growth project of therapy

growth a huge part of the project of therapy, but the very word grow is a word appropriate to children. After a certain age you do not grow. You don’t grow teeth, you don’t grow muscles. If you start growing after that age, it’s cancer. The standard therapeutic answer is: you’re growing yourself.

child archetype worship

You know, in the organic world when anything begins to grow it’s moving constantly into unfamiliar movements and unfamiliar things. Watch birds grow—they fall down, they can’t quite do it. Their growing is all awkwardness. Watch a fourteen-year-old kid tripping over his own feet.

Danish philosopher Kierkegaard, a founder of existentialism, would say, “The deeper natures don’t change, they become more and more themselves.”

Jung says individuation is becoming more and more oneself, he also says, the most terrifying thing is to know yourself … becoming more and more oneself — the actual experience of it is not growing but shrinking, a loss of illusions … of course not what consumerism tells you, but shedding feels good, it’s a lightening up … all that imagination changes … growth is always loss.

undermine the theories we do have—theories we’ve built a very profitable industry out of

fantasy of growth in therapy

linked mentions for "growth project of therapy":

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2. describing core motivational drives

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3. collective obsession with growth

   Curious and perhaps not very subtle correlation between Hillman's words on our obsession with psychological growth and the GDP of economics.

4. fantasy of growth in therapy

   the fantasy of growth that you find in therapy, and also in New Age thought, doesn’t include this awkwardness … when we look at people going through