Blogging on Good Therapy

A GoodTherapy.org Featured Column written by Cedar Barstow, M.Ed., C.H.T.

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“Altruism is a natural expression of human development and a healing force in society…Caring coupled with imagination and enterprise is the essence of creative altruism. If we ignore our capacity for compassion and care, we diminish the texture of our lives, our ability to help others heal and grow, and our collective potentials for social healing. By opening ourselves to the reality of shared being, we enhance the wonder and richness of the world and liberate the creative and constructive energies of the human heart, mind, and spirit.” —Tom Hurley

Karen Armstrong adds to her statement about the need for an ethic of compassion: “The early prophets did not preach the discipline of empathy because it sounded edifying, but because experience showed that it worked. They discovered that greed and selfishness were the cause of our personal misery. When we gave them up, we were happier. Egotism imprisoned us in an inferior version of ourselves and impeded our enlightenment.” Fascinatingly, recent neurological research by Moll and Jordan Grafman has shown that taking action in the best interests of others is coded in the brain. In a study in which they scanned the “brains of volunteers as they were asked to think about a scenario involving either donating a sum of money to charity or keeping it for themselves,” the results showed that “when the volunteers placed the interests of others before their own, the generosity activated a primitive part of the brain that usually lights up in response to food or sex. Altruism, the experiment suggested, was not a superior moral faculty that suppresses basic selfish urges, but rather was basic to the brain, hard-wired and pleasurable.” (Moll and Jordan Grafman are neuroscientists at the National Institutes of Health. Quote is from an article by Shankar Vedantam, The Washington Post, May 28, 2007.) There is an surviving and thriving impulse and advantage for those who develop and use their capacities for social intelligence. This social intelligence is accessed through the social engagement nervous system referred to on page 91 of Right Use of Power: The Heart of Ethics.

Compassion, not selectively for those who are similar—for that is easy—but for those who are different, even ‘enemies,’ is what brings, not only greater happiness and spiritual development, but also peaceful relations and the sustaining prosperity that comes from mutual aid. Compassion for all simply works better than aggression. Right use of power comes from compassion for all, rather than from fearful aggression. Because it feels good, because it makes us happier, because it improves relationships, because it makes the world a better place—for all these reasons, we need to support the soul development of compassion for all, including ourselves.

Story: My psychotherapy client sat down, took a moment and said, “I don’t think there’s anything to work on today.” “Maybe so. Why don’t you take a little time quietly with yourself and see if your unconscious offers something up to us out of the inner space you create, and if not, you could just leave for today.” After about 5 minutes, Margie said, “There is something kind of peeking out. It’s an impulse to do something to help on a world level.” “That sounds like health. You’ve been healing and empowering yourself. The desire for altruism is an organic thing. What’s it like when you experience this impulse peeking out?” “It’s like I feel like a child…very small, looking up at all these big, powerful people in high government positions.” “Overwhelmed and insignificant?” “Yes, and very naïve. Like, I’ve been in such a small little world, isolated. I guess I’ve been trying to keep my life manageable and safe.” “So you’re scared when you open up to a larger world.” “Yes, and then I have all these questions….How do I find reliable sources of information…I’m so uninformed. How do I not get overwhelmed by all the pain and disasters? How do I find some way to help that would be effective and not too painful or draining?” “Lots of good questions.” “Too big, I can’t sustain this impulse…it just goes away.”

How do we help our clients and ourselves channel the natural impulse for altruism? How do we help them discover that service is a primary source of contentment and meaning? What is the curriculum for the soul work of learning compassion? Karen Armstrong’s curriculum is simple. She tells a story: “Rabbi Hillel, the older contemporary of Jesus, taught the golden rule in a particularly emphatic way. One day a heathen asked him to sum up the whole of Jewish teaching while standing on one leg. Hillel stood on one leg and replied: “that which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the Torah; the rest is commentary; go and learn it!” The practice of right use of power and influence goes beyond the treatment room. This is ethics as world service.

©Copyright 2007 Cedar Barstow, M.Ed., C.H.T. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact Cedar and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 29th, 2008 at 4:00 am and is filed under Ethics, Right Use of Power, The Art & Practice of Psychotherapy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.