‘How could they do this to me?’ The answer is they didn’t” (9:1-3).
We cannot resolve this controversial statement without reliance on Jesus’ explanation for where he is coming from. My career has been in family services and child welfare where I can attest that parents do awful things to children. To say “they didn’t” as is said here can sound off base, to put it mildly. He uses the example of his resurrection again to explain where he is coming from:
“The purpose of the resurrection was to demonstrate that no amount of misperception has any influence at all on a Son of God. This demonstration exonerates those who misperceive, by establishing beyond doubt that they have not hurt anyone” (10:2-3).
The answer we are given, “the essential goal of therapy” (as the section is titled) is to accept as remedy what we discussed in our previous section: accepting ourselves in God’s light. “No one can survive independently as long as he is willing to see himself through the eyes of others. This will always put him in a position where he must see himself in different lights” (11:2-3).
This may seem like a tall order. We are being asked to accept our invulnerability to being hurt by others’ misperceptions. We are otherwise being “idolatrous” (11:6) by accepting the image-making of others, whether it be parents or therapists. No one has the power to “make you over” unless you hand over that power to him. But in doing so you are taking that power away from the one true Authority who has established your being. Would you really take from God his role of telling you what you are and give it to one who misperceives you?
Jesus makes a nice concession in paragraph 13: “Your parents probably did misperceive you in many ways, but their ability to perceive may have been quite warped.” Yet the decision to give these misperceptions power over us is one we make. Jesus calls it “extremely dangerous” to our perception and concludes the section with an important instruction which I suggest we all use as our practice for the day:
“It is my duty to establish beyond doubt that I am totally unwilling to side with anyone’s misperceptions of me, including my own.”