Beyond Therapy: A Set of Essays
On Miscellaneous Topics in Psychology and Psychiatry (2001-2003)

VI. Beyond Therapy: Part III - Overview:
What Cultural Implications are there when Therapy Itself is Subject to Treatment?

0.   Introduction

	In the first two parts of this Sixth Essay I have argued and demonstrated the need for an appropriate and proper overall transcendental suspension as central to the therapeutic process both theoretically and practically (as discovered through the metaphorical examination of embodiment and the nature of its causal processes). In Part III let me argue for the critical ramifications that follow from this necessary central precondition of the therapeutic process, namely, that no therapeutic process can be critically engaged without the appropriate and proper implementation of the thorough overall transcendental suspension being exercised within that therapeutic relationship whether that be exercised by deliberate design or by default through natural intuition! (1)

	Let me first revisit this topic of the suspension and why I need to refer to it by this qualification of it as an overall transcendental suspension. Then, I will examine a number of topics related, to some extent, to this title of beyond therapy. Finally, the critical ramifications of this topic will be explored in cultural, philosophical and ‘spiritual’ terms of reference. By this expression of ‘spiritual’ is meant the integral integrity experienced by the individual as an individual in the community as a member of a variety of institutions in their current cultural matrix from the central point of view of those relationships themselves as relationships qua relationships. This self-referential integrity of the relationship could be regarded as having a spiritual-like (or quazi-spiritual-like) sense of 'being' or 'presence' without a direct material-physical basis in the phenomenal/phenomenological reality of the life-world. (2)

	In this essay my main preoccupation is the question "How do we appreciate either the totality of our culture or some aspect of it whilst being currently immersed in the same without any obvious reference point from which to adequately perform this type of task?" In understanding how we might find ourselves being able to go about this type of task we can then ask ourselves "How do we go beyond current models of therapy… go beyond therapy as it currently appears to be understood (by the therapeutic community and the more informed community at large)?" (3)

	For a start, in the goodness of time it would appear that we can find some form of deeper appreciation. However, in this quest we are somewhat impatient and seek this depth of appreciation now! It is my belief that this type of task is possible but one fraught with much difficulty often realized in some small measure at the expense of substantial insight! That the overall suspension plays a pivotal role in this exercise of seeking insight! Translated into a postmodern idiom one might say that deconstruction plays, should play a therapeutic role, and, that no form of value should be privileged in our investigation of the life-world be it ethical, historical, pragmatical, religious, political, phenomenological, hermeneutical, existential, etc., etc! (4)

	Let me summarize what is meant by this expression suspension implying a transcendental suspension and more specifically an overall transcendental suspension. (5)

	This (complex) concept owes its origin to work done by the German transcendental phenomenologist Edmund Husserl (1859-1938). Basically this type of transcendental philosophy asks that in making a phenomenal judgment as to how a certain phenomenon under examination appears to be constituted in experience, i.e., as it essentially appears to us, we should put out of action all value judgments that obstruct us from phenomenologically clarifying the nature of that phenomenal constitution. Hence we bracket all value judgments such as whether that under examination is identical to some type of entity x or state y, beautiful, morally good, pragmatically useful, belongs to this or that genre, is real, etc. By this method (of the epoche), and other methods such as eidetic reflection, we come to understand that nature of that particular type of phenomenon in its ideality. In effect this suspension brackets the phenomenon in its ideality and exposes its type/brackets out all value judgments not directly concerned with that ideal nature of its constitution… preparatory to the exercise of a reduction wherein the essential nature of the phenomenon is to be adequately and/or comprehensively established (and the exercise of a re-constitution wherein its place in the life-world is also to be investigated). (6)

	In my (meta-phenomenological) reinterpretation of that 'phenomenon of the suspension' I first re-perceive the classical suspension as one of three ideal moments within the ambit of a hermeneutic circle of comprehension (in an ideal relationship's dealing with the interaction between its parts-and-totality or wholeness, and the part that object or state plays in its interconnectedness in the apparent totality of the life-world), namely, a(n existential) suspension, (analytical) reduction and re-constitution(al synthesis). That in a deeper analysis one comes to understand that these three moments are effectively types of suspensions in their own right. That the analytical reduction is a conjunctive suspension and essentially deals with metaphorical content, i.e., 'both like x and not like x'. That the synthesis of the re-constitution is essentially rhetorical in orientation and is based on a dis-conjunctive suspension, i.e., 'x is either a or ~a'. Lastly, the suspension (as classically understood) is essentially (in this understanding of mine) a 'balance of these two previous suspensions of the conjunctive and the dis-conjunctive' [and from the combination of reductive past and prospective future re-produces an existential sense of the historical but dynamic present]. To complete the picture I further argue that an overall suspension is realized when all three moments are in a state of a dynamic, ongoing balance. It's in this latter sense that I wish to extend the classical sense of the suspension, indeed, cash it out in some depth of detail. For the sake of clarity I will continue to identify this amplified sense of the suspension as an overall (transcendental) suspension. It also conveys the sense of being a thorough suspension, i.e., one that maintains a suspension of all forms of value (which in an ordered analysis I have classified as six in number, namely, pre-essential essential judgments dealing with formulae, lexical inventories, sense as a location in our cultural-intercultural psychic mapping of the world; essential-aesthetical judgments dealing with aesthetic issues; ethical judgments of a deontological nature; pragmatical judgments of utility; hermeneutical judgments dealing with matters of interpretation, meta-field transitions; factual judgments dealing with historical 'facts'). (7)

	I have argued that in the appropriate and proper exercise of an overall transcendental suspension of the hermeneutic circle there is an overall existentialization of experience with, as a result, a rectification and clarification of the authenticity to be found at the centre of that relational experience. That such a practice realizes, in general, the preservation of the relationship through installing a regime attuned to the inherent authenticity of that relationship; in effect, a re-orientation towards the authentic in our relationships with, as a consequence, the existential transformation of behaviour that reinvests those relationships with a fruitful abundance of value and positivity in the midst of a critical, ongoing, self-aware re-evaluation of those relationships from the perspective of those relationships themselves (in and through their context in this world-of-life)! Hence the explicit merit of this sense of self-transformation to be obtained in and through the appropriate and proper exercise of a thorough overall transcendental suspension, and, the reason why I have stressed the importance of this central concept, especially in this Sixth Essay!! (8)

	In this paper let me look into a number of medical myths to see if we can look beyond them and that this intuition of the centrality of the suspension is not just a prerequisite for transcendental phenomenologists doing transcendental phenomenology but also a central requirement for understanding the theoretical, practical and critical considerations of therapy along with a holistic appreciation of where we would be better headed!? In this pursuit let me look at 1). drug addiction and desire in general, 2). talking therapies, 3). excessive utilization of medication, 4). unsympathetic specialization, 5). inappropriate and inadequate diagnosis, 6). the cultural delusion (held by therapists and patients) that every condition, in accordance with current practice, can be therapeutically treated to some extent or other, etc. In my examination of these headings I will also attempt to demonstrate the centrality of this role of an overall suspension and the advantages that accrue from appropriately practising this technique that ensures its critical performance in an effective and productive manner. Hopefully, in this process, I will be able to demonstrate the supreme importance of this overall suspension (regardless of whether we be therapists and/or patients). (9)

1.   Drug Addiction and Desire in General - The Expensive War on Drugs….

	As previously noted warfare is more a failure of other methods to achieve what is desired by the warring party, and, its desperate adoption of 'violent' means to realize that goal signals this general sense of failure without taking into account whether such forced methods should be judged appropriate, proper and historically successful in the context of their implementation! Subject to a thorough suspension we cannot say that 'warfare', in general terms of reference, is either good or bad!  However, if other methods are available to achieve realistically that same sort of result, that also positively reinforces the existential quality of that relationship, it follows by default that 'warfare' in that particular situation is essentially wrong or misguided (owing to its violent and/or destructive methodology). Again, I am not saying, in general terms of reference, that warfare is either good or bad, however, our intuition would normally side with the latter opinion, just that in some situations that relatively drastic option might prove more valid in the context of certain situations that call for this degree of desperation on the behalf of that relationship (given the apparent validity and appropriateness of that transcendental reservation). (10)
	One of the areas in human experience that western culture often overlooks is that of the emotions and mood, and, issues touching on those domains are often confused and if 'looked at' end up being 'treated' in a misguided fashion, such as, e.g., the so-called War on Drugs (where emotions have effectively traduced a humane rationality). Let me briefly argue why this metaphor and its adoption in practice can be shown to be fundamentally misguided. Furthermore, let me illustrate how the utilization of an overall suspension could have positive ramifications for the more practical formulation of pragmatic policies (that are existentially driven and in the process enrich our relationships and are not ideologically driven in such a manner that diminish and disrupt our relationships, indeed, countenance the death of individuals either by design or through default!)! (11)

	Often the type of solution adopted in a particular controversy creates a worse problem than the very problem that, in the first place, was meant to be solved - a bit like digging a hole in order to fill the soil in from some other hole; each new hole in the process needing to get bigger and bigger…. A case where the solution creates an even bigger problem. My analogy here hardly does justice to the exponentially incremental degree of damage done by this so called solution of a 'war on drugs'. Let me explain. By tightening the supply of these addictive materials the price of drugs sky-rockets in inverse proportion to the scarcity of that product for sale rewarding its importers and distributors in similar measure. For far less effort these people that mastermind and bankroll this importation and distribution stand to make a much greater profit by virtue of this increased margin of profit. To put it bluntly, we do organized crime a favour, and, at the same time, actually favour the organization of crime! Moreover, these people that organize this importation and distribution, being usually at arms length from the processes of transportation and allocation, rarely get caught (through their skilfulness, paying off the right people, using couriers, etc., who are not aware of the persons further up in this chain of command, etc.). If addicts and experimenters want to use these drugs and are prepared to pay those higher prices then the laws of consumption usually find themselves being fulfilled. As they truly say, "money speaks". Furthermore, if your means of finance are derived in part or in whole from pushing those drugs to old-time and new-time customers then increased costs become an even greater incentive to sell more of the same in order to acquire the same amount of drug felt to be needed by that user cum pusher. Consequently, even though demand might be suppressed to begin with, pushers pushing their drug exacerbates the 'overall problem' by accelerating the dissemination of those drugs. New markets are demanded and met in their dissemination to non-adults. This same phenomenon also leads to increased burglaries, prostitution, violent hold-ups, etc. These so-called counter-measures, therefore, end up having the opposite effect, namely, the accelerated dissemination of those addictive materials! Then, similar attitudes in policies and practices in a war on drugs carried out on those lands growing and processing these products will find themselves subjected to the same type of phenomena, namely, the paradoxical acceleration of the dissemination of those addictive produce by virtue of the fact that the greatly enhanced price for that scarce product has the effect of motivating planters to plant even more in the realistic hope that a fraction, now even more valuable than before, still reaches its intended market. Hence, with this result from that type of policy and practice any practical person would normally suspend their ontological commitments and seek out some other method for dealing with this epidemic of drug consumption. E.g., giving drugs to users at the true cost of production or for a small fee (to be consumed on premises?) and thereby circumventing the criminal organizations that organize the transportation and distribution of the same. Such a solution also ensuring through a quality-controlled product that there are less inadvertent deaths from adulterated/non-adulterated mixtures, etc. Whilst often the consumption of the drug is not dangerous to health or deadly the consumer not finding a quality controlled product can meet with injury or death through the unexpected increased purity of the produce and/or finding the impurities used in cutting its strength far more dangerous than the drug itself. In such a sensible arrangement as outlined in my solution to this 'problem' there is, more or less, a win-win situation for both the consumer and the public at large despite being politically unpalatable for those who are truly concerned about having this type of distribution not completely eradicated. Such a compromise at least lessens the pressure for a forced and accelerated dissemination of those addictive products. But given the fact that both consumption and distribution cannot be instantaneously eradicated, and the natural law of supply and demand being what it is, it must follw that use of those addictive products will continue. Then in a recognition of this fact it behooves us humanely to ensure that the current degree of damage be limited and reversed to that extent practically possible rather than exacerbated through a magnification of the problem assisted by the very measures adopted to supposedly control it. You would have to be incredibly stupid to continue to insist on policies that have not only very visibly failed but have become a sizeable part of the very problem itself. Hence the role of an overall suspension is called for in order to short circuit this exacerbation, hopefully reversing its damage and to open up those horizons for the creative search for other mechanisms that might realize some of those goals along with their ongoing critical self-re-evaluation. What idiot would take a medicine knowing that that would make them even more sick each time they were to take it! How could society, on seeing the damage wrought by that type of dangerous policy, not want to reverse the side-effects of this policy mis-management by not re-writing that prescription and setting out to discover solutions that might actually work to some degree or other? With that in mind, policies should sensibly seek to reverse those historical trends deemed ‘adverse’ by re-setting the pre-conditions and conditions for this to existentially take place prospectively over a historical period of time through a more thoughtfully constructed attempt in social engineering. In history, it is my belief, that the very trends that create a particular problem can also be reversed to resolve that type of situation (as demonstrated by the historian in their looking into the tidal too and fro of all forms of fashion throughout history). (12)

	The hermeneutic circle is also dynamically structured as a harmonic process, a process of resolution. Dissonance is experienced at the object-pole, i.e., in the moment of reduction centred on a conjunctive suspension. But the provocative nature of that which is relatively different is also a two-faced type of phenomenon, i.e., a dissonant looking away from a correlative field of consonance, and, a facing back to the consonant field of its background wherein it finds a parallel, or rather, a contrary process of resolution through re-integrational accommodation. By virtue of this accommodation (between the field and its dissonant focus mediated by an existential suspension [of the balance of a conjunctive suspension and a dis-conjunctive suspension]) the dissonant structure enters into a process of resolution. Armed with this insight we should look for those processes of accommodational resolution that would realize that type of outcome. Hence the relevance this hermeneutic circle also has for problem solving through the utilization of this mechanism for resolution as articulated through processes of provocative re-integrational accommodation, etc. (13)

	Let me look briefly now at the phenomenal/phenomenological natures of desire and addiction in the light of the hermeneutic circle and its existential operation through an overall transcendental suspension. (14)

	Desire is a feeling of need. Feelings come in attractive, repulsive and neutral varieties, although, correctly, the phenomenal bulk of a feeling is essentially neutral in nature (through the use of overall transcendental suspensions of psychic material synthesized in the epistemological hierarchy of the overall psyche but lower in epistemological organization such as sensations, stimuli, or, induced through the exercise of overall transcendental suspensions of psychic material synthesized in the epistemological hierarchy of the overall psyche but higher in epistemological organization such as those parallel emotional phenomena experienced in the company of cognitive fears, ambitions, successes, etc. Now, desire as a feeling of need is, in effect, the experience of an absence of feeling which has two flavours, namely, the absence of an envisaged presence of positively received feelings or the absence of an envisaged loss of negatively received feelings. A complex desire being a mixture of these two types of absences.(by getting what one doesn’t want and not getting what one does want). Because the psychic bulk of a feeling is neutral it is possible for a feeling phenomenon to change its flavour by virtue of a re-perception of the type of absence sought by the emotional perceiver. This reception being accomplished through the transformation of a complex emotion. However, through the dichotomous cognitive treatment of the desired need this complexity can be apparently overlooked. (15)

	Furthermore, desire is the envisioned potential for an absence, regardless of flavour, to be diminished either through the satisfaction of that need (through the neutralization of those two kinds of absences) or its replacement (with some other desire) or its suspension (as in processes of physiological relaxation realized through satisfaction or satiation, replacement or a cognitively supervized suspension). Now, it follows that an addiction is the self-reinforced desire for a particular need, i.e., functions as a meta-need, a need prompted by cognitive induction as a habit and/or a physiological need that experiences a sense of an absence of the stimuli, sensory or chemical, that prompt the recollection of that need, that in effect one needs that need. E.g. one might enjoy classical music being present during the course of a meal and find its current absence during that meal re-prompts this desire. Or, e.g., a drug addict finds that a craving has returned for their current drug of choice prompting the cognitive cognizance of this physiological fact. But what phenomenologically constitutes the addictiveness of addiction? That must come about through some form of an embedded, cyclically self-ensconced, self-perpetuating desire. Let me elabourate on a possible mechanism for this. (16)

	Normally, the fulfilment of a desire is met in its satiation. A ‘suspension’ of that process of satiation could realize the commencement of a process of addiction. The third component (a necessary ingredient in the formation and exercise of all hermeneutic circles) in this instance is the introduction of a cognitive intentional component which passively gives its permission to the performance of an addictive routine, or, actively tries to deny such a performance. Hence we have this cyclical swinging from the need to the perceived meta-need back to the need, etc. I enjoy x… enjoying x gives me satiation of that desire for x… but a suspension or disruption of that process of satiation of that desire x when met continues or re-continues this desire for x… I  re-continue to enjoy x, or not suffer, as a result from experiencing x… but through a continual loss of satiation to some degree or other I am motivated to re-seek x-like experiences. Now by using this expression of 'suspension' in this context what exactly do I mean? To begin with satiation is a type of suspension. By enjoying my desire for x means that I am either enjoying meeting with an (increasing) absence of that which I don't like or I am meeting with the (non-absent) presence of that which I do desire. Either way my desire is being fulfilled, filled in, filled up… in being met there is the formation of a balance between what is desired and this desire being met. Eventually, under normal circumstances, this objective is cancelled by being met. On the other hand, if that process of satiation instead is subjected to a suspension then that objective of the desire being desired can never be fully met, or, if met cannot be fulfilled for other than a short period in time. (17)

	As intimated previously this circle of desire is perceived as taking place in a tripartite arrangement between desiring the desire sought, meeting with its satiation, and, the cognitive intentional component of (active or passive) permission. All three poles can be subject to an individually distinctive process of 'suspension'; an act of balance that neutralizes the characteristic orientation of that particular pole. With respect to the pole of desire its fulfilment normally realizes satiation. With the suspension of satiation there is a re-inauguration of desire. With the suspension of the cognitive pole there is balance between active non-permission and passive permission. An overall suspension in this context seeing the balance between these three moments (as would be achieved to some degree in the normal course of healthy, life-affirming desires). (18)

In the light of this discussion, what possible hypothetical mechanisms for overcoming addictive routines (e.g., smoking; excessive caffeine intake; over consumption of alcohol; ingestion of heroin, cocaine, etc.) and addictive-like routines (e.g., obsessions; recurrent negative thoughts after traumatic experiences; compulsive shopping; pathological collecting and hoarding, etc.) could be invoked? (19)

	Ideally, an overall suspension should serve us well wherein desires met would be satiated with a rapid de-suspension of satiation, and, cognitively, active motivation would cancel out negative acquiescence. On the other hand, excessive degrees of desire, faulty processes or too successful processes of satiation and inadequate cognitive controls would easily establish the fact of addictive-like routines becoming routinized and thence addictions. Hence the important role we should grant ‘individual suspensions’ and ‘an overall sense of suspension’ for maintaining a healthy attitude and practice towards desire, and, for the prevention and/or suppression of addiction(?). In parallel practical terms we could, perhaps, draw the following conclusions. In the exercise of 'normal' desires we naturally find their inevitable suspension through satiation. So, say, we are currently too hot or too cold and desire the absence of that extreme, relatively adverse condition, and achieving this, e.g., by adding garments of clothing or their removal respectively. In the process a natural suspension is realized in this improvement of perceived temperature. On the other hand the desire for a prohibitive drug whose cost would seriously impact on our lifestyle would best be not taken up by not granting cognitive permission for this type of routine to take place (through the necessary degree of active motivation being put in place to counteract that passive engagement with that addictive type of routine), or, the active seeking of some other desire pattern that might eclipse the former, or, just physiologically relaxing the impulse to desire through naturally re-enacting a suspension of the same (by what ever method, individually or collectively, existentially achieves this for us, which might entail counter-medication, processes of distraction, or, just rest/resting/going to sleep, etc.). In a suspension of satiation we re-enact the desire for a certain desire, therefore, through a de-suspension of satiation we might ensure a longer period of time without the pressing focalized need to re-desire that particular desire and this too might be assisted through processes of physiological relaxation; or the same might be achieved through processes of distraction, etc., or the denial of passive acceptance of a need for that addictive routine to be re-enacted, etc. In a suspension of cognitive motivation I have suggested these possibilities, namely, physiological relaxation, distraction or displacement procedures, or, the development of active, positive motivation to cancel out and override passive, negative forms of motivational acquiescence. (20)

	It would be my opinion that the more successful approach to the overcoming of addictive desires would be to exercise an overall suspension that can effectively counteract, overwrite, write out, neutralize addictive patterns of desire by adopting a fully balanced and exercised overall transcendent suspension through ensuring patterns of suspension at each mode are in place and a dynamic balance between all three modes is also in operation. A natural practice that should only take reflection, practice and a sense of a critical re-atunement to install, refine, enlarge and reflect upon, perhaps to be developed in automatically learned, sub-intentional terms of reference(?). (21)

	There is, however, a deeper level on which desire can be productively neutralized, namely, through the adoption and adaptation of Buddhistic insights re the empty nature of all things. Things and states qua 'things' and 'states' only-exist-for-us as linguistic entities through their superimposition of a reified metaphorical reality that bears no true resemblance to the conditions that appear to order the course of those things. By removing that superimposition we cease to give ourselves those things to which we can attach ourselves, indeed, we cease to be an agent that operates with a superimposed belief re the nature of their own sense of self with as a consequence no basis for either attachment or for a self to entertain the same. By 'seeing' the emptiness of things and realizing that that emptiness is empty likewise we no longer can attach ourselves to these illusory entities nor find our illusory sense of self attached to the same, without, I might add any real lose in a relative sense of self that actively engages in an authenticity of being before others equally realized as without a basis for attachment, etc. Indeed, in that type of authenticity of engagement we meet the true, divine-like nature of others and our own senses of self through being-becoming in a state of ongoing harmony in the spiritual-like, relationally oriented embrace of the life-world as this 'one' world-of-life! Only through a recognition of emptiness do we have a recognition of real existence - an existence that is not as a false, illusory, superimposition upon the way-things-truly-are in their interdependent relativity… a state of affairs that still maintains a phenomenological sense of perspective but with a sense of perspective that is not an absolutistic one! That all things are merely the product of an ongoing concatenation of conditions determined directly through linguistic habits without reference to any form of ultimate preferentialization and their superimposition upon the same!! (22)

	Hence the necessary implication being ‘seen’ for an overall transcendental suspension to establish an authenticity in the exercise of desire (and not calling for its mere suppression or elimination, its embrace or rejection, etc.). (23)

	As a final point under this heading I would like to note the question "how addicted, wittingly or unwittingly, are we to those current, predominant medical model(s) operating in our culture regardless of whether we be a therapist/patient or neither"? (24)

	As I have argued elsewhere (conventional) prejudice brings us to the point of judgment as a pre-judgment. On the other hand, in the overall transcendental suspension there is a neutralization of that bias which directly opens us onto the world-of-life as that life-world there-for-us! A recovery of experience that is there for us at all times if we would but recognize the reality of this aspect as it applies to all experience minus those illusory super-impositions that merely conventionally mask that reality from us as it is there for us to share…! But without putting this theoretically insightful perspective into philosophical jargon how do we translate it to the coal-face of our living in this world where we be persons, in no way unlike others, with an assortment of additive routines and/or addictive-like routines some of which interfere with the quality of our existence and which we recognize we would be better off without having, but, suffering from a current lack of an adequate positive motivation, just don’t know how we can positively re-constitute our life without the same!  (25)

	The key to this project is motivation, but the lock that is to be unlocked is how we find ourselves thrown and re-thrown into this world-of-life. We must look to the nature of our embodiment for how that key can then open us up to a better way of re-seeing the world! And the stage (door) for entering upon this path of relative progress is none other than that of the overall transcendental suspension as it falls beneath our very own feet (metaphorically) in the lived here and now of our existence. Combine these three features successfully and you will successfully release yourself from addictive routines and addictive-like routines that you would be better off without having to blindly following for one more day, indeed, can be dispensed with this very moment! (26)

	Using the transcendental suspension we must carefully look at our current condition in this world-of-life as it is lived-before-others. Brutally question yourself! Why are you not the opposite to who you are. Why do you smoke, gamble, drink wine with your breakfast, have too many women/men in your life, or, have too few women/men in your life...? Just what is it that ‘gets your back up’ and which you find yourself resisting, truly resisting?! Indeed, am fearful to confront?! Can you conceive of yourself in an ideal mould of your own making? In someone else’s mould? In an ideal mould, that might reflect your deepest aspirations, should you be game enough to secretly confess them to yourself one dark night under the winding sheets of your cold bed? What are you unhappy with giving up, and, what makes you unhappy to give for?! What might your blind spots be? Are these realistic and idealistic descriptions/prescriptions worth giving up/giving in some manner or other for. Are they realistically obtainable without being too negative about their obtainment in this self-enquiry?! What might your best friend say? Your lover? Your ideal vision of a lover if you were to meet such a person? Being your ‘own person’ can you put your finger on those rough edges that trouble you, on those places where you find a degree of a psychotic-like resistance and self-denial? And lest you be too demoralized to travel along this path of self-inquiry any further now you must ask what are your good points, your inner skills and assets? Even your bad points have a good aspect. And can you be happy living with the same? So you might be stubborn, but stubbornness in the right situation is a virtue! Not as generous to the deserving as you might like to be – then with your excessive accumulation of assets you might like to pass some of them on to the more deserving for the good of your soul…. (27)

	Once this balanced ‘suspended’ character re-assessment (and the equal assassination of an illusory vision of your own self) has been undertaken the next thing we need to do is to re-develop our positive motivation in chunks that are realistic performable and achievable, focussing on those black holes of the psyche where we experience some degree of a psychotic-like resistance to probing and/or changing. All change is achieved incrementally! By small quanta of performance! Realistically producing a plan with small stages of qualified progress that can be quantified! Putting in play those pre-conditions and conditions that ensure your success once this path is realistically followed – armed for failure and ready to celebrate all small victories too! (28)

	Through a balanced suspended self-evaluation, and, a balanced suspended charting of a realistic plan of action with qualified incremental evidence of a quantifiable success we have created positive motivation in the fullest sense as an idealistic, deliberative action being acted upon with a realistically determined objective. An intentionality with intent!  This is the key created within a vision of our embodiment receptive to idealistic and realistic parameters of our currently prospective re-self-constitution. Never, though, with the objective of creating a new sense of self (something that can only be performed by the exceptional few?), only, the renovation and re-creation of our old sense of self, a happier sense of self, a sense of self more at home within themselves! In essence, a realization of who we are (in and through our relationships in this life-world) and where to that extent that this is possible and conceivable for us to realize… and the stage upon which this feat of acting is achieved (and the stage door through which we make our re-newed entry)? None other than that world-of-life as it is to be lived by-us before-others in and through an appropriate and proper suspension. ‘Appropriateness’ being dictated by pragmatic concerns in self-reflection, and, ‘proper’ being dictated by deontological concerns in self-reflection; there always being the semblance of a compromise between these two facets of propriety but never as a compromise that is compromised! Subtle isn’t it? O so it sounds – but your intuition will tell you when you are on the right path in this regard! An existential feedback alerting you to an excess in personal value above and beyond that effort merely invested in this and any other worthwhile enterprise! (29)

	Put these three factors of a motivational key, embodied self-reflection and the stage(door) of an appropriate and proper overall transcendental suspension and you can tackle addictive and addictive-like routines as they intrude into our lives as lived in this world-of-life! On the other hand, lacking those three inputs will condemn us to an inability to give up our addictive and/or addictive-like routines unless we are forced into that type of situation of abstention by others where we cannot indulge in such a behavioral manner for good or bad. All else acting as a supplement or compliment to the above – factors as previously mentioned such as counter-reactive medications, physiological relaxation, the use of distractional and replacement routines, etc. But without a key, a lock and a stage (door) all such supernumerary considerations are wasted on us (unless, again, we are placed in that type of situation where we cannot indulge in those addictive and/or addictive-like routines)! Not much else to say now other than to wish you all the best that good luck and hard effort will bring! (30)

	Finally, here, the therapist, the patient, the public need to ask “how addicted are we to current medical models?” To that extent that we cannot think beyond them… to that extent we cannot suspend their theoretical hegemony over how we ‘should’ think and act. But one step forward is a first step that might be followed by others… through suspension we at least make a start to think outside the square or circle… at least realize that therapy is there for us to find by being able to phenomenologically formulate and clarify the problematic issues that we truly recognize as facing us! To that extent we can ask a question to that same extent we have the means for resolving it, recognizing whether it can be solved... and therein lies our therapeutic freedom even if met by a medical condition that has no other resolution than the timely timeliness of death itself! Alas… even all good medicine must eventually fail us..!! (31)

	I know the problem of addiction, when it is a problem, is a difficult one to treat. What I tentatively offer here are some provisional ideas that might merely form a working paper on this topic of treatment. Although the phenomenology of addiction might be the same, regardless of what products, what action and routines may be involved, correctly motivation (to overcome an addictive routine) is most certainly the key and that motivation, in turn, truly reflects the mettle of the person. In the light of this observation a treatment program must always take into account the type and character of person who attempts this type of procedure and in this essential regard the therapist needs to build their treatment response in an appropriate fashion with that person in mind. Motivation may be the key it is still the person in the final analysis who unlocks that door – all else is but a stumbling midwife, bowls of boiling water and incidental incantations…. (32)

2.   Talking Therapies - Talking about Illness isn't Necessarily Therapeutic!

	We have this myth in society that just talking about our problems will cure them. Freud, it would appear, took up this particular piece of popular psychology and turned it into a science or, rather, an occult art conducted with exorbitant fees and negligible success. Now Freud and his propaganda, and all its mutant variants, are at last being put to the side but still this myth persists with a tenacity greater than the modicum of an existential insight buried within its simple premise… it is true that talking to a friend or stranger when in a crisis can be of assistance… but what is more talked about is not the problem itself but the nature of their relationship and interaction, general observations on the way of the weather and the world, a possible plan of action, some good advice and a mutual sharing of our being in this world-of-life-with-others…! Too often, however, a psychopath or sociopath grabs hold of another person and inflicts the sad story of their miserable lives upon them without listening to the advice and good will of that other ‘trapped’ person… without a sharing of being… without their also being there for that put upon other person.  Too often these unfortunate citizens want to tie us up in their misfortunes and will only leave when their frustrations as why life is so ungrateful to them have been amply transferred in our suffering silence. “You do want to help me?” they rhetorically ask… without waiting for an honest answer. We give them good advice and realistic proposals in self-help but, no, the litany of an endless roll call of misery and miserableness must be read out until they themselves find it too tiring to repeat themselves one more time! And when these people are reasoned with, given good advice, feel the psychotic-like resistance to a change of lifestyle that might entail. How dare you be so insightful… because if you persist with such insightfulness you will soon as if like the ancient mariner has clobbered you about the head with that dead albatross…! (33)

	Unfortunately, those people that should seek some advice, some honest counseling, that needed ‘touch’ of human interaction, rarely wish to “inflict their suffering upon us” when such proffered in good faith would only be too happily accepted since in the darkness where others have trod we too have traveled to some extent down those same best forgotten byways of the soul. But, the last thing these depressed spirits really want to talk about is their current suffering… in their stumbling they seek an escape from the same and thereupon that path that might let them re-join the human family, once more break bread at a less sad, more joyful table…. (34)

	Too often the counseling currently practised is just non-therapeutic, if not anti-therapeutic! Imagine if you will you were on say the 80th floor on one of those World Trade Centre buildings when they were struck on ‘9/11’. You have just enough time to escape running down the stairs, a process that takes some considerable time and effort in the panic of a thousand other people doing the same thing. Now, imagine, if you will, if you can, and I am painting an extreme picture here for the sake of my argument, a grief counselor has you in a 1:1 counseling situation and insists for the good of your psychic health that you describe to them, blow by blow, what it was like to experience that half hour it took you to go down that stairwell and just clear that building minutes before it collapses above you on the street outside. (35)

	“What did it feel like,” they ask, “what were you thinking…” “Do you still think about it…” “Has it made a difference in your life….” (36)

	Honestly, I would feel like punching them in the face so that they too might feel some of the ‘pain’ you felt in that period of crisis and some of the ‘disruption’ it would have caused for you afterwards… (37)

	But, hopefully, I paint an extreme picture, although I am not too optimistic here. It would only need one concrete person to take up this myth in society that “talking about your problems will cure them” to properly unsettle a person subjected to such trauma. More likely, and the optimist in me is talking here, a more reasonable, more professional counselor would thoroughly ‘skirt the main event’ and interact with them on a human 1:1 basis, offer them advice on how to deal with some of the after effects like sleep disturbance, etc., and overall completely distract them with positive proposals for the future and something completely different…! Distraction therapy is probably called for. Post-traumatic states often have the patient suffering from a repetitive, addictive-like obsessive 
recalling of the trauma-event with a whole host of questions in attendance like “why, why me, should I have done this , why didn’t I do this, why did I not do that…,” etc. To successfully break this cyclic re-playing of the trauma-event and its obsessive searching for interpretation is do the other person a service. Distraction is one way to do this by engaging the person’s undivided attention on something else, anything else, preferably with positive connotations for that person undergoing such counseling. Then by doing this on other occasions, and helping that individual to do the same, will indeed offer them a service that would be of psychic benefit to them (as truly befits the role of a counselor in the role of a therapist). (38)

	In the goodness of time traumatic events, hopefully, can be put to the side and therein allow us to get on with our lives and pick up the pieces so to speak. If it is the appropriate time for that person to confront the trauma-event then it should be done from a position of enpowerment, a pre-prepared positive re-interpretation of that event that will allow the person to confront that type of situation with this positivity of attitude, should they have to, or need to face that situation in its re-simulation or some other situation like it… reassuring them in the process helping them gain a renewed strength and inner resilience, an inner acceptance and final inner refusal to be subjugated by that ‘demon’... Overall, time is the best healer and it should be assisted rather than prevented from doing its task of healing the psyche through the natural course of its own forgetting... It is natural to forget the negative and remember the positive… so let it be! If an event can not be ‘put to the side’ then this embedded remembrance needs to be short-circuited, de-fused, switched off and un-plugged by all the techniques the therapist has at their disposal whether it be the temporary use of medication, distraction therapy, relaxation therapy, developing a positive sense of self-re-construction, developing those skills that produce a sense of self-strength and self-defense, positive visualization, positive self-re-visualization, etc., etc. (39)

	“Talking therapy” operates on the experiential insight that talking about things can help the person confront the issues that need to be confronted, and, that a sharing of our sufferings and our joys with our very best friends can be of a comfort to us and therein validate us as human, but human beings being all too human. On the other hand, to institutionalize this process is fraught with problems that take a really good therapist to overcome. A professional interaction can still be an existential one on a horizontal empathetic level in the context of a professional, vertical, transcendentally detached ‘level’ at the same time. These two dimensions should not be confused! The professional attitude like the existential attitude, or the existential attitude between friends or lovers, is no different in this inner requirement that a transcendental suspension be conducted with due propriety, i.e, with a pragmatic appropriateness and deontological properness in keeping with the nature of that relationship. So let us see myths for what they are – insights into human nature that should not be construed or misconstrued as anything other than as metaphors, as metaphorical sign-posts that cannot paint a literal picture of society… ‘images’ that should not be read in a concrete fashion and adopted in a slavish fashion… as if such apparel should be worn de rigueur. (40)

3.	Excessive Use and Abuse of Medication to Solve all our Problems… 
Even though we do have a Pill for Everything!?

	There is this worrying fact that we might well have a pill for everything! But, then, an even more worrying fact must confront us that we might well use them, all of them! We have pills and potions, suppositories and powders, ampoules and patches to speed you up and slow you down, help your appetite and stop you eating, help you to remember and help you to forget, make you laugh and stop you crying, get you off to sleep and keep you awake, make you vomit and stop you from feeling nauseous…. (41)

	All innovations are a two-edged sword! Medication is there to help us – how do we know when we are to use it and when we might well be abusing it by taking up its deceptive offer of packaged help advertized in an aura of irresistible inducements and blandishments, all promoted by drug companies and their representatives whose opinions can only be self-motivated – within the reason of law to that extent that they are pressured to take their campaigns for their universal dissemination. So the posters smile and we are told that we should reward ourselves for being so sensible in choosing product x and, by implication, not choosing product y. Of course there are occasions when we can genuinely smile and should well do so – when some medication has saved our life, or, allows us to get on with life in a more normal fashion…! (42)

	So, from time to time many people have this fork on the road ahead of them – to go to the left and abuse these potent symbols of our current powerlessness, or, to go to the right and use such medicinal agents with all the wisdom and wit available to us (before others insist this is what we should have been doing a long time ago)! Should we just toss a coin or do we have the powers to make an informed decision in this regard? “To abuse” or “to use” what the ingenuity of medical science finds in it’s profitable charity to throw our way? (43)

	Most people, not subject to too much pressure in this regard, I believe, would be able to make an informed decision and they do so through the auspices of a transcendental suspension...! They, quite simply, rhetorically ask themselves “Should I take x or should I take y, or, should I take neither x or y, etc?” On further reflection they then ask themselves, “What are my alternatives… what are the consequences of these actions… in what do I stand to gain and in what do I stand to loose in the performance of these alternative pathways of action and inaction in the complexities of this overall equation???” But, then, if the computation of the expected outcomes of various non-definite choices of action and inaction that confront one are only the tip of this iceberg of complexity how can the individual make a truly informed decision, indeed, find themselves in the position of actually being able to make a decision at all!? (44)

	I have a suspicion that you have an inkling of where I am taking you in my unraveling of this problem… that only through the powers of suspension, conducted with propriety, can we find ourselves in a position to make an informed decision! But, to assist us in this problem, a number of principles might help us to ask the necessary questions in this endeavour… as long as we do not insist on their literal guidance, since their primary role is to be as metaphorical signposts… because it is the role of a signpost to point, and, moreover, for different signposts to point in different directions… and never the same direction…! So here goes… some folk-like wisdom crystallized from my general observations of and critical reflections upon the confused and mixed loyalties of the medical scene in this regard…

1.	In an medical emergency perhaps use of medical assistance is the better option?
2.	In a non-medical emergency perhaps other, more natural methods might be better adopted?
3.	Medication is a two-edged sword – get to know both sides of it before, during and after use!
4.	If you could use less do so!
5.	Decide beforehand, if you can, whether this regime is going to be permanent or not permanent in extent and kept to that temporal regime unless you have better reasons to alter it!
6.	Medication is a balance between possible effects and possible side-effect – you should be aware, when and where possible, of both sides to this equation!
7.	An informed patient is the first and best step on the path of quality control!
8.	If practical, non-medical methods could be adopted then forget the medication!
9.	The difference between abuse and use is a fine line!
10.	It takes an honest insight into one’s motivation to recognize this fine line between use and abuse of medication!
11.	All relevant information should be available before making an informed decision!
12.	Hence the necessary, central implication of an overall transcendental suspension in decision making! (45)

An honest, informed awareness of the relevant issues, and, the propriety of our final decisions can together only be realized and critically appreciated through the auspices of an informed overall transcendental suspension conducted with propriety! Conducted in good faith we are informed in good faith of the pragmatic appropriateness and deontological properness of our decision making both in this regard or in any other regard! All our decisions in life are not only decisive to that extent they are decided but are also ‘sealed’ with the spirit of integrity that originally informed them. We, in effect, break those seals when we ignore them and override them. All decisions are made with some degree of integrity… but some of our decisions have more integrity than others. Listen to the metaphorical ‘voice’ of your ‘conscience’ even though we may need to ignore the raucous voice of morality and may need to dissemble in this endeavour in order to obey a greater, more powerful, more subtle voice… a vocative voice that calls us forth and gives us our vocation… an inner sense of direction that may call for our taking an unexpected course should that need be accepted and taken up… an insistent voice that may well ask us to steer an opposite course to the one we are currently taking…?! Conscience is a painful two-edged sword too! In time it will hurt even more if we ignore the import of our own inner voice when we try not to hear it cutting through the very spiritual-like fabric of our being as a person-standing-before-the-sight-of-others… being allowed to be judged by none other than the suspended, hanging judge of our own essential sense of self as it finds and defines itself in and through our relationships in this world-of-life…!  (46)

4.	Unsympathetic Specialization - Understanding the Real Meaning of Holistic 
    Medicine

	As I have intimated in earlier essays there is a need for a somatic-psychic-co-authorial balance in the dispensing/dispensing with medication and other forms of medical treatment and advice. Too often in the institutionalized setting a patient with a kidney disease becomes merely a ‘diseased kidney’, the person in the mental hospital becomes merely a ‘psychiatric case’…. In my criticism of both Freud et al and of Freud’s somatic critics I have argued for the need to adopt a balance between the psychic, the somatic and the co-authorial. That only when these three aspects are taken into a balanced perspective can we truly say that we are treating the whole person, truly praticising a holistic medicine, a form of medicine that attempts to integrate the mind and body of the person as a ‘real’ person in the midst of ‘their’ and ‘our’ cultural setting(s)! (47)

	The materialist overlooks the mental dimension of the relatively non-material. Being a materialist would make no sense if the materialist has no idea what might be constituted by the relatively non-material. Then, if they wish to overlook, re-write this correlative contrast and in the process hierarchicalize their preferences in this regard to that extent that they endeavour to do this to that same extent that they have merely enshrined their own prejudices in some form of inert, opaque philosophical concrete. (48)

	The world-of-life is there all about us and if we wish to prejudicially enjoy some parts of it and discount others to the nether regions of the psyche so be it. But this unbalanced discipline is flawed to that extent it argues for one of those correlative prejudices and not its correlative opposite. Quickly, let us call in the deconstructionists to balance the books and once more let us indulge in our dealing directly with phenomena that need our full, immediate and practical attention! (49)

	Then, in contrast, an ordinary run of the mill short-sighted idealist is a person who enjoys the other side of the mirror by insisting that all is mind in some mental form or other. Now, it is true that we experience the world and it is through our mental faculties that we experience this experience of an apparent world… and that we can never experience the world apart from our mental experience of it… Does this give us the right to then declare "All is mental, all is mind" (or worse, "That all is Mind and Mind alone)? The phenomenologist argues along these same lines only part of the way and then they do so within the ambit of a transcendental suspension to the effect that to pre-adopt some form of preferential view on the world can only prejudice the conclusions of your arguments. By looking closely at the apparent demands of intentionality the phenomenologist notes that intentionality is always directed towards its intentional object. Moreover, they note the distinctive features in the complexities of intentional processes are also polarized and being polarized can never be experienced in a pure form since as correlativities they are mutually dependent upon each other in order to get up and run together. Hence the phenomenologist could never be a simple materialist nor a simple idealist! ‘Psyche’ is thematized by its contrast with ‘body’ and ‘body’ is thematized by its contrast with ‘mind’; to think of them as absolutely apart, when they are a part of each other, is to think non-sensibly, and to speak nonsense as a consequence! Hence this existential fact of embodiment, that we are embodied in this world-of-life (between the poles of 'body' and 'mind', and, between the senses of 'self' and 'other')! Moreover, we commit a transcendental mistake if we philosophically try to employ these various conventional (and metaphorically grounded) terms of reference beyond the confines of their conventional-metaphorical level of deployment! (50)

	We are also agents embodied in a world-with-others! In our embodiment in the life-world there is also this co-authorial dimension that should not be overlooked (a major theme developed in my Fourth Essay). The statements we utter in the world are not just our statement alone! We are talking to a world that is listen to us even if we are only talking quietly or silently to ourselves. It is as if the world is already eavesdropping and in this ‘listening’ we speak to this collective sense of self. This aspect is accomplished for-us by this intersubjective sense of self that is embedded in a meta-textual sense of genre and an understanding of context in the formation of our thoughts and utterances. However, this passive sense of the other is sometimes overruled by an active sense of the other wherein thoughts and utterances are actively manufactured by more than one intentional agent, more than one author. This dimension being co-authorial in complexion – an intersubjective realm wherein more than one author congregate to manufacture texts together (in either real and/or virtual space). Hence the implication of a co-authorial realm that should also be taken into account in the conduct of all therapeutic encounters and all other forms of engagement! (51)

	Hence in the practice of a truly holistic medicine all three dimensions of the somatic, the psychic and the co-authorial should be appropriately taken into account and all utterances and performances should reflect in due measure the proportion these three realms enter into the formations and exercises of current discourse. How is this re-apportioning of our concern for the other person to be appropriately divided between these three realms of being? By none other than the central emplacement and empowerment of an overall transcendental suspension whose active-reflection, in the consequential flow of activity arising in and from that act of reflection, should duly mirror spontaneously as if without effort (through the release and 'bubbling over' of an existential sense of value above and beyond that merely invested in that sense of active-reflection). Hence the realization of a semblance of response, the sensitive aesthetics of its responsitivity and the existential ethos of responsibility receptive to the required nature of that process of therapeutic interaction and possible intervention. In effect, more value of a particular sort being commensurately given to that particular realm of being that engenders this type of response, etc. So, if a patient has a somatically-oriented illness our most important course of responsible action may well concern itself primarily with somatically-oriented treatments, etc. On the other hand, no patient is a mere 'body' nor a mere 'mind' nor a 'gallery of whispering gossips', and, all three dimensions should be apportioned according to existentially perceived needs in these different but interrelated realms of being that collectively establish our sense of being a person in this world-of-life; this life-world as re-constituted by-us for-ourselves! (52)

5.   Inappropriate and Inadequate Diagnosis - Importance of Typology/Topology!

	One of the tasks a phenomenologist sets for them self is the determination of essential type. But the life-world is ‘one’ world-of-life and therefore essence can never be absolutely distinctive, i.e., a phenomenal/phenomenologically appreciated essence can only exist within certain relative parameters with a certain degree of essential distinctiveness. E.g., some substances can be a hundred times sweeter than sugar but (I speculate) not a thousand times sweeter (or if substances exist that are a thousand times sweeter then there are no substances that are tens of thousands of times sweeter than sugar, etc.). There is always a limit to phenomenal essentiality. Moreover, some foods may be sweet, some may be bitter, but they still remain foodstuffs. So, the point of my analogy being, that the determination of essence is always limited by degree and subsumed within higher, more over-arching natural (and artificial) categories. Then, again, finer and finer distinctions could be made, in principle, within a certain essential-type, but, may offer no merit in the process. Likewise, accommodations between any one essential-type and some other can be made, in principle, but, again, may offer no merit in the process. ‘Merit’ being relatively defined as an excess existential value realized that is greater than that invested in that process of distinction or accommodation in the course of the utilization of that distinction and/or accommodation. This relativity and limitation of phenomenal-essence/phenomenological appreciation of phenomenal-essence implies that there can be no absolute essence of an essence; as essence is defined as distinctive within certain phenomenal/phenomenologically appreciated limitations. Hence the phenomenologist, in effect, maps both the typology of essential distinctiveness (within distinctive boundaries) and the topology of that type in a non-absolutely integrated cultural-intercultural mapping of the life-world, its phenomenal sense as defined elsewhere which corresponds with the first moment of the hermeneutic circle which is reductive, retrospective and phenomenal in orientation. The second moment dealing with meaning is seen as hermeneutical in orientation, i.e., noting how one gestalt field of meaning relates to it sense-determinations within that field and between fields, in effect, an ecology of fields and, in contrast with the first moment, is re-constitutive, prospective and, as stated, hermeneutical in orientation. The last moment of the hermeneutic circle is the existential suspension and deals with meaningfulness with a temporal orientation towards the historical present, and, as a doorway through the overall suspension to an ahistorical sense of an existential present as spontaneous, creative, rich, self-enriching, ongoing, as moving within the semblance of the eternal moment (to quote or paraphrase miscellaneous existentialists). That we should note therefore that phenomenal essence is always limited by boundary conditions, and, that ‘type’ always exists within a topologically pre-determined accommodational structure (interlinked through our cultural-intercultural psychic mapping of the life-world as explicitly or implicitly expressed through the use of language)! (53)

	Let me illustrate this phenomenal-phenomenological relationship between typology and topology by re-visiting work done in my Second Essay on a mapping of various types of psychosis and my speculations on what mechanisms might allow all these different types of psychosis to be collectively catalogued as ‘psychotic’ in complexion (as opposed to being ‘neurotic’ or ‘stasic’ in character). (54)

	In that essay we noted various (speculative) topological similarities between say affective psychoses and cognitive psychoses. Based on the tripartite nature of the hermeneutic circle in a gestalt-oriented frame of reference, doubled between the distinctions of a covert-background and overt-focalization, I postulated six affective-psychotic modes and in parallel six cognitive-psychotic modes. Then, I did the same for judgmental-psychotic modes and by implication hypothetically envisaged the same for organic psychoses as well. Basically, similar semi-autonomously independent topologies were proposed within a hypo-topological space, namely, the epistemological hierarchy that constitutes the subjective, experiential nature of our being embodied in this world-of-life. The speculative question was then raised as to what phenomenal/phenomenological mechanism could be metaphorically proposed as ‘explaining’ or ‘illustrating’ why these various psychotic states could all be collectively embraced as psychotic, indeed, hopefully explaining at the same time why we also rarely find an instance of a pure psychotic type; the usual picture being a composite of primary psychotic features and secondary psychotic features, e.g. the paranoid schizophrenic with an endogenous depression, or, a suicidal, endogenously depressed paranoid schizophrenic.  (55)

	The mechanism I proposed, and would still argue for, is an underlying, defective archetypal exercise of the suspension, the third moment of our hermeneutic circle treated in archetypal terms of reference. Location of that defective exercise in the epistemological hierarchy and the nature of its spread from that epicentre (or epicentres?) determining, in conjunction with the uniqueness of life-history of that individual in the matrix of a certain cultural history (in a hyper-matrix of intercultural influences), the characteristic nature of that illness albeit within certain probabilistic boundaries further qualified by chaotically influenced determinations/indeterminations. Hence the ideal presentation of type and trueness to type in the phenomenological determination of phenomenal reality, and, broader topologically based influences (along with those idiosyncratic descriptions of an individual that uniquely make an individual an individual). It being the task of the phenomenologically-oriented therapist to accurately determine the type of an illness and all topological features apparently inter-linked with the same. That, ultimately, there can be no absolute difference between phenomenal/phenomenological typology and topology since from the perspective of the epistemological hierarchy they together psychically map our implicit and explicit collective vision of the life-world along with all possible somatic-psychic-co-authorial defects that could ideally, and in practice, effect the functioning of the individual somatically and/or psychically and/or co-authorially! It being the task of the phenomenological-oriented therapist, therefore, to hypothetically determine this overall mapping, and the mapping of defects within the same, and, to skilfully apply the same in the course of their therapeutic practice! Again, the rhetorical question: “How is this to be done?” Again, my rhetorical answer: “Through the auspices of an overall transcendental suspension conducted with due propriety (pragmatically and deontologically)!” (56)

	But is this too much to ask the busy therapist? Why should they subscribe to phenomenology? And why this variety of phenomenology? My answer to these hypothetical objections is that the therapist is already operating phenomenologically! My implicit proposal is to offer a refinement of how they already go about this type of task , i.e., determining what type of illness is present or what type of illnesses are present, try to determine the possible interrelationships between these various illness if more than one is present, determine what pre-conditions and conditions might have 'caused' those illnesses that are present, and in the light of this classificational mapping(s) of illnesses already in use attempt to determine the best therapeutic program given this type of situation, and, in the process, formulate what would constitute success and expected success in the adoption of that (simple or complex) course of treatment! Moreover, our classifications in use are already considerably pre-determined, and, that only on the expanding edges of our medically-oriented universe does the therapist find those relatively more problematic areas both in diagnosis and treatment! (57)

	Why am I concerned about appropriate and adequate diagnosis and appropriate and adequate treatment? Why should we not be?! If a patient has a leg with advanced gangrene that needs amputation and the surgeon instead chops off a perfectly good arm would we not question the management of that therapeutic program?  Indeed, the true pursuit of best practice demands that we endeavour to produce the best diagnostic mappings of this medically oriented vision of the life-world, and, the best range of critically pre-evaluated treatment options that can be applied thereafter. This ‘science and art’ of diagnosis and treatment is the topic for this specialist of the therapeutic practitioner  and we expect them to discharge their duty in these fields to the best of their ability. An ability augmented by an intentional awareness of the role played by the overall transcendental suspension already being exercised by them in and through all processes of judgement be they diagnostic and/or treatment and/or re-evaluative in orientation! (58)

5.	That Every Current Condition Can Be Treated and Should Be Treated
          Including this Over-optimistic Optimism?!

	The therapist needs to know their limits! And they need to know the limits of current theory and current practice! Limitations that are clearly determined through the practice of the overall transcendental suspension! By suspending our prejudices, our pre-judgments, all illusions of optimism and pessimism, through the auspices of the overall transcendental suspension our strengths and weaknesses are painfully exposed before us! We are human and to be human is to be limited! We all have our limitations! The therapeutic practitioner needs to know theirs as those limits will be met and painfully noted each and every day. They are not supermen however much we might wish to treat our therapists in that light in the sometimes vain hope that they can help us overcome our current crop of ailments and adverse conditions. Then, finally, this creaky, cranky mechanism of a worn out, used up body will give out on us and go the way all compounded things are teleologically destined to pass. In the meantime, however, let us also suspend all existential fear and dread that the human condition is merely ‘a bursting bag of blood and bone destined for the garden of the world’ and get on with out existences by living our life in and through the realistic equanimity of the overall transcendental suspension savouring what small delights and treasure will pass our way day by day… and therein relishing our freedom to be more than just ‘a blob of miscellaneous gelatinous materials masquerading with a backbone’! (59)

	That, alas, some patients are beyond therapy (in accordance with our definition) and can only be treated in a palliative fashion if that were to be called for. On the other hand, but in the same vein, we also have ‘patients’ that cannot be currently treated except perhaps symptomatically if that were to be appropriate. Therapeutic limits should be faced and the practice of going through the pretence of treating patients that cannot be currently treated should be faced and confronted for what it is, namely, a sham! In some measure our prisons operate in this fashion. What cannot be rectified must be subjected to a longer period of rectification in the vain hope that eventually ‘we’ will be able to get it right an ‘cure’ those so called ‘afflicted individuals’. Moreover, there is a tendency in hospitals to find it ‘easier’ to admit than to discharge (even though I often point out to admission officers that their task is more in the line of making sure a lot more people actually don’t get admitted than the number being seen implying that the true title of their office should ‘non-admitting officers’). In the light of these tendencies (of institutional inertia, etc., at all stages of the therapeutic process) therapists need to recognize the limitations of current diagnosis and methods and act more humanely both therein and thereafter. All too often a conspiracy of silence descends upon the prognosis of the patient and even the patient is not made fully aware of the ramifications of their illness and its consequences and what practical expectations they should hold with respect to their current condition or set of conditions and its desired amelioration. That, in essence, we should accept that some patients are currently beyond therapy! (60)

7.	What Conclusions should we Draw? - That Suspensions should be Suspended!
 					  Just as Excessive Medicine Manifests as Poison!

	I would argue that the theory and practice of medicine, whether somatic, psychic or co-authorial in orientation, should be conducted by the therapist through the auspices of an overall transcendental suspension conducted with due propriety in order to critically engage with the manner of their current formulation and exercise of their therapeutic programs. I would also argue that to go beyond therapy we can only attempt this difficult task by also suspending the prejudice and preferentialization of our current attitudes, etc! Moreover, we need to hermeneutically appreciate those areas of our research that are preoccupying our attention suggesting the presence of blind spots, a psychic struggling with aporias and internal contradictions, etc., or, the outright intuitive awareness of our current limitations in that regard and the current edges of discipline(s). I suspect, however, that what is beyond us is well and truly beyond most of us, and, that even ‘if it were to hit us’ we would not be in a position to recognize the import of that type of event; that such ‘insight’ would not manifest as insight. But, some people do recognize those events that signal an expansion in the extent of our knowledge of the life-world and I would suggest that that level of appreciation took place through a prior appreciation of those current limits that needed to be tested and over-looked without being ‘overlooked’ because of an inability to currently recognize their true worth, so to speak, by those less prepared for such recognition. Moreover, a set of relatively influential people are also needed who can come quickly to appreciate this novelty of in-sight – otherwise that prophet is merely “crying in the wilderness.” (61)

What measure can we put in place to help us to extend the current boundaries of our own knowledge of the life-world, perhaps, the current boundaries of our collective awareness of the life-world in that same regard? By what measures should we adopt and adapt the exercise of an overall transcendental suspension to this task within the fullest sense of propriety available to us? Let me sketch out some possible, general guidelines for the exercise of this sort of intention. (62)

	What is problematic should be focused on, and, everything else should also be treated as problematic in order to put ourselves in a position where we can evaluate and therein test the strength of all relevant current connections idealistically hypothesized and realistically exercised in those regards. That ultimately we should practice a totally de-preferentialization of all preferentialization but in and through a hierarchical sequence of observed problematicity! In the process getting down and dirty with what is truly at the coal-face in our investigations as we probe into these areas of our deepest care and concern. (63)

That, essentially, we present ourselves with a complex methodological, metaphorcal appreciation of reality and in this light we need to ask “To what extent is there also a picturing of reality in this regard?” Because the metaphorical cannot literally depict reality in its illustration of the life-world we must ask “To what extent this picturing is so and to what extent this picturing is not so?!” However, we should also note that because there can only be one world-of-life, one-life-world in which to encounter the world-of-the-other, it implies that the reality of our perceptions and insights into the phenomenal/phenomenally appreciated nature of this one world-of-life must be direct and, to that extent, real! Noting that by ‘real’ we mean both a relative multi-modal richness along with a richness of content, or phenomenal saturation, in key, specific modalities that establish and distinctively characterize that particular, comparative(ly ‘felt’) sense of  ‘reality’. In other words reality is not determined in and through a representationalist point of view but though this appreciation of modal richness and the individual richness of those modes experienced in our phenomenal/phenomenlogical appreciation of the reality of that situation as a situation in reality (as determined phenomenologically… and that can only be determined phenomenologically whether we accept that fact or not!). (64)

Only in the ‘reality of the reality’ of that experience do we have a directness of perception through there being only ‘one’ life-world and that there can be no ‘real’ inner worlds of experience nor any ‘real’ external worlds of experience as well! Hence the directness of reality experienced through the overall suspension itself being suspended (through a de-preferentialization of even the not-textual) allows direct access to this world which is none other that this one-life-world as our-world-of-life!! The moral of this story I am spinning is that even the suspension itself must be suspended, done away with, put to the side, overlooked… and that, therein, is our path of freedom to enter this one-world-of-life even though, in truth, this is an illusion since we have never left this world-of-life in the first place however inauthentic our intentions and manner of purporting ourselves in the world-of-life. Remember there is even honour among thieves! That central to all intentions and to all actions there is an authenticity of being to that extent that we are capable of simultaneously exercising both this overall transcendental suspension and its total de-suspension at the same time – a degree of authenticity guaranteed by virtue of our being able to operate to some extent in this world-of-life since otherwise we would be paralyzed and trapped in some form of provisional suspension! (65)

	By these means, of the suspension of the suspension, we must now announce the belated return of the phenomenologist hitherto feared lost, if not trapped, in the transcendental dimension! We welcome you back to the reality of this real world, the reality of this world-of-life in which there was no real escape nor a real need for escape. Here we are embodied. An embodied embodiment in which we should have no fear of change since it is through the change of change that we are presented and re-presented to others in this world-of-life and they in turn are presented and re-presented to us… along with the infinite richness of all other things…. (66)

	So, even though the ‘medicine’ of therapy is the overall transcendental suspension as it plays itself out on theoretical, practical and critical levels and spheres of engagement, too much of a good thing turns to ‘poison’ and the fundamental nature of the suspension itself needs to be suspended, overthrown, written off, cast out…! What is done with one hand is to be undone by the other… the ultimate sacrifice of dogmatism… including the ultimate sacrifice of all sense of self along with all sense of world even though the life-world returns itself to us as the simulation it is as constituted in ‘our’ consciousness as it beholds us as we behold it and each other through this mutually interactive, relatively transparent sense of 'the other'…! (67)

8.	Therapy is Never Beyond Therapy - What ‘Lies’ Beyond Therapy 
    Cannot be Therapeutic!

	This essay and this set of essays have no final conclusion. They must remain a work in progress. However, let me address a small number of themes in order to present this collection of papers with the illusion of a coda, the pretence of a pause; perhaps even a semblance of a real full-stop. (68)

	I would like to do this in the space of one paragraph by making some provisional claims in bold and underlining my motivation, and, indicating some future directions in aspiration through the use of italics in the hope of producing an essential synthesis of where I find myself finally standing for the moment on this extensive topic of beyond therapy. (69)

	As a phenomenologist I have produced a quite detailed, although forever provisional, definition of what being therapeutic means. Central to the therapeutic transformation, and its minimization of adversity for the patient, is the role of the overall transcendental suspension in theoretically mapping the typology and topology of illnesses, in the practical formulation and causal instantiation of individual treatment programs, and the critical assessment and self-re-assessment of those treatment programs! Our phenomenological recognition of the life-world allows us to transcend the collective lack of vision on the part of realists and materialists, on one hand, and, on the other, to also equally transcend the over abundance of vision on the part of idealists and spiritualists! To recognize that our being in this world-of-life is as an embodied being who is also thrown into/fallen from a spiritual realm of being in our being-with-others by virtue of the fact that the spiritual world cannot be written off by a short-sighted focusing on the materiality of our being embodied since our intentionality, central to our experiential being in this world, cannot be rendered as the merely material since intentions cannot be dismissed as mere intentional objects (and intentional states) because intentional objectivity is only a polarity and as such cannot be obtained or even thought in that so called pure form or format. Hence the existence of the spiritual by default to that extent that it too does not get short-sightedly written up in turn in a similarly absolutistically unobtainable modality of the merely spiritual. Immersed as we are in this life-world as embodied we find our freedom though the transcendence of the everyday, the natural, the whatever… through the very act of the overall suspension and its simultaneous self-suspension ‘in turn’. Hence to go beyond the current state of therapy we need to suspend all our preferences… all our ontological commitments (lest we become psychotic whether covertly or overtly)… suspend all our epistemological expectations (lest we become neurotically preoccupied with a fearfulness of the future)… suspend all patterns of existential intervention (lest we become root-bound in a stasic condition without change and lost to all its pleasures and pains that so enrich our being in this world-of-life)… and suspend all sense of the overall suspension too! A ‘trick of existence’ that we imbibe in the very being of the being of our being… in all its change… to that extent all identity also appears to endure, meet with duration, allows us to appear in time… and be met and engaged in time! It being through ‘engagement with the other’ that the therapist can intervene in the world of the other. All forms of causal intervention in this world-of-life being instigated through the power of the suspension and its self-de-suspension… allowing us to simulate an intentionally re-directed process of change whose psychic centre of operations is more elevated in the psychic organization of the epistemological hierarchy that constitutes the experiential nature of our embodied being and its semblance of an active intentionally-directedness therein. Hence the activity of reflection – to ensure an active response, the aesthetic of its responsitivity and its eventual realization of a sense of an ethos of responsibility and the authenticity of an existential transformation of the same through a purification and refinement of the relatively inauthentic. Hence the role of the therapist is to existentially transform the current facticity of our relationships that therein the relative adversity of our existences can be minimized and minimized therapeutically! Deriving therein our powers of existential discrimination and therapeutic acumen. Part of which is to realize to what extent current therapy cannot go beyond, and to try to do so is only to lie to the patient. That what cannot be treated should not be ‘treated’! Therapy is therapy and should never be a pretence even though the therapist should be aware that some patients prefer not to know too much… for the moment… without at the same time a conspiracy of silence! Moreover, there can be no ultimate medicine, no ultimate treatment… all is doomed to failure… but just going for the ride is how we regain our dignity… through the existential transformation of the relatively inauthentic since authenticity as the existential transformation of experience is the transformation of inauthentic experience and not the authentic transformation of authentically-oriented experience! There is this eternal correlativity between the authentic and the inauthentic that allows us to do this act of tightrope walking… because only in moving on existentially can we become more authentic in our thoughts, words and deeds… The extent to which there is the semblance of an ultimate therapy is to that extent the overall suspension is allowed to both write itself and be written off at the same time. Only a few postmodernists, in passing through this world-of-life, realized the true role of deconstruction is therapeutic, and, that no type of value should be privileged! Only by those means does identity, beauty, morality, utility, interpretative truth and facts return to this worldly stage, this passing pageant of simulated simulation and the multi-modal richness of its ‘reality’ expressed therein… What implications does a recognition and acceptance of this phenomenological fact of the overall transcendental suspension and its self-de-suspension have for our re-viewing the world as a simulation of a simulation, as that to be questioned and the fact of that question to be questioned in turn…?? As therapeutic..!! The only therapy that we as human beings in this world-of-life must possess… before all subsidiary forms of therapy can operate… and therein, perhaps, allow us to exerience some degree of benefit… be that somatic, psychic and/or co-authorially cultural in extent… hence implicating a cultural-intercultural dimension along with an existential self-referential treatment of the treatment process itself through such critical self-re-evaluation!!! Furthermore, as each and every relationship has the simulated semblance of ‘a life of its own’, being psychically greater than the sum of its parts, its stand to reason that each and every relationship to that extent it has a ‘life’ of its own is able to critically reflect upon the course of its own actions and therein refine the course of its path through this world-of-life and as a consequence mutually re-define its neighbour and thence, therein, a change of culture. That to this same extent changes in therapeutic theory, practice and critique will have ramifications for that culture and, forthwith, ramifications for all other cultures (and institutions). Moreover, there are cultural consequences stemming from the existential fact that therapy itself can be subject to treatment in the course of its own critical self-re-evaluation, in the inevitable movement of itself beyond the imperfect fashions that constitute current forms of therapy !?  (70)

							         Noël Tointon, Sydney, 30.4.03.