Interview with Prof. Dr. Emmy Van Deurzen - Pt. i

---FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY--- Hello everybody, I'm Aisyah. I'm from Multimedia University, from Faculty of Creative Multimedia- and it’s a great pleasure to be having Prof. Dr. Emmy van Deurzen with me now in Malaysia. Alright. Here’s a little introduction about Professor. Prof. Dr. Emmy van Deurzen is a philosopher and existential psychotherapist. She is based in London.. Am I right? She has written many books including Existential Counselling and Psychotherapy in Practice, which was a best-selling book and it was printed twice in 2002 and 2011—12. What is your current job position? What is my position? Yeah, your current job position. I am the Principal of the New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling in London which is like the most eminent training institution for Existential Therapy in the UK and I also run my private practice called Dilemma Consultancy in Sheffield and in London. Wow—right. Okay, so what is your expertise? My expertise is in Existential Psychotherapy and I started out as a philosopher and then I started working in psychiatric hospitals. And I used to use philosophical ideas to work with people, mainly people with psychosis or with autism and I realised that I needed to get some further expertise and I went back to university and did another first degree and another master’s degree in Clinical Psychology – and then I trained in psychotherapy and then I wanted to bring those two backgrounds together: the philosophy and the psychology. So, at that point, I started searching for other people who had done this, and discovered about the work of R. D. Laing who was a radical psychiatrist in London. Met some people who worked with him, was in . . . work with him . . . in 1977, moved to London from France where I had been, to start working in that movement and then from there, developed my own way of working with people and started writing and teaching. So, how many years of experience do you have in the field? I started working as a psychotherapist in 1972 and got a full-time job in 1973 so that's exactly 40 years. 40 years. Yeah. It's quite a long time. It is quite a long time. It is a long time. What is Existential Therapy to you? Right. So Existential Psychotherapy is a method of helping people to think about their lives and to learn to think much more clearly about their lives for themselves rather than the psychotherapist making interpretations from a theoretical model. So it's about giving philosophical tools to people to really take charge of their lives and really understand where they are going wrong and start experimenting with living in different ways and learning to make choices more carefully for themselves rather than just, kind of, going wrong and thinking there is some psychological problem. It's very much a problem in living and, you know, people need to be given an understanding of what life is all about so that they can get it more right. What is the objective of Existential Therapy? That's a difficult question, because it's different for every person. So, for some people, the objective would be to just get to know themselves better. For other people, it would be to get more clarity about life. For other people, it would be to understand what relationships are all about and to get better at relating to other people, maybe to their parents, maybe to their partners, maybe to their siblings, maybe to their colleagues.. It doesn't matter. And yet, for other people, it might be dealing with a particular crisis. So, people often come to Existential Therapy when they've had— what is often referred to as an "existential crisis". So that happens to teenagers a lot where they have an identity crisis. It happens to people in their early 20s when they start wondering where do they fit into world. It happens when people settled down and have children and they realised their whole lives have changed around. It happens in midlife, in the 40s when, you know, people have lived in a particular way— some catastrophe happened, a crisis happened, and they got to rethink it all from scratch. And then again, it happens when people retire from work or after menopause, or when the children leave home to go to university, or marry themselves. And it's happened obviously in old age when people start falling ill and they realised death is near and they start to rethink what they've done with their lives. So for all of these different situations, it's a very different form of therapy and it's a different conversation that you have with the client. You can't just import a theoretical model and apply it, you know, really nearly in the same way to everybody. You've got to be understanding of different life situations and what is needed for that particular person. So there are many different ways to deal with different clients. What are the talking methods that you use in Existential Therapy? Well, obviously, the main thing is that there is a dialogue. So it's not somebody lying on a couch and just talking and then the analyst making interpretations. Nor is it like a cognitive behavioural therapy where it's much more prescriptive and people are given homework. It's a conversation, it's a dialogue, in which, you know, ideas are being considered and looked at and ideas are being challenged in the client, you know. It's--it's, really how you think it works— "What about this?". So it's quite a challenging conversation, which is a dialogue which means two people working through an issue towards a greater clarity. But then, there are lots and lots of other methods that you use as well and that is different for different Existential Therapist. So, I have personally developed a whole range of methods which.. I--I don't want to, you know, go into all of that unless you want to ask me more about that. But perhaps, one of the very important things is the realisation that life is often about paradox and that when people have a dilemma or conflict or difficulty and they're kind of stuck with it, it's often because they don't realise that life is not one thing or another. It is both things at the same time, and one has to learn to sort of bring those opposites together and when we do that in a-- in a, kind of elegant way, we--we start to see that there is a kind of dialectical movement in life and to accept the contradictions of life and work with both ends of the spectrum. Makes it much easier to find the energy to kind of solve your problems. So it's very much about that: understanding how a person can learn to solve any problems for themselves. Not just the problem they've come with on this particular occasion, but any problem. You know, life is full of problems. Everyday there are new problems. Life is made up of problems. Yes exactly, it's inevitable isn't it? So it is about giving people a kind of constructive attitude towards that and completely welcome that idea— that, everyday is problem-solving and everyday is about, sort of, meeting the challenges of life and making something of that. That's really interesting. When it comes to learning theories, do you implement learning theories, for example Constructivism, or Conditioning, Humanism, et cetera in Existential Therapy? Hmm. Well Existential Therapy allows for a kind of multiplicity of methods. So, there are people who consider it to be an integrative method and that would mean that you could bring some learning theory in and you could bring in some cognitive ideas. There are Existential Therapists who are really constructivists anyway. So—and there are many who are person-centered, who use some Gestalt theory as well. So many combinations can be made - but you don't have to, because the philosophical method is quite enough in its own right and I am a bit of a purist, so I don't like to bring in too many of those different approaches but then I'm not against it either. And when I supervise other people or when I teach my own students, I make sure they get to learn all those different methods because it's very important to be broadly based and to not be too narrow when you work with somebody. Sometimes it's very useful to have those tools available. When it comes to media or multimedia technology, what type of media or technology have you used in your Existential Therapy sessions? Well--I've used a lot of different media because in 1997 or 8, we decided that the University of Sheffield - where I was Honorary Professor at that time, that we should really meet the new technologies in a very, sort of, favourable way. We applied for some European grants, and we got 3 or 4 even in a row . . . to establish online psychotherapy training. Now a lot of people thought it was crazy because psychotherapy is obviously about meeting person to person. So the whole idea of doing that online was a bit of an anathema to most people But we did a lot of research on this and we discovered that actually students and also clients in therapy and also supervisees find it easier when they're in a chat room - a protected chatroom, not a public one, um, to speak their minds. Because they actually feel that when they're sitting in front of their computers, it's like on their own and they can say anything they like. So they're much more liberated and they're much more, um, able to go into the depth. So it becomes much more quickly like a psychotherapy because it actually feels very private to them. So we did this research, we showed that self-disclosure is significantly higher in online teaching than it is in face-to-face teaching - and that the satisfaction of people in what they've learnt and what they learn in an online therapy session is actually at least as good or better than in face-to-face, which amazed me really because I was quite sceptical to start with. So we do that a lot. We use, um, we use chat rooms, we use forums, we use, um, multimedia another ways we use film clips in our teaching.. We use mobile phones, we use iPad. We kind of try to integrate it all. Yeah. How long is a typical duration of an Existential Therapy session? Fifteen minutes. Pretty much . . . classical set-up. Except that when I work with couples - I do a lot of Existential couples therapy as well. When I worked with couples, I always do double-sessions because the way I work with couples is that I work with each of the partners as if they're having a private session while the other one listens. So I need a double session to do that. So they each work for a half an hour with me with the other listening, not allowed to say anything and then they learn to kind of listen to each other and after that it's much easier for them to understand where that is . . . that really bothers their partner. They get a much clearer idea, they get away from the fighting and they get into the understanding. So those a longer sessions but if it's one-to-one, it's fifteen minutes, and oh yeah, I work with groups as well, and I do that for an hour and a half. So I have a group of eight people who I see weekly and I see them for an hour and a half. So that gives each of them a little bit of a chance to work on their problems each week. How long does it—the session prolong? I mean is it a once-only session or do you have like weekly sessions? Yes. Well that, again. I'm quite flexible about that, so there's some people that might come over from abroad, say, to see me for just one-off session and they might want to book a double session for that sometimes. But that'll be it, and then I might see them later on. Maybe in a Skype session or just have an e-mail exchange with them later on. Or they might join one of my online groups. I’ve created these groups on LinkedIn and Facebook for Existential Therapy and there's some quite intense discussions, so people join that after a while as well. But for people who live in London and who come see me on a more regular basis, again, I leave it open to them. Whether they want to see me for one hour a week, sometimes in a crisis situation, maybe for two hours a week. And otherwise, they might see me fortnightly and when it gets a bit better, they only come once a month. And then when they get more confident, they might come every six months or once a year. But they do like to have a follow-up, because it gives them confidence. It gives them a feeling that there is somebody who is sort of thinking about them and who they can go to for a one-off consultation - who already knows them and so, I like to work in a way where I say to my clients, "It's up to you to decide how often you need to see me and what sort of interactions you want to have, and the sooner you feel able to do it on your own, the better it is." Which is a bit different to what psychotherapy normally does, because normally it says you've got to come once a week for at least two years, or three times a week or in psychoanalysis, even four or five times a week. So it's very different to that. It really depends on the person. Depends on the person. It's the person's decision. It's about freedom. It's about independence. It's about the person taking charge of their lives rather than becoming dependant on me. What are the challenges of Existential Therapy - when it comes to dealing with different people, minds, and whatnot? Well that's an interesting question. I think the main challenge with Existential Therapy is that sometimes clients come to Existential Therapy to philosophise rather than to really look at themselves carefully. So there is a risk that it becomes an intellectual discussion and that is more of a risk if somebody has only been trained as an Existential Therapist. Of course I was trained in Lacanian psychoanalysis and Gestalt therapy and Person . . . . So I have all these other ways of realising that sometimes an intellectual discussion is not . . . very apt. Sometimes it's just about slowing the person down, allowing them to express their emotion, to just be tearful, to just go into themselves or, you know, to regress a little bit and think about their childhood in a more sort of psychoanalytic way. All of those different ways of approaching are important. And I think there is a risk with Existential Therapy that you would reduce it to being too much - about, you know, talking about life and then it becomes too abstract. It's got to stay real. So you mentioned before that you, um— the kind of approaches that you have conducted for Existential Therapy.. You have conducted group sessions, collaborative sessions, couples.. Do you have any other approach that you use in your Existential Therapy? Well of course. I do a lot of teaching. Because as the Principal of the New School, that's really . . . a lot of my time. It's . . . devoted to, so I, um, as a teacher, obviously, I always think that when people start to read about something and study something, they go through a much greater transformation more quickly. They--they, grow much more quickly, than when they just come to therapy. So I'm a great believer in using film, using books, ah— so give people recommendations to read certain things or see certain movies. Or tell me about a book or film that interests them, or the works of art for that matter, that moved them. So to bring in such things, it's very important. The other thing that I do is something that I call "Life Training", so that's for people who are not wanting to have psychotherapy but who do want to find out how they can live better. So they'll come for a one-day workshop with me and during the workshop like that, I will get them to do all kinds of exercises to think about their lives in many different ways, including about what they want to have achieved when they die. What are the unsolved problems in their lives, what are their relationship problems, how are they in relation to their family, what are the issues in the couple they're in - all kinds of things. And-- it's very enjoyable. That's very good for people. Very . . . People are often confused when it comes to therapy and counselling. What are the similarities and differences between therapy and counselling? Okay. If I can add another one, it's 'coaching'. So, coaching is a very specific intervention which is—remain quite at the surface so that it's for people who don't have particular emotional psychological problems but who might have problems at work, or might have problems, usually in relation to their career. Or, you know, real worries about how they interact with their superiors or with their staff at work - and they come with specific problem that they want to deal with. So, it's short-term, it's specific. Counselling, is a little longer term and goes much more into emotions. It's . . . but it won't do is what psychotherapy does which is to go really into the roots of something and really understand all the implications, and therefore, tends to take longer time. Now, of course, some people talk about short-term psychotherapy, but really, short-term psychotherapy is the same as counselling. And solution-focused counselling is really very similar to coaching. So there's a lot of overlaps between all those things. But really, it's about intensity and duration. Do you have anything to add to the answers just now? The counselling, therapy and coaching. Right. Well, just that I think that between those three ways of working, um, there is a lot of development that will happen into the future. In the past, when we only knew about psychoanalysis or psychotherapy, say a century ago, it became . . . very well-to-do people who would linger with it for a very long time. Then, when counselling became more popular, particularly with . . . work in the 40s and 50s, it was applied more to settings like schools and social work. And now with coaching, we can apply things in much more day-to-day situations like in organisations and in businesses. So the facility for people to talk about their problems rather than stew in them or get stagnant with them, it's much, much greater - and there are so many more methods and in education as well, of course, so many more methods to help people with their problems. There are not so much of an interference or demanding or too expensive. It becomes more and more popularised and more democratic, and I think that will make a big change and a big difference to the world in the long term. And of course, I also believe that the Existential approach is particularly important in that, because instead of that kind of processing people from particular perspective, it just open things up for them - and it is much more down-to-earth, and less of an interference. So I have high hopes that people of many different cultures will find that attractive. I might just say this other thing about that, which is that Existential Therapy, of course, because it's open-ended and it's open to different sorts of philosophies, it's very culturally, trans-culturally compatible. So, people from different religious backgrounds or different cultural backgrounds can bend Existential Therapy in a different direction - and they can make it compatible to their beliefs, the local beliefs as it were. And I think that's very important, because a lot of the western methods of psychotherapy were very culturally determined by western concepts and that was quite problematic. You know, the countries in even—for instance, in London, what we found was that some of the cultures that live in London would not benefit from counselling, would not go to counselling services because they felt that really wasn't for them at all. But now, there are lots and lots of different projects from an Existential perspective of people from different cultures have looked at what is needed to make it relevant to that particular setting. So, that will make a big difference too, I think. What is the age range of your clients? Well, that's an interesting one. Because I seem to get clients that are always older than myself, so when I started working in my 20s— well that was obvious, you know, people were in their 30s and 40s, and then they just got older. And now that I'm in my 60s, I very often see people in their 70s or 80s, um, and I actually at the moment very rarely see teenagers, um, I see a lot of people in their 30s or 40s and 50s. But as I said, also a lot of elderly people. But Existential Therapy is relevant to anybody of any age, really. Even to children. T--there's a whole movement of philosophical discussions with children in schools. Children are very philosophical. They ask big questions, you know. "What does it all mean?" you know, "What does it mean to die?" or "What does it mean to be alive?" "What is a human being?" "Why is that?", you know. It's great. They really take to that. These clients.. Do they come to you willingly or have they been referred to you by someone else, maybe like, their own organisations, et cetera? Well they get referred sometimes by other people, obviously. But, no. I only take clients who come willingly as you put it. Um, somebody has got to want to do this work, otherwise there's no point. You can't force freedom on a person. They've got to come and want to have that discussion and they've got to want to look into themselves. It's all about being self-reflective. You can't be self-reflective if somebody forces you to be self-reflective. It requires you to, kind of, want to go there, relax into it and find yourself - and, well, a little bit beyond yourself as well, hopefully. You know, find a sort of bigger connection to the universe to whatever spiritual belief you have as well. It's very important. But you can't force that on a person. They got to want to do it. When it comes to painfully shy or introverted clients, how do you deal with them? Hm. Well, of course, when you're alone with somebody, they're often not quite so painfully shy - and painfully shy people amazingly are actually often people who have tremendous ability for extraversion as well. They're just, afraid or they have been usually very condemned or judged by other people. So, to discover that when they start talking freely to a person who listens to them, and who values them, and who makes them feel they have something to offer - often changes them quite quickly. But, not before they have joined the group. So, clients like that almost always, after I have spent some time in individual therapy with them, I will recommend that they join the group as well. Because they benefit a lot from that. It is . . . always so much you can do in one-to-one sessions. You might find you can be very open with your therapist, but you still then have to translate that into doing it with other people who might not be quite so empathetic, and so understanding, and so kind. So, to do it in a group with seven other people, makes a difference. And when you discover that, you know, obviously you go through moments where there is a challenge where other people maybe don't like you as much as you would like to be liked - but that you can stand up to it and that you can overcome it, and that is still alright - and that's—you don't have to be afraid. And that people, if they judge you, are being corrected - and that's their problem that they have to learn to respect you more. That's terribly reassuring. So people change very quickly. Copyright © 2014 S.N.A. Rahman All rights reserved.