It was clear as we neared the end of our first session that Tom had worked hard to cultivate an ironic sense of humor, which had attracted many acquaintances but few emotional connections in his 41 years on earth. So I expected some witty remark to try to lighten the tone as he looked down at his fingers, toying with the loose fabric of the chair in my office. Still, I was in no way prepared for what he said on that summer afternoon some 15 years ago.
"I'm just another guy looking for a rainbow," he sighed.
Maybe it was the shadowy tone of voice in which he said it or the thinness of his smile immediately afterwards. For whatever reason, Tom's little statement completely disarmed my empirically-based symptom-reduction training that had already yielded a treatment strategy. Suddenly I realized that the ebb and flow of his emotions were not symptoms crying out for therapy.
Although my scientific assessment of the conditioned patterns of Tom's emotional repertoire nicely highlighted the necessary steps for meeting the goals he set at the beginning of therapy, it was nowhere near sufficient. Knowing that you can't enjoy a drive if the sparkplugs in your car are misaligned, gives you no idea of what it takes to appreciate the drive in the country. Tom did not simply need help with his sparkplugs.
We've enjoyed a glorious revolution in psychotherapy, but like all revolutions it can claim unnecessary casualties. The explosion of knowledge in neuroscience has greatly expedited our work as therapists. But we don't want to make the same mistake as previous generations who attributed significant emotional experience to some obscure source in the past, as if the course of the river were determined by the snows melting in distant mountains. We cannot allow discoveries about the biochemistry of emotions to cast shadows the human capacity to create value. That would be similar to confusing the neurochemistry of visual processing with the experience of a sunset.
Make no mistake, even before this moment of revelation with Tom I had cautioned myself against "reductionism," with the facile mantra, "People are more than their symptoms." What I hadn't grasped was that symptoms are far more than symptoms and far more than what they may or may not mean about the client's past, which we can never know with anything approaching scientific plausibility. Rather, they are direct reflections of his or her current capacity to create value.
Symptoms, after all, are essentially emotions, and emotions are about importance. There are two kinds of emotional importance that we could all, from time to time, use a little help in establishing. My practice, while highly successful in reducing symptoms at one-year follow-up, was, before Tom, about sparkplug importance, having to do with emotion regulation skills (making the emotional system stronger and more flexible), efficiency, comfort, seeking reward, avoiding pain.
A more profound kind of importance is about value. We experience value as self-enhancement through the appreciation of someone or something and through investment of time, energy, effort, and sacrifice - above and beyond sparkplug considerations - in that person or thing. Having sex is of spark plug importance; making love is about value. Influencing the behavior of loved ones is sparkplug; compassion for them is value. Doodling is sparkplug (nervous-discharge); drawing is value. Using the stars as a compass or calendar is sparkplug; appreciating their beauty is value.
High value investment gives meaning, purpose, and vitality to life, with a greater motivation to improve, create, build, appreciate, connect, or protect. It literally boosts the immune system and makes us physically healthier. As value investment declines, so does meaning, purpose, vitality, and motivation. You begin to function more on automatic pilot with less interest and positive energy. If it declines too far, you begin to feel numb or depressed. If it declines drastically, you lose the will to live.
The self-enhancement aspect of value seems as underestimated in the anthropological literature as it is in psychology. There you find reports of the earliest humans decorating a rock to make it special, without noting that they became special by creating and appreciating the decorated rock. We become more valuable as we create and appreciate value, and we become less valuable (able to create and experience value) as we devalue our surroundings and the people in them. The tragic lives of so many artists owes in no small part to squandering the great emotional dividend of creating value by consistently devaluing everyone around them. Value investment provides a greater sense of being alive; value-depletion diminishes the will to live.
It became clear to me on that afternoon with Tom that the services I offered had to help people create and invest more value in their lives. I had to do more than help Tom weather the storm; I had to show him how to appreciate whatever rainbow he found, and, in a real sense, to become the rainbow -- as T. S. Eliot would have it, you become the music while the music lasts. In marriage, for instance, if you do not become the love, the love will not last.
In marriage, for instance, it is not enough to appreciate certain qualities about your partner - that will seem hollow after a few minutes and likely to sound phony if you try to translate the emotional state of appreciation into verbal compliments. Rather, you have to allow yourself to be enhanced by the qualities of your partner. It doesn't matter how skilled you are in communication - the sparkplugs of relationships. If you do not give heartfelt appreciation and compassion, you will become resentful, regardless of how your partner behaves.
Psychotherapy and marriage counseling are ultimately about increasing the value of our lives.
