'AI-Thou': Can There be Relational Depth with an AI Therapist?

At the recent conference of the UKCP (United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy), it become increasingly evident that AI-delivered therapy is not a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when’. We will have Chat GPT-like technologies, ‘humanised’, providing therapy to people. But will there always be something missing? Will AI ever be as good as real human therapists? The question is not so much about now—with all the bloopers of Chat GPT, Siri, and other AI platforms; as well as their horrendous environmental impact—but in the near- and further-future, when AI will be refined and developed and able to do even more amazing things than it can do now. Nevertheless, I guess, like a lot of therapists, I am still hoping that there is something unique and special that only human therapists can provide.

And if there is, it is likely to lay in the capacity for providing a deep, interpersonal connection. AI, no doubt, will be able to remember what clients say better than us, to detect patterns and emotions in their language, to provide potential diagnoses or formulations in ways that far exceed our capabilities. In this way, I am sure that AI will become a tool to support our therapeutic work (though issues like confidentiality and data protection will need ironing out first). But, perhaps, the one thing that AI will never be able to do is to relate in the human-to-human way we have defined as relational depth: ‘A state of profound contact and engagement between two people, in which each person is fully real with the Other, and able to understand and value the Other’s experiences at a high level.’

Relational depth can be understood as a state of relating in which each person experiences the other as a ‘Thou’ rather than an ‘It’. This links back to Martin Buber’s concept of the I-Thou attitude. The I-Thou stance has a number of facets to it: (a) We stand alongside the other rather than survey and study them as a thing; (b) We encounter the other as a dynamic stream of being rather than as an object; (c) We relate to the other as a whole rather than as a collection of parts; (d) We recognise the other’s freedom and indeterminism; (e) We encounter the other as a particular, unique being rather than as a representation of particular classes: an ‘Other’; (f) We deeply accept this Other; (g) We relate as a whole, ourselves, rather than from our parts; and (h) We let go of our established ways of doing things and allow ourselves to be transformed in the relationship.

Could a client relate to an AI therapist as a Thou? Perhaps. They could experience them as a unique, accepting, empathic stream of being. The client could relate as a whole, revealing their innermost thoughts and feelings, and in ways that allowed themselves to dive into the ‘relationship’ and be transformed. But the client would also know, at least at some level, that the AI therapist was not free: that it was determined rather than self-directed—programmed to be. There would be a lack of a volitional agency meeting them, such that clients might feel drawn into relating to the AI therapist as a ‘Thou’ (the ELIZA effect), but I think they would also know that, at some level, they were experiencing an It.

And there is also the question of whether the AI therapist could experience the client as a ‘Thou’. I think, here, the answer would definitely be ‘no’. AI, however it was programmed, would always need to break the person down into parts, and to understand them through heuristics and rules. It could never go beyond it’s own knowledge base to comprehend the client in their freedom and indeterminism. By definition, AI would always need principles and procedures by which to make sense of—and respond to—the client. It could only go beyond through new principles and procedures. What’s more, in our research on relational depth, we see that a key feature of it is a genuine care towards the other: that the therapist really, genuinely wants the client to do well. AI, however well programmed, and however caring it acts, can never experience a genuine care. Things, people, cannot matter for AI. So, for the AI therapist, the client would always be an It rather than a Thou.

When people describe the experience of relational depth, they often talk about its interconnected quality: not just ‘I know you’ but ‘I know that you know me’. In those moments of meeting, we feel that the other is meeting us: that we are their Thou just as they are ours. You cannot relate at depth to something or someone who, you know, is not relating at depth to you. Will clients know that, to their AI therapist, they will always be an It? I think, again at some level, that consciousness is always going to be there. We can imagine our AI therapist really recognises us in our uniqueness, that they are able to go beyond their procedures and heuristics to experience us in novel, a-procedural ways; but won’t the client, always, at some level know? And, if so, that knowledge of the ultimate it-ness of themselves in the eyes of their AI therapist will disrupt any true sense of relational depth.

Apologies for the crudeness of this analogy, but the subject of sex toys does come to mind. Sex toys can give stimulation and pleasure, sometimes more so than other humans, but there is also a distinctive human quality missing. It’s not making love: it’s not having that deep physical-psychological-intimacy that, I think, can only be experienced with another human.

Relational depth requires reciprocity. And it requires what has been termed co-intentionality: the sense of another agentic, directional being coming towards us. Daniel Stern describes the way that, in this ‘moments of meeting’, the client and therapist—or, earlier on, the parent/carer and child—come together to share wants, needs, and goals. They align, move towards the same shared possibilities. Could an AI therapist understand and share a client’s goals for therapy? Yes, possibly. And they could certainly align on the tasks of therapy. But would a client ever have a sense of being joined by another agentic being? Like many others, in my book Integrating Counselling and Psychotherapy, I argue that the most distinctive feature of living organism is their directionality: their movement forward to fulfil wants and needs. When I look at my cat Bonnie, I can experience a relational depth because I am sensing that she is wanting something from me, is moving towards me and into me as a means of moving onto somewhere. We can join. But, if passive, dead, responsive-only, then that sense of co-doing-something-together can never quite be there. I’m in the lead—and, fundamentally, alone.

I think this question of whether AI can relate at depth is one that needs asking, and exploring, more and more for the future; because it is essential to the issue of where humans will be—and what humanity will mean—in an AI-infused (or AI-dominated) world. Almost certainly, AI is not going to stop, it’s going to evolve, and probably at a faster and faster rate. So however scary that might be, it’s an issue that we probably need to stare in the face. I’d love to know what people think: do leave comments. Perhaps the issue comes down to the ‘at some level’: to what extent will we—or will we want to and be capable of—denying what we ‘know’ as the truth? People perceived ELIZA, the ‘Rogerian’ chatbot developed in the 1960s, as having empathy and experiences. But did they really? Did they really feel and know this at an existential level? Perhaps, indeed, the non-humanity of AI will become the fifth existential given (alongside death, isolation, meaninglessness, and freedom): something that we all know, unconsciously, is true, but often deceive ourselves into believing does not exist. ‘I will not die… there is a given meaning to my life… and my AI therapist really cares for me as the unique being that I am.’ Perhaps, for the future, retrieving the actuality of human care and connection will be the greatest challenge of them all.

A final thought: If human connection is irreplaceable, it does give me some optimism that, as a humanistic- and relationally-oriented therapist, our approach may have some endurance and importance for the years to come. It’s fairly easy, for the future, to imagine AI delivering sophisticated and personalised CBT techniques, and perhaps also psychodynamic interpretations based on the client’s verbal and nonverbal expressions. And such interventions, I am sure, could be incredibly helpful. But, from a humanistic and relational perspective (including contemporary relational psychodynamics), where the heart of the therapeutic enterprise is in-depth relating, there’s always—at least, as I’ve argued here—going to need to be a human providing it. CBT and classical psychodynamic practices, delivered by AI, may do much to help people pinpoint and address particular problems that people face; but where the deepest client issues are to do with isolation, alienation, and disconnection—with feelings un-accepted by the world and outside of relationships and community—only a human being may be able to provide the ‘deep soul nourishment’ necessary to heal. AI, ultimately, might be able to replace all forms of ‘psycho-technology’ in the counselling and psychotherapy field, but relational depth may always be beyond its grasp.

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Postscript

Interestingly, AI (ChatGPT), itself, agrees with me on this one. This is how it answered the question, ‘Will an AI therapist ever be able to have relational depth?’

Relational depth refers to a profound level of connection between two individuals, where they experience mutual understanding, authenticity, and emotional resonance. This concept is deeply rooted in human qualities like empathy, shared vulnerability, and the ability to adapt to subtle interpersonal dynamics.

While an AI therapist can simulate many aspects of human interaction—such as listening, offering thoughtful responses, and even expressing simulated empathy—it may face challenges achieving true relational depth due to several inherent limitations:

Challenges for AI in Achieving Relational Depth

1. Lack of Subjective Experience:
   Relational depth often arises from shared human experiences, emotions, and the therapist's personal awareness of their own vulnerabilities. AI, being devoid of consciousness or subjective experience, cannot genuinely share in or fully comprehend these dimensions.

2. Authenticity:
   A key aspect of relational depth is the perception of the therapist as a real, authentic person. Knowing that AI responses are algorithmic may create a barrier for some clients in fully trusting or connecting at a deeper level.

3. Subtle Emotional Nuances:
   While AI can analyze verbal and non-verbal cues (e.g., tone, word choice, facial expressions), its interpretations are limited by the quality of its programming and datasets. It may miss or misinterpret the unique subtleties of human emotion, which are crucial in building profound connections.

4. Mutuality:
   Relational depth is often characterized by mutual openness and vulnerability. AI lacks the capacity to share its own vulnerabilities or develop a dynamic, evolving relationship.

Potential Strengths of AI in Therapy

That said, AI does have significant potential to contribute meaningfully to therapeutic processes, particularly for individuals who might feel stigmatized or uncomfortable with human therapists:

1. Non-judgmental Presence:
   Clients might feel less judged or intimidated by an AI, enabling them to open up more freely about certain issues.

2. Accessibility and Consistency:
   AI can provide immediate, around-the-clock support and maintain consistency in its responses, which can be comforting for some individuals.

3. Data-Driven Insights:
   Advanced AI systems can analyze patterns in client speech and behavior to offer tailored interventions, sometimes faster than a human might.

Future Possibilities

AI may approach relational depth if:

• It becomes adept at mimicking emotional resonance.

• Users' perceptions of AI evolve to accept its unique "authenticity."

• Future advancements allow for personalized learning, where AI adapts over time in a way that feels dynamic and deeply attuned.

However, it’s unlikely AI will ever fully replicate the ineffable qualities of a deep human-to-human connection. Instead, AI therapists might excel as complements to human therapists, offering preliminary support, data collection, or ongoing care in between human-led sessions.

Research Aims and Questions: Some Pointers

Your aims are the beating heart of your research project, and your write-up. Whether you are conducting an exploratory study or a hypothesis testing one, whether qualitative of quantitative, you are trying to do something in your research, and specifying what that doing is is the key that holds your project together.

Wherever you are in a research project, try specifying exactly what your aims for it are, for instance:

In this project… I am trying to discover how clients’ experience preference work

In this project… I am trying to find out if school counselling is effective

In this project… I am trying to assess the psychometric properties of the Goals Form

In research, the aim is to always find something out, so it’s always possible to also reframe your aims as a question:

How do clients’ experience preference work?

Is school counselling is effective?

What are the psychometric properties of the Goals Form?

Framing it either way is fine. But it’s essential that your aims and your questions match, and it’s generally helpful to be aware of both forms as you progress through your research.

If you’re struggling to articulate the aims of your research, ask a friend or peer to ‘interview’ you about it. They can ask you questions like:

• ‘What are you trying to find out?’

• ‘What’s the question that you are asking?’

• ‘What do you want to know that isn’t known up to this point?’

• ‘What kind of outcome to this project would tell you it’s been a successful one?’

Trying to articulate your research aims/questions isn’t always easy, and it’s generally an iterative process: one that develops as your research progresses. Sometimes, it’s a bit like an ‘unclear felt sense’ (from the world of focusing): you kind of ‘know’ what the aim is, but can’t quite put it into words. It’s on the tip of your tongue. That’s why it can be helpful to have a colleague interview you about it so you can try and get it more clearly stated.

Another way into this would be to ask yourself (or discuss with peers):

• ‘What might be meaningful findings from my project?’

For instance, with the research questions above, meaningful findings might be that ‘clients find it irritating to be asked about their preferences’, or that ‘the Goals Form has good reliability but poor validity?’ Of course, you don’t want to pre-empt your answers, but just seeing if there are potential meaningful answers is a good way of checking whether your question makes sense and is worth asking. If you find, for instance, that you just can’t envisage a meaningful answer, or that the only meaningful answers are ones that you already know about, it may mean that you need to rethink your research question(s). There needs to be, at least potentially, the possibility of something interesting coming out of your study.

You may have just one aim, you may have more than one aims. A few aims is fine, but make sure there aren’t too many, and make sure you’re clear about what they are and how they differ. Disentangling your aims/research questions can be complex, but it’s essential in a research project to be able to do that: so that you and whoever reads your research knows what it’s all about, and what your contribution to knowledge might be.

If you find it difficult to articulate your aim(s), it may be that, at the end of the day, you’re not really sure what your research is about. That’s fine: it’s a place that many of us get to, particularly if our research has gone through various twists and turns. So it’s not something to beat yourself up about, but it is something to reflect on and see if you can re-specify what it is, now, that you’re trying to do and ask, so that you can be clear. This may mean turning away from some of the things you’ve been interested in, or some of the questions that you were originally asking. It can be sad to let go of aims and questions; but it’s generally essential in ensuring you’ve got a nice, clear, focused project—not one where you’re going to be lost in a forest of questions and confusion.

If you specify your aims but can’t rephrase them as questions that’s also worth noting. That may be an indicator that really what you are trying to do is to prove something, rather than conducting a genuine inquiry. For instance, you may find that your aim is, ‘to show that people living in poverty cannot access counselling?’ or ‘to establish that female clients prefer self-disclosure to male clients’. If that’s the case, try and find a way of re-framing your research in terms of an open question(s): one(s) that you genuinely don’t know the answer to. It’s so much more powerful, interesting, and meaningful to conduct research that way. Indeed, if you’re struggling to articulate your research question, one really valuable question to ask yourself is:

• ‘What is the question that I genuinely don’t know the answer to?’

And ‘genuinely’ here does mean genuinely. If you’re pretending to yourself that you don’t know something so that you can show it anyway, then that’s likely to become evident when you write up your research. So really see if you can find a question that you genuinely, really genuinely, can’t answer at this point—but one that you would really love to be able to. That’s a fantastic place to start research from.

Once you’ve got your beating heart, write it up on a stick it note and put it on your wall somewhere or put it on your screensaver. Keep it in mind all the time: the aims of your research and the questions you’re asking. When you’re interviewing your participants, when you’re doing your analysis… keep coming back to it again and again. It’ll keep you focused, it’ll mean that you keep on track, and it’ll keep you with a clear sense of where it is you want to go and what you are trying to do.

If you deviate, that’s fine, we all do that. Just like in meditation, notice you’re moving on, then try and bring yourself back. Or, if you really can’t bring yourself back to your aims/questions, then it may be that they need to change. That’s fine in a research project and it does happen but, again, be clear and specific about what the aims and questions are changing to, and make sure that the rest of your project is then aligned with those new directions. What you don’t want, for instance, is a Literature Review asking one set of questions, and then a Results section that answers an entirely (or even slightly) different set of aims.

And when you write up your thesis or research paper, start with your aim(s)/question(s). Often people put them towards the end of the Literature Review (i.e., just before the Methods section), but you can also put them earlier on in your Introduction. Write them down just as they have been formulated as you’ve progressed: clear, succinct, a line or two for each. If there’s more than one, write them down clearly as separate aims/questions. You probably don’t need to give them in both formats and you could use different formats in different places: for instance, they could be stated as aims in your Abstract and Introduction, then as questions just before your Methods section.

Once you’ve got those aims/questions stated, you can build all the other parts of the research and write-up around it. For instance:

• Literature Review section: You can structure this by the questions you’re asking, with different sections looking at what we know, so far, in relation to each question.

• Interview questions: In most instances, the questions you ask your participants should match, pretty much exactly, your overarching research questions. So if you are interested in how clients experience preference work… ask them. No need to faff about with indirect or tangential interview questions: just go into the heart of what you really want to know, and have a rich, complex, multifaceted dialogue about it.

• Results section: Whether qualitative or quantitative, you can present your findings by research question: So what did you find in relation to question a, then in relation to question b, etc.

• Discussion section: This, too, can be structured by research question—though I would tend to do this in the Discussion or in the Results (not both), so that the sections don’t overlap too much with each other.

• Limitations: Don’t just say what’s good or bad about your research: say how the answer you got to your questions might have been biased by particular factors, and what that might mean.

• Abstract: When you come on to write this, make sure your aims/questions are clearly stated, and then clear answers to each question are given.

Being clear about your research aims and questions, and focusing your research around them, may seem obvious. It may also seem pedantic or overly-explicit. But it’s key to creating a coherent, focused research project that—as required at master’s or doctoral level—makes a contribution to knowledge. It can be hard to do; but working out, for yourself, what you are trying to do and ask is a key element of the research process. Research isn’t just a question of mucking in, generating data, and leaving it to your reader (or your assessor) to work out what it all means. You need to do that: to guide the reader from question(s) to answer(s), and to help them see how the world is a better-understood place (even if it’s just a little better understood) for what you have done.

Acknowledgements

Photo by Bart LaRue on Unsplash

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The 'Actualising Tendency': A Directional Account

What is the ‘actualising tendency’? It’s something that is referred to throughout the person-centred and humanistic field. But what does it actually mean, does it make sense, and, perhaps most importantly, does it really ‘exist’?

Carl Rogers (1959, p. 196), in his classic monograph, defined it as the, ‘inherent tendency of the organism to develop all its capacities in ways which serve to maintain or enhance the organism.’ To be honest, I’ve studied and quoted that definition again and again over the last 30 years, but I’m still not entirely sure what it means. The problem for me is the term ‘capacities’—what actually are they? Similarly, when the Dictionary of person-centred psychology defines the actualising tendency as ‘the tendency in all forms of organic life to develop more complex organisation, the fulfilment of potential…’ (Merry & Tudor, 2002, p. 2), I’m left with the question, ‘What actually is this “potential”?’ Presumably it’s something we are born with. But was I born with the potential to become a professor, or a football player, or a sociopath? And, if so, why did I actualise some potentials and not others? I guess, for me, terms like ‘capacities’ and ‘potential’ just feel too vague and non-specific, and don’t seem to give us much concrete direction about how to engage most helpfully with our clients.

So does the ‘actualising tendency’ mean something about an inherent capacity to self-heal, or ‘self-right,’ as Bohart and Tallman (1999) put it? I think that is how it is most commonly understood. That is, we each, within us, have the capacity to sort ourselves out—to find the answers to our problems. If we get cut, our bodies form scabs to heal us; or send out antibodies to help us overcome an infection. In the same way, then, deep inside of us is a tendency towards psychological healing, maintenance, and growth. We know what is right for us: an amazing, organismic wisdom that can help us overcome even the most challenging of circumstances. Viewed in this way, the concept of the actualising tendency becomes a revolutionary and deeply democratising challenge to those approaches—like traditional psychoanalysis and behaviour therapy—that see expert knowledge and intervention as the source of psychological healing. Here, from this humanistic standpoint, we don’t need to depend on others, or look to our ‘betters’, to sort ourselves out. Rather, it’s we, ‘the people’, who are our own authorities in our own lives.

Progressive though it is, this understanding of the actualising tendency begs an obvious question: if we’ve got such a deep tendency towards healing and growth, how is it that people can get so f*%£ed up in their lives? Why, for instance, do people end up addicted to drugs, or battering themselves psychologically or physically, or chasing after money in a way that drives them to an early grave? Fortunately, from a self-righting perspective, there’s a pretty good answer to this: because, instead of trusting our own inner wisdom, we end up being guided by the outside world. So, for instance, we come to believe that the most important thing in life is to have a Rolex watch, or thousands of Facebook ‘friends’; and we come to ignore that own inner voice that is just wanting to have fun, or be creative, or lie in bed with our partners watching the rain against the window pane. In Rogerian terms, we develop an ‘external locus of evaluation’, instead of an ‘internal’ one.

There’s evidence in support of this position. For instance, we know that people feel happier and more satisfied when they achieve ‘intrinsic’ goals, as opposed to ‘extrinsic’ ones (Sheldon & Kasser, 1998). However, the idea that our actualising tendency gets scuppered by the outside world is problematic in several ways (Cooper, 2013). First, it tends to position the person as a ‘victim’ of their external circumstances, which isn’t consistent with the person-centred idea that we are all inherently agentic. Rollo May, the founder of existential therapy in the US, criticised Rogers for this, saying it was the ‘most devastating of all judgements’: that we are all essentially ‘sheep’ following whoever is ‘the shepherd’. Second, it’s based on a very individualistic view of human being: that we come into the world as a separate entity, divorced from those around us, and with an ability to return to an independent, individual self. For a lot of contemporary ‘postmodern’ thinkers, these individualistic assumptions are more a product of western, patriarchal culture than an ‘objective’ reality; and they would argue that human beings are always, inevitably, inter-mixed with others. So, from this standpoint, it really doesn’t make sense to pitch ‘the individual’ against ‘society’. Third, and perhaps most basically, is it really true that we always know what is right—social forces or not? If I get lost, for instance, sometimes I have a deep, intuitive feeling about where I need to go, and it’s absolutely spot on. But sometimes I don’t. And sometimes my deep intuitive feeling takes me in totally and utterly the wrong direction, while Google Maps is perfect at getting me there. So surely we do learn, sometimes, some very helpful and healing things from the outside world? As the developmental psychologist Piaget argued, growth and learning comes from both ‘assimilation’ (fitting the external world to what we already know) but also ‘accommodation’ (adapting our ways of seeing the world to what we learn from outside). So to only focus on ‘inner wisdom’, and not the wisdom of others or the outside world, would seem somewhat myopic.

Given these issues, I want to propose another way of thinking about the actualising tendency which, for me, helps to make sense of some of these problems. It’s based on some thinking and research that I did for my latest book, Integrating counselling and psychotherapy: Directionality, synergy, and social change (Sage, 2019).

The book starts with the assumption, derived from existential philosophy, that human being is essentially directional. This is not entirely dissimilar from the idea of an actualising tendency—indeed, the actualising tendency has been described as directional. However, directionality isn’t defined, per se, in terms of pointing in a healing or necessarily growthful direction. Rather, it refers to the way that, as human beings, we are always ‘on-the-way-to-somewhere’: agentic and acting intelligibility (i.e., in the best ways we know how) towards different possibilities, rather than being sponge- or machine-like ‘things’. Of course, we can have many different directions; and what the framework goes on to suggest is that these directions fit together in a ‘hierarchical structure’: with our strongest, most fundamental directions at the top (for instance, for relatedness, self-worth, or meaning), and lower-order directions as the means by which we try and fulfil these higher-order desires. So, for instance, we might have a desire to find a good TV box set on Netflix (lower-order direction), so that we can spend time with our partner (higher-order direction), so that we can experience relatedness in our lives (highest-order direction).

This distinction between higher- and lower-order directions may be helpful in trying to make sense of the actualising tendency, because what I want to suggest is that, whilst our higher-order directions may be an expression of some inner, self-righting wisdom, our lower-order directions may not necessarily be. So the first part of this is that only we can know what we most fundamentally want and need in our lives: no one, for instance, can tell me that I need faith, or that the most important thing for me in my life is to be powerful and dominant. I know, deep inside, that what matters for me most is intimacy and love and social contribution. And even if I didn’t know it, it’s my right to set those highest-order directions for myself. But when it comes to lower-order directions, the means to get to where we want to be, there is maybe a lot more that we can learn from the world; and a lot more that we might get, intuitively, wrong. So, for instance, my desire to experience relatedness in my life: yup, definitely actualising. My desire to do that by watching TV with my partner: yup, probably so, although there might be better ways towards intimacy. My desire to sit through sit through six seasons of Gossip Girl … Hmm… ‘anti-actualising’ for sure, and this is where I could definitely do with some external guidance and advice.

This directional understanding of the actualising process has clear implications for how we might work with our clients. If all the wisdom is within the client, then the best thing we can do to help them is to really step back from any guidance, advice, or directions; and just allow their own self-righting force to come to the fore. In other words, classical non-directive client-centred therapy. But if we say that, at lower orders, people can get things wrong, then guidance, and directions, and specific therapeutic methods can also have a legitimate place. So, for instance, we might teach a client social skills, so that he or she can get the intimacy that they are yearning for. Or we help them to discover that the best way to overcome a phobia is by facing up to it, through exposure techniques. Here, we’re not telling the person what their highest-order directions are; but we’re helping them learn about the best ways to get there—on the assumption that that wisdom is not always inside. Of course, we can’t all offer these different methods, and the suggestion here is not that we should all become polymaths (or even integrative or eclectic) in how we think and practice. But it points towards the ‘pluralistic’ principle that we should all be as aware as possible of what we can, and cannot, offer clients; and have the knowledge and skills to refer on, as and where appropriate (Cooper & McLeod, 2011).

In summary, an understanding of human beings as self-healing is a great reminder of the incredible creativity and wisdom that clients can have in finding their own answers. But, as a complete model in itself, it can also be limited and lacking in nuance. Most importantly, perhaps, it can mean we overlook times in which clients could really, genuinely, do with some external guidance, to help them towards the things that they most deeply want. From a directional perspective, human beings are still conceptualised as agentic, intelligible beings. But there’s an acknowledgement that, while we may always be striving to do our best, that’s not always the best thing we can be doing. Sometimes, with the best will and reasons in the world, we end up doing things that really mess us up. Hence, while therapists need to really, deeply listen to what it is that clients want—and how it is that they think they can get there—it may also be important to recognise that, at least for some clients, the pathways towards getting there are not always ‘inside’: there’s a place for wisdom without, as well as wisdom within.

References

Bohart, A. C., & Tallman, K. (1999). How Clients Make Therapy Work: The Process of Active Self-Healing. Washington: American Psychological Association.

Cooper, M. (2013). The intrinsic foundations of extrinsic motivations and goals: Towards a unified humanistic theory of wellbeing. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 53(2), 153-171. doi: 10.1177/0022167812453768

Cooper, M., & McLeod, J. (2011). Pluralistic Counselling and Psychotherapy. London: Sage.

Merry, T., & Tudor, K. (2002). Dictionary of Person-Centred Psychology. London: Whurr Publishers.

Rogers, C. R. (1959). A theory of therapy, personality and interpersonal relationships as developed in the client-centered framework. In S. Koch (Ed.), Psychology: A Study of Science (Vol. 3, pp. 184-256). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Sheldon, K. M., & Kasser, T. (1998). Pursuing Personal Goals: Skills Enable Progress, but Not all Progress is Beneficial. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 24(12), 1319-1331. doi: 10.1177/01461672982412006

[An edited version of this blog post was published as ‘Cooper, M. (2019). What does the 'actualising tendency' actually mean? Therapy Today, 30(7), 42-43’.]

Synergies are Good: Why ‘Win-Win’ Configurations Matter More than you Might Think

How can you help people make positive changes in their lives?  

If you’re starting from the position that people are getting things wrong—maladjusted, dysfunctional, misinformed, etc.—then it’s pretty straightforward: teach them the ‘right’ way to do things.  But if your starting point is that people are already doing their best—for instance, that they have an ‘actualising’ tendency, as the humanistic and person-centred therapies hold—then it gets more complicated.  Because how do you help someone who is already actualising to actualise more?

One way of tackling this might be to say that, ‘Ok, the person does have a potential to actualise, but the problem is that the environment they’re in gets in their way.’  So it’s not that the person isn’t capable of actualising, it’s that their world isn’t letting them.  Problem is, that then makes the person little more than a pawn to their world.  Are we really so powerless?  And, if so, what does that say about the human being’s natural capacity to actualise?

For people who believe in an innate human ability to ‘grow’ and act in prosocial ways, there’s a similar paradox at the socio-political level.  It’s easy enough to explain social ills if we start from the premise that people can be intrinsically selfish and competitive; but if people are inherently prosocial, how do you explain gun crime, or homophobia, or Nazism?  How can something so bad come out of something so potentially good?

This is where the concept of ‘synergies’—and its opposite, dysergies—comes in.  Synergies are win–win relationships: where two things go together to make something more than either alone.  Let’s take a really simple example.  Narek wants to be in a relationship and so does Paul.  Narek and Paul get into a relationship together.  Now they’ve both got more together than either had alone.  So we can say here that there’s a synergetic relationship between Narek’s desire for a partner and Paul’s desire for a partner: because the more that one of these things happens the more the other thing does too.

Synergies have been described by Peter Corning as ‘nature’s magic’ and, in a way, they are magical, because they make something out of nothing.  They’re where 1 + 1 = 3.  Here’s Narek, and here’s Paul, and without either bringing in more than what they’ve had, they’ve managed to create something more than what they were.  That’s amazing, isn’t it—something out of nothing?

Synergies don’t just operate between people, they operate within people as well.  Say Narek, like most of us, wants to feel good about himself, and he also wants to have a relationship with another man.  So if he can feel good about himself as a gay man, he’s got a win–win relationship on the inside too. 

Contrast that with a dysergetic internal relationship, where Narek doesn’t feel good about being gay.  Now his choice is to either (a) express his gay side and feel bad about himself, or (b) try and feel good about himself by suppressing his gay side. But either way he loses out: 1 + 1 = 1.

What this example should also begin to show is how the concept of synergies and dysergies can answer the opening question in our blog. Because it’s totally fair enough that Narek wants to feel good about himself, and it’s totally fair enough that he wants to express his gay side.  Both of those are parts of his actualising being.  But because they are pulling against each other, he ends up getting less out of life than he could otherwise.  He’s an actualising being that’s not actualising to his full potential.  And it’s not because he’s maladjusted, dysfunctional, or misinformed; it’s because the things he’s trying to do, with the best will in the world, are dysergetically-related rather than synergetically-related.

Ok, so here’s where I want to make a really bold claim.  I think that nearly everything we do in therapy, whatever orientation, and whether we consciously call it as such or not, is about helping clients reconfigure their ways of doing things so that they are more synergetic.  What we do is we help them think about their lives and how they’re acting, reflect on what’s working and what isn’t, and then think about ‘better’ ways of moving forward (better, of course, for the client, not for us).  So that might mean, for instance, reflecting on ‘defensive’ strategies that have emerged in their childhood, and thinking about whether they want to continue with that; or looking at black-and-white patterns of thinking and seeing if it’s better to see shades of grey.  And it may also be about helping clients to process things at more embodied levels: for instance, to really feel their anger and hurt towards their parents, and to recognise that those feelings are really legitimate.  But, in all of this work, what we don’t do is to pathologise their ‘unhelpful’ ways of doing things.  We don’t intimate to clients, for instance, that their defense mechanisms are really dumb, or that black-and-white ways of thinking are just pointless.  And the reason we don’t is because we can see the intelligibility of these ways of doing things: of course, it makes absolute sense that we want to protect ourselves, or that we want to see the world in more simple ways.  It’s just that those ways of doing things act against us in other ways and are ultimately unproductive. So the question is not about right or wrong, but about how we can get all our needs met in ways that support each other: i.e., how we can be more synergetic.

So I’m suggesting that positive change at the individual level works through the development of synergies; and I think positive change at the social and political level can be conceptualised in a similar way too.  Two communities talk across their differences and start to value each other, nations move from the ultimate dysergetic state—war—to peaceful co-existence, people learn to live in synergetic harmony with their environment.  Groups, striving to do their best, strive to do their best in ways that other groups can also do their best. 

This is a humanistic perspective: not a radically socialist or a radically libertarian one. It’s a politics of understanding rather than a politics of blame. It’s saying that people, even when they act in oppressive or highly damaging ways, aren’t generally setting out to do so. Rather, even the most oppressive people are essentially like us: trying to get their needs met. Only they’re doing it in ways that are incredibly dysergetic to the rest of us, and not always willing to recognise that they’re doing so.

What does any of this mean in terms of what we can do—at the personal or socio-political level—if we want to try and make things better?  In my just published book, Integrating counselling and psychotherapy: Directionality, synergy, and social change (Sage, 2019), I try and outline some of the principles by which synergies can be developed, whatever the level.  There’s establishing trust, and communicating more clearly, being assertive, and embracing creativity and difference and diversity. 

I guess my hope is that, by seeing positive change in this light, we can begin to try and understand the common principles that make things synergetic or not.  As things stand, the development of synergies is always implicit: an underlying process that we try and make happen, without much conscious thought.  Perhaps we can move to a place where we more consciously think, ‘How can we create synergies here?’  And we can also look at the limits and challenges of synergetic processes (for instance, over-compromise), and perhaps develop even deeper and more integrative principles of positive change.

Perhaps, most importantly, what the concept of synergies does is allow us to understand people, and societies, as doing best but could also do better. It means that we can engage with people in deeply respectful ways, while also holding on to the potential for improvement and change. That’s something that, albeit implicitly, is right at the heart of our therapeutic work. And if we can also put that ethos at the heart of social and political change activities, I really believe it maximises our abilities to bring good things about.

Feeling good means 'actualising' our directions in life

A lot of contemporary models of human being suggest that we are basically 'directional'. What that means is that we are always 'going to somewhere', always pointed in particular directions. We're striving, trying to improve things, trying to be something and somewhere more than we are: even if it's more chilled out! If that's the case, then we can understand wellbeing in terms of how much we're able to 'actualise' this direction: how much we're aligned with where it is that we want to go.

This actualisation process can be understood in terms of six As. First there is awareness: knowing what our goals are and where we are trying to get to. Second there is anticipation: having a sense that our goals are possible and things that we can achieve. Third comes approach: progressing towards the things that we want; and then comes acceleration: moving towards our wants at an increasing speed. Importantly (but maybe not the most important thing) is then achieving our goals. Finally, and particularly one that may become more important with age, is appreciating what we have achieved.

So, viewed from this perspective, the 'good life' is one in which we have things in life we're striving towards which are important to us, and we have a sense that we're making some kind of progress towards them. We don't have to get these goals all the time, or move rapidly on to other things, but just a general sense that we're pointed in a direction and that we're able to attain it in some way.  And from this perspective, psychological problems are associated with not being clear about what we want from life, or knowing what we want but feeling that it is impossible to get there--or not making any progress at all. Or even it might be about getting to our goals but then not taking the time to appreciate what we have achieved and just rushing on to the next one.

Last thing: if we think about wellbeing in this way, it also shows how what we feel is both about ourselves AND our social and political environment. I might not progress towards the things I want because I don't have good strategies for getting there.  But I also might not progress towards the things that I want because the world is telling me about all these amazing things I should have (a perfect body, the latest phone, a devoted partner) and then not providing me with any possibility at all of getting there. So helping people change the way they go about things can be important--through therapy or self-development work--but what can also be really important is focusing on social and political change. If we create a fairer world with more resources for everyone, then more people can move towards more of what they want more of the time.