Altruistic autopsychotherapy...

ALTRUISTIC AUTOPSYCHOTHERAPY AND PSYCHIC AUTOCORRECTION
 HELPING ONESELF BY HELPING OTHERS


Thesis


Budimir Rogovoy, Ph.D. (Russia)


The present thesis is devoted to the method of  psychotherapy  and  psychic correction which consists in helping oneself by helping others, incl. in  thinking of such helping. (The term “psychic correction” is used by us with respect to persons having no definite psychopathological diagnosis but needing psychological help).
The idea is nothing new; on the contrary, it is very old. If we try to search out for its origins, we shall have to touch the shadows of the ancient philosophers and religious teachers and especially such an immortal message of love as the New Testament.
Dale Carnegy, who gave a brilliant synopsis on the theme, writes as follows:
“I could compose the whole book from the accounts of the people who having forgotten themselves acquired thereby their health and happiness.” (Our re-translation from Russian. B.R.)
A pioneer of Altruistic Autopsychotherapy, the famous psychoanalyst Alfred Adler gave the following advice to his heavily depressed patients:
“Try to think every day how you can make something pleasant to somebody.”
This seems easy at first sight but not to these depressed patients! A.Adler says: “They are busy thinking: “How can I bother somebody?”…Many of them say: “Why should I do anything pleasant to others? They do not try to do anything pleasant to me.” “You should think of your health”,- answered A.Adler.- The others will suffer later.”
“When the patient becomes able to have contacts with other people on the basis of equality and cooperation,- continues A.Adler,- he may be considered cured.”
Other important achievements of Altruistic Autopsychotherapy since A.Adler and D.Carnegy are the good effects of the change of attitude to people in the directions of love and forgiveness in the treatment of heavy somatic diseases such as, e.g., cancer, and the support of collective cooperation and mutual help in the rehabilitation of alcohol and drug addicts.
In our approach to the theme we shall rely oh the new psychological theory sketched out by the contemporary Russian psychologist Fyodor Vasilyuk, which theory is, as we believe it, a kind of unorthodox psychoanalysis. In difference from the orthodox psychoanalysis F.Vasilyuk postulates the existence of four, not two, main psychological principles, and namely the principles of pleasure, reality (resp. activity), values and creativity ( resp. freedom), which principles and the corresponding “life worlds” have independent roots and are being lived by a person consecutively and also simultaneously as new active productions in later stages of psychic development.
Let us consider first of all Altruistic Autopsychotherapy  from the standpoint of the “lowest” life world of pleasure.
From this standpoint Altruistic Autopsychotherapy may be looked upon as a process related to the identification of the acting person with the person whom he or she is helping.
Here is the following advice:
“Start to give what you need. If you need attention and care, pay attention and care to somebody else who needs them too.”
If one`s desires are unfulfilled, because of objective obstacles or subjective superfluity, these unsatisfied desires are curbed in the processes of identification, and namely in the mildest way as the pleasure of the person whom one is helping becomes to be felt as one`s own in some degree.
The degree of such identification may be various reaching in the ideal that saintly love about which Jesus says:
“You must love other people the same as you love yourself.” (Matthew 22:39)
As far as one approaches the saintly identification preached by Jesus one`s life becomes more and more blissful, still more so if one spiritually approaches not only one`s neighbors but God- the eternal source of Love.
We are of the opinion shared by us with some other psychologists that there is in human psyche an “internal saboteur” (the term of W.R.D.Fairbairn) –an antilibidinal force which puts obstacles to man`s pleasure and activity.
Altruistic Autopsychotherapy may become a very mild, because of the processes of identification, way of overcoming the devices of the internal saboteur.
The attention to and the development of the principle of pleasure should not be considered anti-Christian, as many believed in the past and some people even in the present. And even in the past there were important revelations of this truth.
The saint Antonius the Great, the founder of the Christian monasticism, said:
“Needing no goods , God created for man the heaven, the earth and the elements, providing him through them with every enjoyment .” (Our italics. B.R.)
Passing now to the considerations from the standpoint of activity, we should like to point out first of all that man as compared with animals has an extremely high potential of aggressivity the latter being intimately connected with the above-mentioned self-destructive stratagemes of  the internal saboteur. “A sadist is always simultaneously a masochist.” (S.Freud). Instructive examples of this kind are given in our times by suicidal terrorists.
It is obvious that Altruistic Psychotherapy, by cultivating love contrary to aggression, is capable to curb and minimize aggression and thereby to lessen also its self-destructive potential.
“No person,- says the apostle Paul,- should try to do the things that will help only himself. He should try to do what is good to other people.” (1Corinth10:24)
 This is a correct way to create a really harmonious society and also a way, at least as the ideal to strive at, to help the acting person himself because it could help to create more favorable surroundings for every person.
The founders of psychooncology Carl and Stephanie Simontons relate the story of their patient Edith, who suffered from breast cancer with metastases.
Edith at the age of 53 had her mother living in an old people`s home. The mother was angry with Edith if Edith did not visit her every day, and Edith felt guilt and had an inferiority complex.
The psychological therapy consisted first in helping Edith to become aware of her unconscious negative emotions respective her mother, after which Edith was proposed to imagine that something good should happen with her mother.
After several weeks of doing this exercise the negative emotions of Edith significantly lessened. She could now consciously decide whether she would or would not go to her mother on some definite day, and she did not feel guilt any more when she could not go. The solving of the problems connected with the mother suddenly improved her relations with her children.
Her physical condition also improved, and the metastases completely disappeared.
This case and a number of other cases show that Altruistic Autopsychotherapy can be done with success not only on the level of external activity but also on the level of thinking. This “internalized” method of Altruistic Autopsychotherapy was elaborated, as C. and S.Simontons indicate, on the basis of Jesus` Sermon on the Mount, which emphasizes the value of correct internal states of consciousness and not only of external actions.   
 Passing now to the standpoint of the “world of values” we should like to mention first the emphasis of Altruistic Autopsychotherapy on positive, not negative, emotions and states.
The clients of C. and S. Simontons begin their psychic analyses from the negative feelings of resentment and guilt but never stop at them. The direction of the analyses is towards the awareness of their responsibilities and active role in the building up of these negative states, especially by their former aggressivity. And the following step is to use mental actions of the client in the correct direction by mentally creating positive mental images of the persons to whom they have experienced negative feelings.
Possibly it could be also useful at the final stage of such psychic analyses, at least for some clients with apparent inferiority complexes, to help the client to create his  own positive image, as it is successfully done, for example, in the behavior therapy (e.g., by originating and repeating positive self-statements of the client about himself).
As writes Robert H. Schuller, the famous pastor of the American Protestant Church, “if you want to be gracious to people, you must first of all begin to relate to yourself in the same way. Accept yourself as Christ accepts you- such as you are.” (Our re-translation from Russian. B.R.)
By the way, the author had an unhappy chance to observe the unfavorable results of the unpropitious attending of some Orthodox priests to the former “sins” of a seriously ill person, which attending did not help for her treatment but probably worsened her condition still more.
Altruistic Psychotherapy has been  effectively used, as a part of their therapeutic repertoire, in therapeutic groups beginning from the Association of Anonymous Alcoholics and numbering now by hundreds in all the world.
In these groups negative emotions and states of their members are very prudently given vent  in the frame of mutual confessions and criticisms but the main emphasis seems to be on the education of positive emotions and states. The absolute necessity of humility is being underlined but the very processes of communication and contacts in the group with the constant exercise of mutual help and support create the background allowing the members to feel their ultimate ineffaceable value.
Some of the therapeutic and paratherapeutic groups practicing, among other methods, Altruistic Autopsychotherapy address to God or other transcendent sources of Good, some do not.
It is generally accepted that the addressing to “higher forces” may have beneficial effects even if they should be , wholly or partially, products of imagination. In case of Jesus there is no doubt that, really or potentially, a real communication with the mighty transcendent force takes place.
Transcendent forces may help for doing good to people and vice versa doing good for people helps for the transcendence to God.
According to Jesus, the most important commands are the love to God and the love to “neighbors”. “All of the law and the writings of the prophets take their meaning from these two commands.” (Matthew 22:40)
The connection between the love to one`s neighbors, in the “world of values”, and the love to God, in the “world of freedom” in our terminology, is not difficult to grasp psychologically. If I understand and feel myself to be related to God as my Father, I cannot but understand and feel the same resp. other people, who become thereby my brothers and sisters.
All this was splendidly shown in the following episode of the great novel of Leo Tolstoy “War and Peace” ( vol.3, ch.8).
Princess Mary speaks with her brother Andrew.
“Andrew, I ask you only about one thing, I entreat you,- said she touching his elbow and looking at him with the eyes shining through tears… Do not think that misfortune was created by people. People are only His instruments… People are His instruments, they are not guilty. If you believe that somebody is guilty before you, forget it and forgive it. We have no right to punish. You will understand the happiness to forgive.”
Andrew disagrees. “…All the unrevenged bitterness suddenly raised up in his heart… And without any further answering Mary he began to think about that joyful angry minute when he would meet Kuragin /his enemy/…”
And later, going away, Andrew thinks over the conditions of his life and of his surroundings:
“The same conditions of life were earlier but earlier they were in connection with one another, and now everything has scattered off. Only senseless phenomena without any connections appeared before Prince Andrew.”
Leo Tolstoy showed clearly that Andrew`s attitude to people based on the joys of aggressiveness ( and, alas, these  may be really intense joys!) leads inevitably to the loss of  the transcendence to God, which alone can give the feeling of the full sense of life. And the pleasure of doing good to people leads for Mary to the approach to God and to the true happiness.
( A reservation is needed at this place. We speak here about the internal psychic attitude to people and not about the right or even the duty to struggle with enemies. In the period following the writing of “War and Peace” Leo Tolstoy theorized much about this problem and, in our opinion, wrongly.)
In conclusion we should like to state our belief that further theoretical investigation and practical elaboration of Altruistic Autopsychotherapy demands a close synthesis of religion and psychology.
As it has been shown above, psychotherapy can be supported and helped by the Christian tenets and traditions.
In our opinion, it demands from the believers to focus primarily on their internal states of consciousness with the exercise of freedom in the ensuing external activities, which should be done not “from religion” but “with religion” (Friedrich Schleiermacher). Cf.(Luke 17:21)
Such re-direction of consciousness demands belief and sustained attention but cannot be a “heavy burden”. Cf.: “Yes, the work that I ask you to accept is easy. The burden I give you to carry is not heavy.” (Matthew 11:30)
S.Freud furiously criticized the tenet of love to one`s neighbors as unreasonable, harmful and first of all unattainable. These criticisms are mainly directed at external actions and not at internal states of consciousness, and they miss the point pitifully.
And generally speaking the Freudian psychology has not manifested any sufficient sympathy with and understanding of the Christian religion.
We presume to propose in this essay, in a sketchy form, a new psychological approach, which might become an alternative to the Freudian theories.             
Our considerations seem to be in agreement with the proposal of Barack Obama to translate religious concerns “into universal, rather than religion-specific, values”,to “be subject to argument, and amenable to reason”.

LITERATURE
1/New Testament: Easy-to Read Version (1993) Moscow: Sovaminco.
2/Adler, A. What Life Should Mean for You.
3/Carnegy,  D. How to Stop Worrying and Begin to Live.
4/Freud, S. (1930) Civilization and its Discontents.
 5/Obama, B. (2006) Call to Renewal Keynote Address.
6/Simonton, C & Simonton, S. (1978) Getting well again.
7/ Vasilyuk, F (1988) The Psychology of Experiencing. Moscow: Progress.
                about 2010.