Richard Lloyd Jones: It was Freud who first opened to us the rich and complex world of the human psyche. There have been many additions since, some of it useful, like Jung's Association of Ideas, some of it next to useless, like Skinner's insistence that we can be programmed like pigeons. Now, through the work of Norberto Keppe, there's a lot of light illuminating the murky corners of the human mind.
I'm Richard Lloyd Jones, and we're going to correct psychology today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. Recently, I had a podcast listener asking me about doing trilogical analysis by phone. He said he'd been looking around in his hometown for someone to help him analyze some long-standing issues in his life, but, quote, just never found one that was so in tune with what you're saying in your podcast, end of quote.
This is not an uncommon response to Keppe's work, actually. When I first came to Brazil, I was struck by the depth and optimism of Analytical Trilogy. Different from most psychological schools of thought that try to have you understand your problems by looking at the impact of significant events in your past, or exploring the elaborate coping strategies that you erect to get what is missing in your life, Analytical Trilogy cuts to the core problem. How we reject or deny or even destroy our essential nature, throwing the blame on these other things.
There's a strong philosophical base to Trilogy that allows a trilogical analyst, and there are a number of them down here in Brazil, to reach the core of the problem. The first base, all sickness, all neurosis, all anxiety, is evidence of something we are doing against life. This could be an attitude, a lifestyle, a way of seeing the world, but something is out of whack in our approach to life.
This is more profound than it may appear at first glance because it supposes that reality is healthy, good, beautiful by itself. It is this dialectic between this reality and our rejection or denial of it that is at the basis of Keppian analysis. I've asked Alexandre Frascari to join me again to explore this fascinating topic. Alex, I could start with a quote from Keppe's wonderful book, which you've been studying a lot lately, from Sigmund Freud to Viktor Frankl, Integral Psychoanalysis.
Right at the beginning of this book, he says, Up to now, all processes of psychotherapy have not been psychological. Psychoanalysis itself, whether orthodox or not, is more than anything else a biological, organic treatment. Not to mention the other techniques, such as Rogerian, transactional analysis, psychodrama, behaviorism, which are more sociotherapeutic. What's the relevance
Alexandre Frascari: of all this to Keppe? Well, this is something interesting because all the psychological orientations, they don't address the psychological problem because they consider the psychological part as a consequence, as a victim of these biological factors and social factors.
For example, we can be in a state of anxiety because of some hormones or secretions of our brain, for example. Or we can have problems with our work, with our family that are causing a kind of stress, and that's why we have psychological problems. Right, because
Richard: of the things outside of the human being. Exactly. Well, in the case of chemicals, it's inside, but it's something that's like physical and not related to the attitude or the behavior of the person.
Alexandre: Yes, as if our psychological life was a consequence of these factors, a victim of them, and not the cause of them. So how does
Richard: Keppe see this, Danny? How would you summarize his view of human problems and neurosis?
Alexandre: Well, one point is that our problems, the origin of our problems is inside ourselves. We cannot, for example, it's not possible to be sick because of external factors.
For example, we cannot be sick because of something that we don't know. We are sick when we deny something that we know. And this is a psychological attitude that we have.
Richard: Keppe calls this the difference between an unconscious and inconscientization. Where Freud believed that we had this unconscious part of ourselves that we had no control over, that we were born with, that was full of these bad intentions or indecent desires, mostly sexual. Whereas Keppe sees that the problem is that we have something that we don't want to see.
We have inconscientized something. Talk a little bit about Keppe's distinction here. Well, Keppe
Alexandre: I think is the only one that puts our will as the source of our problems, the choices that we may have. So the unconscious, as Cappie says, is something that we create and not something natural that we are born with and that we are victims of, okay? So in one sense, this is a more optimistic view of human beings because if, as Freudians see, that we are a victim of our unconscious, that we have no control of it, we can't do nothing.
We are like doomed to be a victim or to suffer because of it. But for Keppe, when he says that our will is the center, is the acceptance of reality that makes us sane and the denial of reality that makes us sick, he puts lots of the responsibility for our sanity in our hands. So in this sense it's much more optimistic because it shows the person that the person can solve his problems through conscientization.
Richard: Yes, if we have a desire, a will, a desire to do something that's bad for us we can treat that, we can become conscious of that and see where we're going wrong. Whereas if that's a natural part of ourselves,
Alexandre: there's nothing we can do. Exactly. And this is one point interesting because when we perceive a problem that we have, many times we think, well, now what I'm going to do about it?
And Kempis says, no, the thing is, first you have to perceive that you are like that. Because the idea of what I'm going to do is already a mechanism of defense, It's a way of escaping of this consciousness. In fact, what you are saying is, how am I going to escape from this consciousness and not how am I going to solve the problem?
Because the person knows in his inner self all reality, so he knows what he has to do. The person knows what he has to do to be good. He knows what he has to do to help other people. So if he doesn't do he has to perceive why. For example the big envy that he has, the not acceptance of reality that he has.
I've been working
Richard: with a student in public speaking recently and she's been dealing a lot with her fear of speaking in public. And she's terrified of speaking in public. And I've been helping her to see that like underneath this, is actually a resistance to doing something that's good. Because if she, she's a very charismatic person, very knowledgeable in her field, but she resists sort of sharing that knowledge with others, which is what would happen in a public speaking situation.
So, Alex, she's like, doesn't want to see that she doesn't want to help other people. She doesn't want to express herself, actually. That's what's called envy. It's called envy, yes. Talk a bit about how you see this in relationship to Keppe's work. Well, I
Alexandre: think an interesting point is that we are like sane in the sense that we have enormous capacities. We can do, all of us could be a genius.
So why are we not genius? Why aren't we? Good question. It means that in our structure we have all access to reality. We were created to be like transcendental beings, more than material beings. And what we do when we deny, we reject this world, we decay. So the thing is that we are not in a process of evolution, as many people like to think.
In fact, we are in a state of big decadence. We are much inferior to what we should be. And the main point of that is because our psychopathology is not conscientized. So the process
Richard: of conscientizing, in Keppe's language, of conscientizing these attitudes against reality, against our being, Just this process returns us more to reality, to more of this potential we have inside us.
Alexandre: We know, we have contact. Consciousness is something that exists either we like it or not. We cannot destroy it. So it is always present in our inner self. Otherwise we would never be anxious, for example. So why are we anxious? Anxious for the psychological words is the same as a fever for the biological. When you have a fever, it's a sign that you have some problem in your organism.
And when you are anxious, it's because you have some ideas, some feelings that are not according to your real self. And because of the fact that we are linked to consciousness, we perceive that these ideas, these feelings are wrong. So we feel anxious. And if you follow normal psychotherapies, for example, or these orientations that are more exteriorized, they would make you, for example, take a drug to cover the symptom.
But then you don't have the capacity to perceive it anymore. So your problem will increase. Or they
Richard: will encourage you to project the problem outside, right? The reason I'm like this is because of my genetics or because of my family or because of my boss or the traffic? Well,
Alexandre: many, many therapies, they, in fact, they nourish the problem that we have. Because our problems is exactly that we don't want contact with our inner self.
We want to put our problems outside us so we can feel as a victim of them. So when a psychotherapy nourishes this idea in fact what it's doing is to nourish the pathology of the person. And why this happens? Because most of the psychotherapists they also have this problem so they make a pact, a kind of pact with the client and defend the problem for the client.
So the correct, the only true therapy is the therapy that makes you perceive what is going on inside yourself. So another point that I think is interesting that we should talk about is that everybody wants to be happy. So why, why we want to be happy, how, how we know that we are not happy? We only know that because we have this contact with this consciousness, we have the contact with reality.
So for example when you think in a society that is called utopic, why do you think that this society may exist? Because in your inner self you, you know that this is how society should be. So the desire that we have to be happy or to have a fair society is a sign that we have contact all the time with this consciousness and that we could call God.
But the mistake that we normally do is that we try to reach this happiness using external factors, using, for example, our sensorial life. We want to reach happiness through food, through money, through sex, for example. So we think that if we have a lot of money, then we'd be happy. If we have a lot of sex then this will make us happy but in fact as these are external factors if the person is too much focused on these things they will get very anguished.
So many people say well I try a lot to be happy but I feel this anguish inside exactly because of this problem. I noticed
Richard: this actually when I travel back to North America because this is a culture very rich culture in terms of these material things you're talking about, in terms of, you know, the roads have no holes in them. People have a relatively high standard of living, much different from what we experience here in Brazil.
And I experience this very much, that people have everything on that level, but inside there's a feeling of desperation, like, I'm still not happy. Why? I should be happy. I have everything. So it's like, as you said, an anguish. Oh, my God. And Keppe says it this way. He says that Keppe talks about the wrong orientation that exists in society today that tries to lead the human being to happiness through things that are inferior to him.
Sex, power, money. But we can only be happy if we're in contact with life that comes from our inner self. And this is the same life that governs the universe. And this is a big difference in Keppe's work. Can you talk a little bit more
Alexandre: about that? One thing that we perceive is, for example, that people that work with marketing, they are specialists in using our psychopathology to sell things.
So what you see on TV, on the media, for example, in the magazines, is exactly this idea. They want to sell this idea that you need these material things to be happy. So they exploited the psychological problems that we have. So we see that for example these big companies that use a lot this marketing stuff their intent is not to make us happy, it's just to sell their things.
So in this sense we are very much harmed because of the kind of society that we live in.
Richard: Yeah we won't make much money as marketers if we're trying to sell the qualities the person has inside right. We have to try to sell some ideal, some dream, some expectation, some desire that the person has, that's how we have to sell. If we try to sell a quality the person already has inside the person doesn't need to buy that you know because they already have it.
So marketers are, it's a very
Alexandre: interesting point, but they work for this consumist idea. You have to consume because this is a need of the capitalist system. If you don't consume the capitalist system will destroy itself so they use marketing for that purpose. Keppe said one of the
Richard: recently one of the secrets to living well was to always desire less not more. And I remember talking to a friend of mine in the United States about that. And my friend said well there, there goes, there goes the whole economic system you know if you always desire less not more.
Can we come back to this psychological aspect inside the unit, is that the place to go next Alex?
Alexandre: One thing that I've kept did that was very interesting is that he unified all the fields. For example what is called a scene in theology is the same thing that what is called a syllogism in philosophy or pathology in science. So a sin or syllogism or a pathology they are the same thing.
So is the, the problems that we have with different names, each field calls this a different name and the, the solution for all of these problems that are the same problem is conscientization. So one thing that Capity that's very important is that he not only he pointed at the problems but he also says how to solve these problems. He created a mechanism, a therapy that can lead person to conscientization.
And if we think in this uh in the in the society for example how can we develop our society, how, how can we reach this utopian society that we know it exists? For example, the basis of society should be arts and not money, not mathematics, let's say, as we are today. Because I think Aristotle put mathematics as the path to go from the physical to the transcendental world.
And this is a big mistake. Because if you see today, mathematics only serves the economic system. That is very pathological. So the basis for a true society would be arts. Feeling. Feelings, exactly. Because if the person are in contact with arts, he has more consciousness also about himself. When you are in contact with beauty, you have more consciousness about ugliness. So when the basis of society is arts, we will have more possibilities to have more consciousness also.
So I think that conscientization, arts, are the way to reach the society that everybody knows that exists and we don't know how to get there. And the route
Richard: to conscientization is what, Alex? Because most people listening to this program have no experience of Kepien analysis. And so conscientization is, how can you explain that for people who are listening to this program who don't understand?
Yeah, about how Keppe works in
Alexandre: this area. There is a little, a short case of analysis that maybe is interesting that shows how is this vision of Keppe. I think this is from the book Healing Through Consciousness of Dr. Cláudia Pacheco. A person that has an allergy. The analyst would ask the person, what do you associate this allergy? This is... What do you associate this allergy with?
Yes. When you think of allergy, what comes to your mind? Because if you ask the person directly, he'll never say the truth. So the analyst has a technique of association of ideas to pass through the censorship barrier. So he's asking, what do you associate this allergy with? And the person associated to rejection. And the dust, what do you associate the dust with?
I associate the dust with impurity. So, the way Keppe analyzes this is the following. You are saying through this that you reject all the consciousness of your impurities. You created an idea of sanity and perfection about yourself, which you are terribly afraid of losing. So, anytime
Richard: the person is in a situation where they have to perceive this symbolized by the dust they will have a reaction to it because they don't want to see yes the
Alexandre: deeper part inside.
So what the, the person does with his body, the rejection to this dust is the same thing that the person does with the problems he has in life. If he has a problem with his marriage for example he will reject this course he want, doesn't want to deal with the problem. So you see that it's a rejection of the perception of the problem.
It's interesting because one person here that we know, she has an allergy of dust. And one time she went to see a movie and there were lots of horses running on the film with a lot of dust and she had a crisis of allergies. She had
Richard: an asthma attack
Alexandre: in the movie theater, just from the insinuation of
the dust. In Keppe's book that you've been studying a lot called From Sigmund Freud to Viktor Frankl, Integral Psychoanalysis, he does some analysis in here, some critique, if you will,
Richard: of other forms of psychotherapy, including transactional analysis, Rogerian psychology, Gestalt, etc.
In Rogerian therapy, as an example of an analysis from a Rogerian analyst, and then how he would look at it through trilogical therapy. And this might be interesting for us to consider a second. For example, there's a woman here talking about her marriage. And she says, I've been married one year. My husband's a law student. He's fundamentally an unemotional person. There's a lack of understanding between us.
And the psychotherapist says, so it does not fully satisfy you now. She says, no, it's not a satisfactory relationship, but I believe that there will be many possibilities to turn it into a satisfactory one. And the Rogerian psychotherapist says, what's your husband like? Well, he isn't very emotional. I am, however. I feel he's very reserved. It took him quite a while before he showed any open affection towards me in our everyday relationship.
I'm beginning to feel that maybe I married for economic reasons, because I need this deep affectionate support, and I don't have that. The psychotherapist says, this sensation is really disturbing to you. It really is disturbing and it brings a deep sense of guilt because I brought up to believe that one should not think such things of one's husband. And so Rogers and many psychotherapists, they totally disconsider, it's not even a word, but they don't consider the fact that the client is speaking about herself, not about her husband.
That,
Alexandre: I think, is one of the major discoveries of Keppe, is the question of interiorization. Because every situation that you talk about, you are talking about yourself. When she talks about her husband, she's talking about herself. So Keppe developed this technique to make the person see himself through the others. Because it's impossible for us to see ourselves. We need a mirror, we have to look in a mirror to see ourselves and this mirror are the situations, social situations that we live, that we pass through.
So in
Richard: this case of this client what she's saying is that she is very reserved emotionally towards herself. That she relates very little with her own feelings, her own affectionate support. She doesn't have any of that within herself thinking that the problem comes from the husband.
Alexandre: She's projecting her problem on her husband. She sees he as the problem because of her censorship.
She doesn't want to see that in herself. So she put this outside.
Richard: As Keppe insists over and over in his wonderful work, we are not victims of an unconscious, but of our wish to inconscientize what we don't want to see. An important distinction. Write me anytime, rich at richjonesvoice.com for any more clarification. This is Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.
