Let me first of all thank you for re-introducing an old idea, that the main reason we are here is to learn from our experience and that this is a Holy Quest. I would like to comment on what I see as a spiritual paradox that confront most people in their daily lives. In my clinical practice, I mostly do evaluations of Disability applicants. These are almost exclusively people who for medical and psychological reasons cannot be monetarily productive and make their lives work. Some of them have arrived at this impasse because of various ways in which they have wasted their years in pursuit of immediate pleasures with no thought that there may be an overarching meaning in life. This is best characterized by a 14 year old girl whom I was evaluating about a year ago. In the middle of the interview with mother and other family present, she declared petulantly, "I know me!" Upon hearing this statement, I felt an echo going back across centuries with the sense that dimensions of knowledge and experience had somehow been lost, leaving us with only a shell of purpose and meaning. What we want for lunch, what clothes we want to wear, what TV we want to watch, and how we plan to satisfy ourselves even momentarily has become a substitute for self-awareness... and this is fostered by those in the mental health field who have no better idea about how to meet essential needs than the people they treat. BUT, lest we forget, there is the potential for real learning in the people who get lost in the world of need satisfaction. To me, that is where the value is in doing psychotherapy. It is not so much about ego, id, and superego, so much as it is about finding your way in the world. This, to me, is simultaneously a quest for survival AND a Spiritual Quest. In my practice, therapy involves a careful consideration of where we are in light of where we come from, physically, mentally, and spiritually, as well as where we are trying to get to. The definition of both can be mutually enriching and offer meaning wherever we are in our psychic development.

This posting is informative and something we could learn from.

Ironically, the science that has begun to demonstrate neuroplasticity shows that psychotherapy and other forms of appropriate therapy can be beneficial. Why else do we reflect and think, other than to modify our future reflections and thoughts?

The expectation of change underpins any reflective or proactive therapeutic technique. Neuroplasticity tells us that this frame of reference is valid.

Martin