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Matthew Schulte
Milwaukee Area Technical College
May, 1997
People make up stories, just as whole cultures do; this natural tendency can be used therapeutically. Deep-seated archetypes in every person�s psyche form the basic characters of these stories. An individual can assume the role of hero in the story of his or her own life, learn from his or her own characters, and thereby live more fully.
Introduction
There are hundreds of approaches to psychotherapy. One of them, sometimes called �parts work,� also called by Moore & Gillette �archetypal psychology� (1990, p. 11), involves identifying and communicating with the various parts, or subselves, of one�s personality. Where do these parts come from? Who are they, really? How does one communicate with them, and to what end? Do these parts address any sort of universal theme?
Method
An article by psychotherapist Richard Schwartz (1997) helps illustrate how people can work with their �inner families� (p. 44). King, Warrior, Magician, Lover, by Moore and Gillette (1990), identifies some of the fundamental parts of personalities, where they come from, and how to work with them. In Iron John, Robert Bly (1989) shows how an old story has relevance to some of the inner parts of people, particularly men, today. Joseph Campbell�s The Power Of Myth (1989) explores how cultures and individuals tell and use stories, and why the story of one�s inner characters is so powerful. An unpublished short story (Welch, 1997) has been excerpted as an immediate example of how an individual might work with his own parts.
Results and Findings
Richard Schwartz, in his article entitled �Don�t Look Back� (1997) describes how he learned about people�s �subselves� which are often in conflict with one another. He found that individuals had �inner families� within them, and he tried treating them with the same principles he had learned as a family therapist. Refining his method, he learned to question the subselves directly, asking them where they got their detrimental beliefs or emotions, which actually freed up the client to be a compassionate witness to his or her own story. He discovered that everyone he worked with, among the damaged, victimized or overprotective inner selves, had a wise and compassionate �Self,� a leader, whom all parts needed to trust in order for the individual to function in a healthy way. He began to define his job as helping the client release that Self. Schwartz cites examples of cases where this method worked. A teenaged bulimic followed this pattern: a dirty look from her father, for instance, would trigger a critical voice that called her lazy and worthless, which would bring to the surface a young, hopeless part of her in great pain, and then a binging subpersonality would take over, and she would turn to eating to numb the pain (p. 44). Another client, a man who was successful in business but whose family life was falling apart, found within a critic/protector, a sort of manager for pain he had not given himself permission to feel.�Through communication with this manager part, he was able to assure it that its voice would be heard, ask it not to overwhelm the system, and finally see behind the wall it had built to a scared 7-year-old part, hiding in the backyard in a cardboard box. He was able to watch these things happen as if they were scenes from a powerful movie about his own life, and compassion for himself began to flow naturally for the �hero� in that movie. Eventually the harsh critic subself became a more supportive advisor (pp. 44�46). In each of these cases, Schwartz found he had to move beyond thinking of the subselves these people described as mere metaphors for difficult-to-describe feelings, and treat them as living parts with something important to say or contribute, even if they existed in such a painful place that the client had learned to try to ignore them. He was skeptical at first, having been trained to give little attention to the past, but he learned that the subselves could, if asked directly, take therapist and client unerringly to the point in the past where they had acquired their pain. He began to appreciate the impact of the past upon the present (p. 44).
Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette (1990) describe a similar kind of work; they refer to it as �archetypal psychology� (p. 11). They explore the �deep sources of�.�.�.�energy potentials that lie within us all� (p. 9), and attempt to explain ways individuals can draw on these, despite living in a society devoid of sufficient ritual for bringing youth into adulthood, for moving from a �diffuse identity to a more consolidated and structured identity� (p. 5). They speak of Jung�s idea of �primordial images,� hard-wired �blueprints� within everyone, which are probably inherited genetically. These archetypes provide the foundation for behavior, and when they become skewed by disastrous or unhealthy encounters with the real world (e.g. inadequate or hostile parenting), they can manifest as psychological problems (pp. 9�11). Moore and Gillette�s book deals mostly with the psychology of men. They identify four main archetypes of mature masculine energy: King, Warrior, Magician, and Lover. Each of these has corresponding less healthy aspects, called Shadow sides (p. 43). King energy is compassionate, wise, firm, ordering, and generative, and its Shadow can take the form of Tyrant or Weakling (pp. 49�74). The Warrior helps define and maintain boundaries, and it rouses, energizes, and motivates. Like a samurai, it helps one �leap� into battle instead of assuming a passive, defensive role. The Shadow sides of this archetype are Sadist and Masochist (pp. 75�96). The role of the Magician is historically to guide and transform with secret knowledge, including, in the present day, technology. It is the archetype of the �observing ego,� of thoughtfulness and reflection. In Shadow it appears manipulative, or the constantly denying �innocent� one (pp. 97�118). Finally, the Lover is the archetype of play, of sensuous pleasure without shame, of instinctively empathizing with the world around. Lover energy gets credit for the ability to tune in to an �underlying �oceanic� connectedness,� not unlike �the Force� from the Star Wars series. The Lover�s shadows are addicted or impotent (pp. 119�142). All these archetypes, according to Moore and Gillette, are energy flows, which, like magnetism, can�t be seen directly but do produce effects that can be seen, much like a magnet hidden under a piece of paper will influence metal shavings. The energy flows overlap and interpenetrate, but distinguishing them one from another makes it easier to work with them. For the process of untangling, identifying, then remixing and harmoniously blending these energies, they turn to the metaphor of a well-run board meeting. The chair listens to all members, even the unpopular or overly opinionated ones (for example, the Warrior); the input from all is treated as valuable. The members discuss, vote, make decisions. In this metaphor, the chair of the board is played by the Ego, and the board members are all the archetypes within. (pp. 44�45). Moore and Gillette stress that these archetypes, these inner selves, are powerful resources that every man has; it is his responsibility how he will use them (p. 144). And they discuss ways to learn to use them effectively, including a technique called �active imagination dialogue.� This technique involves replacing the usual, ineffective talking to oneself with a conscious conversation, or board meeting, with timeless and universal energy forms inside. The authors caution anyone who encounters a truly hostile presence within, or one they otherwise don�t know how to deal with, to consult a therapist (pp. 145�146).
In a personal interview with M. Thaddeus Welch (1997), this concept of communicating with the parts was discussed. As an exercise undertaken as part of his own psychotherapy, Welch wrote a story involving some of his own archetypes as he, not altogether premeditatively, imagined them. Here is an excerpt from �Everything You Need� (Welch, 1997):
�Hey wait!� I yelped, as they began steering me down the hall. �A shuttle ride? At this time of night? But I�m not ready! I need to get some things, I need to��
�Pish!� Cheezer exclaimed.
�Shut the hell up, you!� Pisser grunted. �You have everything you need.�
I was sweating, fiddling with my fingernails. After a few twists and turns, we arrived at the shuttle bay and they bodily escorted me into Shuttle Number Three. Without even thinking about it, I began a habitual preflight check. Bulkhead door sealed, pressure guages checked, seat belt�
�Ready� Cheezer asked, and he pushed the Launch button.�.�.�.
We had only gone about twenty kliks, Cheezer seated on my left beaming, Pisser on my right sneering, when Cheezer reached out and slapped a few controls. The shuttle turned about to face the way we had come, and came to a dead stop. I could see the ship in the mainview, looking like a spec of cosmic flotsam. It gave me a funny twist inside; this was the first time I�d been outside of her for a long time.
Cheezer interrupted my thoughts by snapping on the communications computer. And suddenly, replacing the exterior view on the screen, was a live picture of the Bridge�and all three crewmen were standing up, staring directly at me.
I gulped. �You mean, they��
Pisser chuckled. ��put us up to this? Sort of but not really.�
�Now,� Cheezer said. He sure seemed to like that word a lot. �Would you like to explain to them why in hell they should let you back on board?�
�What!�
�I said, �Now, would you���
�I know what you said!� I said, exasperated, �but what do you mean?�
�He means,� Pisser said, with a definite leer, �That you had better come up with one good reason why in hell they should let you back on board!�
�Well, because�� I said.
�Yes?� the Weird Bananas said in concert.
�Yes?� said the crew, over the com link.
�Because I�m��
Pisser lazily reached over to the Shuttle�s Vend-O-Matic and dialed himself a hot coffee. He smiled awfully at me.
�Because I�m your�� I tried again.
Cheezer gestured to his cousin for a coffee. �Looks like we�re going to be here a while,� he said.
I stared frantically from him to Pisser to the screen�
�Guess so,� Pisser said, leaning back in his chair and stretching out his booted feet.
�Unless,� Cheezer added, �our boy here does some pretty quick thinking.� He looked at me and smiled. �Ain�t that right�Captain?�
This story helped Welch identify some of the obstacles in the way of his growth. In the story, the Captain is accosted by the two bizarre characters seen above; they take him outside in a shuttle craft to show him just how messed up things have become through his neglect of his duties and his crew. The crew members�an E ngineer, a Science Officer, a Pilot, and a Captain� show some remarkably similar qualities to the Lover, Magaician, Warrior, and King as described by Moore and Gillette (1990). Each has a job he wants to do, and through lack of organization, intrapersonal communication, or simply good role models, each has encountered some obstacle which makes full, healthy expression difficult if not impossible. The act of taking the Captain outside of the spaceship may symbolize an attempt to gain the �cognitive distance� Moore and Gillette suggest is necessary to access healthy King energy.
Iron John, by Robert Bly (1990), provides an excellent example of using a story, in this case a very old one, to connect personally with archetypes. Here again, it is important that all parts be listened to, even if they are not universally supported, even if they are in fact feared. The life�s journey undertaken by the boy in the �Iron John� story around which Bly frames his book can only be undertaken after a deal is made with the Wild Man, a character frowned upon by religion and not contained by polite civilization (p. 9). Bly mentions the Jungian concept of successful requests to the psyche always involving deals, such as, �You let me work for an hour, then I�ll let you be a slob for an hour�deal?� (p. 9). Bly seems to agree with Moore and Gillette that powerful energies like Iron John the Wild Man lie inside every man (p. 11). He identifies the king in every child who stands up for the child�s moods and feelings, and warriors who defend this king. When a child grows up in a dysfunctional family, these energies get wounded or killed (pp. 146�147). In the Iron John story, the boy goes through various adventures, not without facing a good deal of fear, and gets back in touch with these energies.
The connection between personal archetypes and ancient archetypes can be seen quite clearly in Joseph Campbell�s The Power of Myth (1988). People, Campbell says, tell stories to come to terms with the world (p. 4). Myths are clues to how to live in a spiritually full way. They touch on a mystery, much like the hidden magnet mentioned above, that can�t be described any other way. They are not isolated or arbitrary, because people have deep-rooted archetypes in common (p. 6), at least in part because they are born out of our biological organs (p. 37). Campbell identifies as a function of myth teaching how to live a human lifetime, to live in harmony with the �grand symphony that this world is� (p. 31). He suggests that life is a poem�a �vocabulary�.�.�. not of words but of acts and adventures�� in which one participates (p. 55). In this sense one makes out of the raw material of myths one�s own personal myth, which helps one decide how to live. This outlook makes life an adventure story, an experience of eternity right now, rather than a problem or a chore to be gotten out of the way (p. 67). And in this story, each person who undertakes the journey inward to grow or to find something meaningful that has been lost is undertaking the dangerous hero�s journey (p. 124). The hero actually lurks in each one of us (p. 130). He can be helped by a teacher or a guru or a coach, but there is always a part he must face alone (p. 143). Interestingly, Campbell also points to the movie Star Wars, citing it as an example of a modern model for a good hero (p. 144). An important point about this hero�s journey is that anyone can do it. One has to follow one�s bliss, and slay an inner dragon, which is really your own ego clamping you down, saying you can�t do something you really want to do (p. 149). Campbell also seems to believe in the value of all internal parts, not just the �nice� or easily acceptable ones. He says, �if you say no to a single factor in your life, you have unraveled the whole thing.�.�.�. The demon that you can swallow gives you its power� (p. 161). He also emphasizes personal responsibility regardless of what one�s parents might have done wrong: �The best advice is to take it all as if it had been of your intention�with that, you evoke the participation of your will� (p. 161).
Discussion
In all these discussions of ways in which people can get in touch with their various inner parts, a few things remain constant. First, that there are universally occuring archetypes, or symbolic characters within. Second, people tend naturally, both as individuals and as cultures, to see living in terms of stories, characters acting out events, and this way of looking at things can be used therapeutically for spiritual growth. Finally, for such growth or understanding of the story to occur, all the parts must be listened to in some way; it is necessary to come to terms with even the shadows, the dragons, the uncivilized wild parts, for all parts have something important to say. Sometimes people�s conception of therapy or of growth through self-discipline involves simply squeezing off or cutting out the �bad� parts. �Growing up� is often described as simply giving up certain parts that have impractical or difficult dreams or feelings. When working closely with one�s inner parts, however, one may find that life becomes more alive when we listen to what these parts have to say, and find out if they are wounded, and how they might be healed and brought into the present. This task is a little less daunting when we realize that, while our parts are uniquely our own, still we are not completely alone in the hero�s journey among them because others have gone before us, and left stories and myths to give us clues, some sort of a framework, some inspiration and guidance.
Conclusion
Moore and Gillette (1990) say that archetypal psychology is �in its infancy� (p. 11). If this is true, then hopefully it will continue to grow for quite some time. In an age of insane amounts of information, an age of short attention spans, depression, violence, and an abundance of signs without significance, any model for looking at the worlds both outside and inside, any skills people can learn to lend them some sense of a meaningful path or journey, complete with responsibilities to self and community, have got to be developed. People�s own imaginative and recurring stories, born naturally of their own lives, seem to be ideal material for this kind of work; they grow as people grow, they are not stuck in accusatory dichotomies of good and bad, sin and virtue, but instead embrace the fullness and richness of life that come with the self-honesty to listen to all parts and learn what they have to teach.
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