I've argued in The Shape of Joy that our pursuit of mental health involves a relationship with transcendence. This conclusion is supported by a wealth of empirical evidence from the field of positive psychology. The relationship between faith and mental health. The role of virtue. Meaning in life. The pursuit of eudaemonia--the good life--over hedonic pleasure and happiness.
Critical to all this is the question of value, existential, cosmic, and ontological significances and the degree to which life participates in the true, the beautiful, and the good. The illustration I gave of this from the positive psychology research is the construct called "mattering," the conviction that your life possesses inherent significance and worth. James Mumford's essay "Therapy Beyond Good and Evil" expanded that point for us, bringing in a moral dimension. It's not just that I matter, but that everyone matters. Mattering isn't just a private mental health issue, an inner neurotic struggle, but addresses us with moral duties and obligations. Because people matter, because they have value, I owe them recognition and respect. Due to ontic value, I am embedded within a moral matrix where I must navigate the good. Life is inexorability implicated in righteousness. That's precisely why we say, "Do the next right thing." Mumford's point is that a therapy that denies or ignores this aspect of life, its moral content and value-ladenness, will be poorly equipped to support our deep flourishing.
By "deep flourishing" I mean eudaemonic well-being over hedonic pleasure. Again, this contrast is a fruit of positive psychology. Critical, though, to achieving "the good live" are virtues. Here again we find ourselves embedded in a matrix of value. Virtues aim us toward the true, the beautiful, and the good. Consequently, if therapy wants to do more than provide palliative care for the malaise of modern life it has to push the vision of the client beyond the hedonic horizon of neoliberal desires. Asking a client "What do you want?" or "Are you happy?" or "What are your goals?" might not be sufficient. If the client is suffering from value sickness their answers may be bounded by the hedonic. Clients may need to be nudged to consider the virtuous, the eudaemonic, and the good. Moral pedagogy may be warrented.
One way this might be accomplished is asking clients to contrast their resume virtues with their eulogy virtues. David Brooks has a nice little TED talk about this. To be sure, such an exercise doesn't wholly escape the point James Mumford makes about us "choosing our own" values. But compare Brooks' suggestion to the "values clarification exercise" Mumford was criticizing. The values clarification exercise was a blank slate, and that open-endedness, you'll recall, pulled in a lot of value-impoverished answers. By contrast, having clients list and contrast their resume and eulogy virtues directs attention toward a vision of the good life. When I've done the resume/eulogy exercise with people the things that make it onto the eulogy list are things like, "I want to be known as a kind and loving person," "I want to be a good mother," "I want to make difference in the lives of others." Answers like these embed us in a eudaemonic vision of life, a good life, from which a conversation about virtue naturally flows. What kind of person do you need to become if you want to be known as kind and loving? What kind of person do you need to become if you want to be a good mother, father, or friend? What kind of person do you need to become if you want to make a difference in the lives of others? Pondering questions like these push us away from neoliberal visions of flourishing where I pursue my own self-interested desires in "freedom from" others.
As I mentioned in the last post, there are practical and ethical issues that therapists face should they want to bring values into the therapeutic context. I'm not suggesting that therapists impose or force their values onto their clients. Or that religious therapists become crypto-evangelists. What I am suggesting is that therapists can "thicken the soup" of a client's exploration of flourishing. An open-ended values clarification exercise can be "thickened" by a eulogy virtue exercise, with subsequent conversations about the virtues needed to reach that vision of a good life. I think we can also overtly assert the cosmic mattering of clients, that we listen to them and care for them not because we're being "nice" or because "we have to" because "we're their therapist." Beyond niceness and the therapeutic contract, we owe them respect and care because of their intrinsic worth, because it's the good and right thing to do, regardless. And if that's true for me, it's also true for others. And by making this value overt and explicit we naturally find ourselves in a moral conversation with our clients. What do we owe each other by way of respect and care? Other-concern takes its place alongside self-interest.
In addition, if other-concern is given a greater foothold in mental health contexts then guilt and shame will have to undergo some therapeutic rehabilitation. This is a point I also discuss in The Shape of Joy in citing research on mindfulness and social repair. Specifically, guilt and shame are moral emotions that prompt social repair--taking responsibility, saying you're sorry, making amends, and fixing the things we break in relationships. Mindfulness is a powerful tool in letting go of negative emotions, emotions like shame and guilt. Consequently, research has shown that when mindfulness is used to let go of shame and guilt people are less likely to engage in social repair. Simply put, as a self-care tool mindfulness promotes hedonic well-being, it makes me "happier," but can struggle to promote eudaemonic well-being, living a good life. Mindfulness might, in some instances, erode virtues, like courage and responsibility, necessary for the achievement of our eulogy virtues, like being a kind and loving person or a good friend and parent. I might not like fixing things I break in relationship, it might not be what I "want" to do nor will it make me "happy." But social repair is the right thing to do and it will, over the long run, lead to the flourishing of my relationships. Social repair will promote my deeper flourishing.
Which brings me to the final posts of this series, how therapists generally assume they are being value-neutral and non-judgmental. I've pushed back on this view, suggesting that therapists are often trafficking in the values of neoliberalism. If so, therapy is inherently engaged in moral formation. Values are always being communicated and inculcated. And while a therapist might not feel comfortable in sharing their own values with a client, they at least can become alert to how an implicit neoliberal vision of flourishing is affecting their interactions with a client. As I've shared, the simple choice between the questions you pose to a client implicitly nudges them toward a value-laden vision of flourishing, one way or the other. "What do you want?" is a very different question from "What is life asking of you?" In their questioning, therapists implicitly (or explicitly) select the horizon of flourishing. That horizon could be hedonic or eudemonic. That horizon can aim at happiness or goodness. Resume or eulogy. Desire or virtue. And there is no avoiding this. There is no non-judgmental line of questioning. Every word and moment of silence from the therapist brings some values into view and hides others. And if it's true that flourishing is achieved in relation to transcendence, then therapists can be more intentional in bringing that horizon of value into view. Mattering. Other-concern. Goodness. Virtue. Morality.
Deep flourishing.
