Etymology is a favourite pastime, the root of words giving clues not just to forgotten meanings but often to a vital world hidden behind a veil of socialisation and habit. So it is with psychotherapy, a word increasingly professionalised, medicalised and placed at the service of the government and the market economy. I got to thinking about the roots of psychotherapy and all the work I do as an Alexander Technique teacher and professional psychotherapist, thanks to an recent, excellent article by Guy Dargert in the The Psychotherapist. The two root words psyche and therapy point to a specific domain and the act of ministering to it. Dargert locates the domain of ‘psyche’ in the myth of Psyche and the necessity of her journey from a ‘charmed but ultimately unsatisfying life’, where ‘all her wishes were effortlessly fulfilled’, to one where she has faced the contingency of life, the limits of human endeavour and the inevitability of death. Such a journey marks our way to maturity, a therapist is simply one who attends to the possibilities afforded in such a journey, who perhaps may play the role of mentor. To play the role of mentor is, as Dargert points out, to enter the world of ‘menos’, a word with which the Greeks combined for ‘mind’ and ‘spirit’ – a ‘mentor’ being a person who brings an ‘overview’, ‘a higher perspective’ and ‘clear thinking’ to troubled minds. For Dargert such a person might be a ‘true ‘mental health practitioner’’.
To talk of ‘spirit’ is to talk of what is vital, what is animating, and this is usually associated with breathing, which is another meaning of ‘psyche’ that Dargert notes. A psychotherapist would be a person who minsters both to the journey of Psyche and would attend to the process of breathing. In doing so they might adopt the role of mentor providing oversight and clarity, inviting a person onwards to where they can stand calmly in the face of the unknown – which is an aim of the Alexander Technique. It is often forgot that Alexander thought of his work as ‘psycho-therapy’, but it is not surprising when you think of his emphasis on breathing. Breathing not just for its own sake but as a necessity for forming ‘satisfactory conceptions of new or unfamiliar ideas or experiences.’ In this Alexander Technique is a practical way of learning to face ones difficulties, to follow the journey of Psyche, to become one’s own mentor, to become whole in the face of uncertainty and the unknown, to dream, to live a life, and to feel alive. To feel alive is as, good a measure of outcome, as any in psychotherapy. George Kelly recognised this and while his Personal Construct Psychology might focus more on ‘menos’, deep within it is a recognition of Psyche, the need for transition, the need to reconstrue, the need to dream - through what he called loosening, the need to live by what he called tightening, into experiment and action.
