TIFT #131: Befriending the Inner Self

In the Victorian period when psychotherapy was born, rationality was revered. The “baser instincts” were to be suppressed, fully eliminated, or at least kept hidden. That was the culture at the time when Freud realized that unconscious emotional processes were responsible for the hysterical symptoms that were plaguing his patients.

Today, we have a much more accepting attitude, but continue to have a lot of confusion about this, necessarily unfamiliar, part of the human mind. The aim of this post is to share some appreciation and empathy for this very important part of our mind’s information processing.

The power of the nonconcious mind

What makes a movie a hit or a flop? Why is obesity an epidemic? What makes people vote for an appealing image rather than going through a thoughtful evaluation of a candidate’s qualifications? Why do young people spend many hours a day “doomscrolling” or watching TikTok videos? None of these comes from our wiser reasoning mind, they arise from nonconscious processes that have a powerful influence on our conscious thoughts, feelings, impulses, motivation, and decision making. In this post, we’ll make friends with this lesser known part of humanity.

Metaphorical truth versus logical truth

The key to understanding the nonconscious mind is letting go of our tendency to be “consciousness-centric.” We are educated in formal logic, and the professional literature in our field is founded on the principle of placing formal logic above all else. Research papers are purposefully written to exclude the influence of emotion and to emphasize pure reason. But that’s not the main way the brain operates. Especially in those parts of our information processing that go on outside of consciousness, formal logic does not have a place and emotion is our guide. There, metaphorical truth reigns supreme. We need to recognize that, and to appreciate how it works in order to fully understand our clients and their problems. Not only that, but to help them change, it is practically a necessity. I’ll start with an example of how the inner mind uses an entirely different way of processing information. Then we can dig into the why’s of it.

The concept of transference, an example

Viewed from the point of view of conscious formal logic, the online Webster’s dictionary defines transference as, “The redirection of feelings and desires and especially of those unconsciously retained from childhood toward a new object (such as a psychoanalyst conducting therapy).”

In recent times, it has come clear to me that this is quite inadequate for the practice of psychotherapy. This is one place where metaphorical truth is not only richer but more accurate as well. A metaphorical way to describe the transference phenomenon is by recognizing an “inner child” or “inner self,” as the force behind the maladaptive patterns we and our adult clients want to change. Of course, if we look inside the brain, we won’t find an inner child or even self. The presence of an inner being is a metaphor, an image, but one that captures more efficiently and more accurately who it is we are working with and what to expect.

The phrase, “inner self” captures the reality of a dis-associated part of the client’s mental functioning, frozen in time and fighting as hard as it can to carry out a plan, motivated by the will to survive and grow. This intense, life-and-death drive has engaged the mind’s motivation as well as the capacity to monitor progress and continuously gauge factors that predict success or failure. Furthermore, the same inner self is aware that the therapy and therapist have a different goal. In our desire for change, we threaten to dismantle the inner self’s plan in favor of a some untried and dubious alternative.

That, to my mind, is a far more complete and accurate version of what is going on outside of consciousness. In our work to help our clients, this view changes things drastically. Embracing the metaphorical truth helps us empathize with the inner self and understand the powerfully positive purposefulness behind it. Borrowing Carl Rogers’ term, I call this understanding “accurate empathy.” Pursuing it allows us to make friends with the inner self and work with the nonconscious mind, rather than against it. Instead of overpowering the inner self, our goal becomes collaborating with the inner self in evaluating options and considering change. Just as with children in real life, this supporting approach is far more likely to lead to a successful outcome.

A second advantage to our appreciating metaphorical truth is that it is the language of the nonconscous mind. We’ll need to take that into account in doing psychotherapy because one of our main clinical objectives is to deliver new information in forms the inner mind can process.

Technically, the difference between metaphorical truth and conscious logic is that rational logic pays strict attention to the precise relationships between elements such as words and concepts. In contrast, metaphorical truth depends on highly variable, “fuzzy” associations between things. I’ll describe in more detail below how this works. For now, both formal logic and the inner mind’s associative processing are important in our daily lives. Before we get into the details, the next section will suggest why our brains have two minds that don’t always agree.

A fresh look at the human mind

The best way I know to put all this in perspective is to look at it from the point of view of evolution. For most of our mammalian ancestors, the main challenge to survival was to avoid being killed by a predator. For that the responses of fight, flight, and freeze were quite adequate. The brain’s job is to assess the situation and choose which one of the three responses to put into action. However when humans came along, survival took a giant turn. For us, survival came not from the ability to run or fight, but our ability to maintain group cohesion so we could survive as a group. One reason we relate to dogs so well is that they, too, depend on the pack for survival. But unlike dogs, our situation is far more complex. With our big brains come dilemmas like choosing between competitive rivalry and brotherly love. Should we hate our neighbor or empathize and understand? Along with these abilities, humans also perfected techniques for fooling one another. To manage that, we have to decide who is telling us the truth and their true motive. I picture a kind of arms race with the complexity of human interactions increasing as the size of the cerebral cortex grows to meet the challenge.

Flipping the mind

It helps to “flip” the mind, that is, to think of the nonconscious mind as primary, our basic survival equipment, and to think of the conscious, logical mind, as a “fancy add-on” designed by evolution to allow reason to evaluate and edit or modify the responses that arise spontaneously from nonconscious subcortical structures. As evolution often does, the two are pitted against each other. This is the familiar tug-of-war between the “head” and the “heart.” The competition hopefully leads to compromises that are better for survival. We already know a lot about how our conscious, logical mind processes information, so let’s take a deeper look at how the nonconscious mind does it.

Is it a thing?

Outside of consciousness, the brain is basically nonverbal. Words may exist, but in their connotative form, not the denotative one. Some of this extends into consciousness. Think of poetry. Poetry counts on the fact that your mind, when it can’t follow conscious logic, will conjure up a picture, an image or an impression from a clump of words. Those clumps of meaning are the inner mind's native form of information. My favorite definition of the information the inner mind works with is “Anything that can be described in poetry.” A “thing” can truly be anything, a look, a feeling, a vague sense, a concept. There are no limits to this free-form type of content.

The wildly open nature of nonverbal information is a consequence of the way information is stored in the brain. Groups of neurons tend to fire together because the synapses that connect them are adjusted to make that more likely. That’s what won Eric Kandel a Nobel Prize, as he described how the brain encodes information. Not only can a group of neurons firing together describe a “thing,” they can also have associations to other “things.” And there can be negative associations, too, so one thing stands as the opposite of another. When we ask, “Is it a thing?,” we are asking if the collective cultural mind has an image encoded that describes a recognizable entity of any kind.

Contrasting nonconscious thought with conscious reason

A picture is worth 1000 words. That’s because the denotative meaning, the strict definition of a word is relatively impoverished in comparison to an image with all its associations and nuances. When we reason, we use the denotative meaning and its precise relationship to other words. For example, it is important that a first cousin is defined precisely as the child of a parent’s sibling. On the other hand, the image of “Cousin Alice” might carry a world of meaning and associations, as does the word “cousin.” The connotative, associative way of storing and processing information is far richer, but imprecise and even subject to contradictions. Consider an example where metaphorical logic becomes confused. Jill is my friend and so is George. However Jill has turned against George. By metaphorical logic, George, my friend and Jill’s enemy, is simultaneously my friend but also my enemy. Metaphorical logic struggles with issues like this, which is one reason why formal logic is needed to evaluate and sometimes modify the results of metaphorical processing.

How does the inner mind perform calculations and make decisions?

The answer is simple, pattern recognition. But this can be very sophisticated. When one set of circumstances, however complex, is recognized as a “thing,” then pattern recognition and association can match it up with a response. That is simple, rapid, and often effective. It’s an if-then statement. If this is recognized, then that is what to do about it. 

The process itself is now better understood as “predictive coding,” which means going through cycles on different levels, where incoming information is compared with what is expected and adjustments are made to reduce error messages, technically known as “prediction error.” A familiar example is seeing a person on the street and thinking it is someone we know (what the mind is primed for), then realizing it is a stranger.

Given the brain’s incredible capacity for performing many operations at the same time, the result is what Khaneman calls “thinking fast,” in contrast to the more familiar “thinking slow” or conscious logic. For us, the importance of this distinction is that it is the subcortical, survival-oriented basic mind that is the author of the Entrenched Maladaptive Patterns (EMPs) that psychotherapy is designed to treat. The inner mind is where the rapid, but not always optimal, instinctive survival-oriented processing of masses of information works tirelessly and constantly to identify threats and launch responses in ways evolution has shaped for survival and procreation. Of course some of evolution’s handiwork comes from long before human life existed or looked anything like today, so it should be no surprise that the responses generated by our basic survival-oriented mind retain tremendous power, but are not always the best for today’s adult life.

Building connections with the inner self

When clients begin to realize that an inner part of themselves is orchestrating behaviors and experiences that are causing trouble in their lives, their first reaction is almost always anger. “Who is this little twirp trying to mess up my life?” As with real children, this is un-therapeutic and usually results in no change. Our job as therapists is often to be cultural and linguistic translators for our adult clients. By understanding the inner mind and being interested in its ways of interpreting events and responding, we naturally experience empathy and a more positive attitude towards this inner being. Like a good parent, we are both supportive, and, when needed, firm. In this, we become role models for our adult clients, showing them how to relate to their inner selves and lead them to healing and growth. We become allied with both the adult self and more childlike inner selves, helping them understand one another and come to function as partners.

Why do we need to understand children?

The answer is that EMPs are usually “frozen in time,” having been invented earlier in childhood or adult life when facing an problem or challenge with no good solution. When there is no adequate solution the inner mind comes up with strategies to avoid experiencing the dreaded inner proto-emotions that signal danger. Many strategies (TIFT #123) such as denial, acting out the opposite, and holding the hope of someday having needs met by some benign person, become frozen and unchanging, locked in as coping mechanisms. Sometimes strategies are effective at one point in life, but later are not. In a dangerous and unreliable family, it might be helpful to learn never to trust. In adult life this is a liability. Understanding how children solve problems is vital to identifying the strategy employed and what inner truth needs to be changed. From there, we can develop a plan and a pathway for helping our client trade an EMP for a more satisfactory way of responding to the same inputs.

Seeking accurate empathy

The term, "accurate empathy" sounds technical, but it is really a way to describe the one goal that will lead to the active ingredients that make psychotherapy successful. I’ve borrowed the term from Carl Rogers because it is the opposite of labeling. When we oversimplify, for example, “You are feeling angry,” we are putting the person in a category. No one likes that, because it takes away all the individual specificity and nuance. We have general words because the challenges we encounter in human life are often similar, but the meanings of those challenges and the ways we respond are unique for each individual and situation. Most clients want to be understand as one-of-a-kind individuals, and that is what accurate empathy means. One client prefers to call it “complex caring.” They mean the same, an emotionally engaged, ever deepening understanding using the full richness of metaphorical truth. Amazingly, it turns out that doing this is the single most comprehensive way of capturing all the things that are needed for successful therapy, regardless of brand or orientation.

What does accurate empathy do?

Here are four specific ways that seeking accurate empathy promotes the change mechanisms of psychotherapy.

1. As described in many of my posts, the E in EMP stands for “entrenched,” meaning resistant to change. As described above, that’s because the inner mind experiences its cherished patterns of response as vital for survival. The best way to help our client overcome that resistance is definitely not brute force. Nor is it authority or shame. What works is to build a trusting relationship. Like children (and adults) inner selves look for a reliable guide to take them into unfamiliar and potentially dangerous places. This is the enabling role of “common factors,” essentially trust in the therapist and the process. Seeking accurate empathy is the surest way to build a relationship with that level of trust.
2. Seeking accurate empathy is also one of the best ways to fulfill the first requirement for transformative change by memory reconsolidation. As the inner self feels understood, it becomes willing to take risks, but in doing so, it will inevitably activate fears and dread. As the inner self is driven to share with the therapist, old, scary schemas are re-activated, deep in the subcortical mind.
3. That sets the stage for the second requirement for transformative change, delivering disconfirming information to the inner self, information that shows how the old response is outdated and no longer works. It takes an empathic connection to bring a new perspective and/or new experiences to a wary inner self. Without a feeling of trust and safety, the communication will be blocked. For example, an unprepared rupture will be sure to block such a communication. Seeking accurate empathy not only helps us take in what the inner self is ready to share, but it also makes us sensitive to ruptures in communication. We notice them and our empathic engagement makes us want to repair them.
4. There is one more clinical objective that can be necessary for success. If the inner self has chosen an outdated response pattern, a better one must be made available and ready to be put into service. We may need to help our client adapt an old but healthy response, or we may need to encourage and support learning new responses. An example is learning to show power or assertiveness, and how to do this safely. It takes thought and practice. Another common example is learning that acceptance can lead to peace. Children often don’t know that, and have to learn it. Accurate empathy won’t directly bring this new learning about, but it will help us want to learn about strengths the client can draw on. Through our human empathy, we will naturally want to support and help them go through the process of learning and practicing more satisfactory responses to replace the old EMPs.

In these four concrete ways, seeking accurate empathy is the single best way to describe what we, as therapists, need to do to help our clients trade their tightly held, but outdated EMP responses for the more satisfactory ones they will need for healing, growth, and a meaningful, satisfying life.

Jeffery Smith MD

Photo Credit: Daiga daiga Ellaby, Unsplash