"Getting Back to the Good Times"

"Getting Back to the Good Times"

By Brian Lynch, M.D.

I would suspect that most people would not know that most of what is practiced in what is called clinical psychology or psychotherapy has not been proven. That is when doctors and therapists treat patients the methods they use have not been “tested” in any rigorous way. Are you surprised?

Well, this whole business of trying to help people in this way is barely a hundred years old and the idea of having organized systems of doing and paying for research on a large scale is much less than that. Then realize that we are mostly dealing with face-to-face, one-on-one encounters, and conversations between two people. How do you compare one conversation with another and decide if one is better than another? It is pretty difficult. But we have made some progress.

I have talked a great deal about two positive emotions, joy and interest, mainly interest and about “testing.”

The exciting news is that it seems that there is some “proof” that these ideas are indeed valid. Through a therapy called “Control Mastery Theory” (don’t bother about the strange name) they have been able to do studies through which they conclude that people in therapy are indeed trying their best despite many, many things they might do to demonstrate the opposite. Like, do what! Like calling the therapist names, leaving therapy, and not paying the bill. The conclusion in all of these cases is that the person is “testing” the therapist. They are testing whether or not it is “safe” to move forward in life. Now, I just say we all do these things, these "tests" with everyone in our lives if we are not acting in a healthy way toward them.

We start in life with a good deal of “interest” and “joy.” These feelings are not attached to much “thinking” or reasoning for a very long time. They are attached to “doing” things. To “play” for example, again enjoyment in the world. But through much of history and much of our own lives, there has been much interruption of this “interest” and “joy” that from an early age has taught us that the world can hurt and can “hurt” a lot. Here I can only suggest that what the theory suggests is that we have a deep subconscious master plan to get “back to the good times.” We will charge forward wanting and hoping for love and connection, but will then “test” the environment, the desired object” to see if they or the environment is safe. I say often too, it is “just” that what happens is that old memories of the bad times, of the old hurt of pain and abandonment come back. The feelings of fear of more loss, the feelings of shame and distress return and they are too much and we either runway into a pit of self-hate and blame and often addiction or we strike back.

That is, each human is innately “healthy” due to innate “interest.” That is, we are born with the absolute biological need to connect with other people through “interest.” That is this is not the Freudian sex drive. This is “I am interested in you.” This is our healthy state. We can never lose this except in extreme cases ( This is what I call the most damaged of us such as Sadam Hussien. His mother tried to abort him and he knew this!). So we subconsciously are trying always to recover this primary interest even though in any given family, we might have learned many, many rules that teach us that to connect is not healthy or is dangerous. Again, we learn the dysfunctional rules that connecting is not healthy and is dangerous. This causes great internal conflict as these thoughts and feelings are always fighting our biological nature to connect and to be healthy.