I have not ever taken insurance when working in my own practice and in 2001 I
stopped forever working for any agency that does take insurance.
Standard psychiatric standards in many teaching centers using a computerized
questionnaire before each meeting with a psychiatrist, then the patient sees
the therapist after which another questionnaire is administered and based on
these tests the doctors prescribes meds! Yikes!
Liz Jelinek, PhD
On Jun 17, 2017, at 5:00 AM, 'Dan Booth Cohen, PhD' danboothcohen@xxxxxxxxx
[ConstellationTalk] <ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Dear Vinay –
Thanks for sharing this beautiful quote from Jung. Here in the US, the
practice of psychiatry and psychotherapy couldn’t be further from acceptance
of the patient as they are. Only a small fraction of practitioners here are
able to completely avoid taking insurance payments. To participate in the
health insurance system, the practitioner must begin with a diagnosis of a
treatable condition. The DSM V, the bible of mental health disorders, is a
compilation of condemnation. Every diagnosis is a judgement of moral failure
because the standard of mental health is essentially a standard of moral
rightness.
Is it is possible to follow Jung’s call for a stance of “unprejudiced
objectivity” while engaging in the practice of mental disorder diagnosis and
treatment? As one who only offers Constellations and does not take any form
of insurance, I find the diagnostic labels clinically useless and instruments
of condemnation.
Dan
From: ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] ;
Sent: Tuesday, June 13, 2017 6:28 PM
To: ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [ConstellationTalk] Accepting what is
I wanted to share with you all a beautiful quote by Jung:
People forget that even doctors have moral scruples, and that certain
patient’s confessions are hard even for a doctor to swallow. Yet the patient
does not feel himself accepted unless the very worst in him is accepted too.
No one can bring this about by mere words; it comes only through reflection
and through the doctor’s attitude towards himself and his own dark side. If
the doctor wants to guide another, or even accompany him a step of the way,
he must feel with that person’s psyche. He never feels it when he passes
judgment. Whether he puts his judgments into words or keeps them to himself
makes not the slightest difference.
To take the opposite position and to agree with the patient offhand is also
of no use but estranges him as much as condemnation. Feeling comes only
through unprejudiced objectivity. This sounds almost like a scientific
precept, and it could be confused with a purely intellectual, abstract
attitude of mind. But what I mean is something quite different.
It is a human quality, a kind of deep respect for the facts, for the man who
suffers from them, and for the riddle of such a man’s life. The truly
religious person has this attitude. He knows that God has brought all sorts
of strange and inconceivable things to pass and seeks in the most curious
ways to enter a man’s heart. He therefore senses in everything the unseen
presence of the divine will.
This is what I mean by “unprejudiced objectivity.” It is a moral achievement
on the part of the doctor, who ought not to let himself be repelled by
sickness and corruption. We cannot change anything unless we accept it.
Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses. I am the oppressor of the
person I condemn, not his friend and fellow-sufferer. I do not in the least
mean to say that we must never pass judgment when we desire to help and
improve. But if the doctor wishes to help a human being he must be able to
accept him as he is. And he can do this in reality only when he has already
seen and accepted himself as he is.
Perhaps this sounds very simple, but simple things are always the most
difficult. In actual life it requires the greatest art to be simple, and so
acceptance of oneself is the essence of the moral problem and the acid test
of one’s whole outlook on life.
That I feed the beggar, that I forgive an insult, that I love my enemy in the
name of Christ, all these are undoubtedly great virtues. What I do unto the
least o’ my brethren, that I do unto Christ.
But what if I should discover that the least amongst them all, the poorest of
all beggars, the most impudent of all offenders, yeah, the very fiend
himself, that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of the
alms of my own kindness, that I myself am the enemy who must be loved. What
then?
Then, as a rule, the whole truth of Christianity is reversed: there is then
no more talk of love and long-suffering; we say to the brother within us
“Raca,” and condemn and rage against ourselves. We hide him from the world,
we deny ever having met this least among the lowly in ourselves, and had it
been God himself who drew near to us in this despicable form, we should have
denied him a thousand times before a single cock had crowed.
Anyone who uses modern psychology to look behind the scene not only of his
patients’ lives, but more especially of his own life—and the modern
psychotherapist must do this if he is not to be merely an unconscious
fraud—will admit that to accept himself in all his wretchedness is the
hardest of tasks, and one which it is almost impossible to fulfill.
The very thought can make us sweat with fear. We are therefore only too
delighted to choose, without a moment’s hesitation, the complicated course of
remaining in ignorance about ourselves while busying ourselves with other
people and their troubles and sins. This activity lends us a perceptible air
of virtue, by means of which we benevolently deceive ourselves and others.
God be praised, we have escaped from ourselves at last!
There are countless people who can do this with impunity, but not everyone
can, and these few break down on the road to their Damascus and succumb to a
neurosis. How can I help these people if I myself am a fugitive, and perhaps
also suffer from the morbus sacer of a neurosis? Only he who has fully
accepted himself has “unprejudiced objectivity.”
Collected Works of C.G. Jung: The First Complete English Edition
p519-520
