Book Review: Therapeutic Experiencing: The Process of Change

Therapeutic Experiencing: The Process of Change by A. R. Mahrer, 1986. New York: W. W. Norton & Co.

Mahrer's aim in this text is to build on a distillation of experiential therapies, broadly within a humanistic-existential perspective, in order to provide a new method grounded on a single theory. It claims to be a complete training book for people sympathetic to the experiential approach working within a humanistic existential frame, and is intended as a companion book to his 1983 text Experiential Therapy: Basic Practices (New York: Brunner/Mazel).

The text progresses from general principles dealing with the fundamentals of the experiential therapeutic relationship, becoming more specific about theory and methodology through successive chapters. Case studies are used at strategic points to illustrate theory and therapy, and the entire text deals sequentially with beginning, middle and end issues of the experiential therapeutic relationship.

The central theme of the book is the facilitation of the carrying forward of experiencing. For the purposes of illustration, his approach is frequently contrasted with, in Mahrer's view, the traditional 'externalist' strategies of determining a treatment programme to cure a problem. In this endeavour he cites frequent examples of psychoanalytic and cognitive-behavioural therapies, arguing in favour of being rather than doing. As the text thematically develops, Mahrer takes the reader beyond the constructs of empathy, congruence and I-Thou (which in his terms still imply an externalist stance), with almost religious zeal, to a celestial therapeutic plane in which clients' experiencing, experienced by experiencing therapists' as conjoint praxis, is elevated above all else as being the 'central axis of therapeutic change'.

Despite lots of useful thematic insights including, for example, descriptions of the unwitting normative stance of many (external) therapists of different persuasions whose 'doing' task is to spring into line, evidenced by their behaviour rather than their talk (p276), I experienced this as a tedious and irritating book. The problems for me were getting to grips with his central concepts, and trying to understand the existentialist as opposed to humanistic claim for his text.

With regard to my first problem, I don't feel that he defines his constructs very well (or perhaps he defines them adequately within a humanistic discourse?). For example, I'm still not sure after reading the book whether 'experiencing' for Mahrer refers to an event that is mainly visceral and non-reflective, or whether it subsumes reflection and growth, mediated by action and cognitive change.

I'm equally confused by 'carrying forward experiencing' - a phrase he bandies very freely. If he means what I think he means, then the construct is unnecessarily tautological and smacks of false dualisms - either you experience, or you don't.

To uncritically accept the notion of carrying forward experiencing gets you into an infinite regress problem - who or what is carrying forward the experiencing, and who or what is behind this focus of activity....? It could be that I'm an inappropriately pedantic reader, or that in fairness to Mahrer I'm therapeutically and personally too defended to engage with his text. Alternatively, it could be that - in fairly typical humanistic fashion - Mahrets terms are sloppily defined, and his theoretical infrastructure is lacking in rigour.

Despite my issues, there is ample evidence that this is indeed the case, although this is not apparent at first as the book is so plausible. A 'gee whiz' book, it is chock-a-block with psychobabble such as 'Sheer experiencing pulls for a situational context' (p73). Or, 'In most therapies, the therapist uses methods of communication which force the patient to talk to the therapist rather than the insides, to interact and relate with the external therapist instead of the insides' (p133). Despite several attempts, I could not find the appropriate context to understand these strange remarks.

At a theoretical level, the language is even more careless and at the level of the New Age pseudo-psychological rash generalization. In keeping with texts of this particular genre, at first reading Mahrer's theoretical assertions seem unproblematic, but fall apart under scrutiny as rather vacuous, unscholarly, and open to fairly obvious criticism: 'The carrying forward of experiencing refers to experiencing and not to behaviours' (p25). Experiencing as Mahrer defines it, arguably amounts to a peculiar form of therapeutic behaviour engaged upon by certain therapists and their clients.

When Mahrer does attempt to clarify 'experiencing' he utilizes Existential motifs that beg to be taken at face value but fail apart from behind when examined. For example, when discussing the fundamental concern of the nothingness of death that needs to be faced, Mahrer contrasts this with types of therapy that sidestep this problem. He goes on to tell his imaginary client

"You can no longer stand behind your problems or your sufferings or your behaviour, for the problem is you" (p121).

While this makes general existential sense, it is equally the case that the phenomenal of personal development, in the sense of profound integration, and therapy don't always coincide. Therapeutic circles that assume that they do seem guilty of corporate delusion. For example, self-growth (which I imagine to be roughly synonymous with Mahrer's 'carrying forward of experiencing') is often observably about defensively maintaining time and culture-bound prejudices or postures, in response to the perceived threat of demands made to individual or group fields of being. So, it is normative to be in therapy in many senses and never living.

In this area, the Existential content of this book is eclipsed by its skewed emphasis on Mahrer's experiencing which seems to distract from life concerns. If the moral function of (existential) therapy is to help a person to engage with life as honestly and purposefully as possible in terms that make sense within their field of being (isn't it?), then if, say, a hypothetical client has a problem with her lover which is the focus of her current distress, and it is this problem that she brings to the therapeutic moment, then it is this problem that is in focus between client and therapist. For therapeutic purposes the problem is not then effaced by another problem, or cancelled out by a more profound problem. Of course this really depends on what you mean by existential therapy.

As a book purporting to be humanistic-existential, it seems more humanistic than existential. Its mega-I-Thou flavour seems to me to violate the moral function of separate personhood enshrined within the values of existential therapies. In this area, despite Mahrer's eschewval of those external therapies that push patients into roles which constrain experiences that do not fit those roles, it seems that experiential therapy does just that. The behaviour of the experiential therapist logically demands the phenomena subsumed under 'experiencing'. Is this not controlling? Mahrer commits the usual humanistic error of assuming that a feeling focus encapsulates a person's experience totally. What would he do if the client wanted to engage in a rational dialogue?

If existential therapy is - or should be - a more sophisticated form of an ordinary helpful relationship, to deal with problems in living/individual fields of being to help people progress through their moral tasks/projects of life, which is about living, then there are two corollaries to this proposition. Firstly, psychotherapy should assume a modest place in one's life. From reading Mahrer, I have the fantasy that he eats, breathes, sleeps and has sex with experiential therapy.

The second corollary is that there has to be congruence between what you (therapist) practise and how you (therapist) live your life. I felt myself drifting off into little reveries, wondering what's Mahrer like in real life? Does he do ordinary things, in an unselfconscious way, or does he experience everything. I suppose I'm glad that I own this book now, but only because it constitutes a kind of therapeutic map reference from which I can locate myself....several continents away.

Alec Duncan-Grant