Dan Keusal 's e-newsletter Winter 2010-2011 edition

One night back in early December, I had a dream. In the dream, I'd come into my office one morning and found that it had been vastly expanded and remodeled. The warm, personal, two-office/one waiting-room suite I currently share with two colleagues was now big enough to accommodate 20 or 30 clinicians plus a large support staff, while my individual office had been reduced in size by about a third. The entire suite had been repainted and re-carpeted in a drab, uniform olive and brown color scheme, intended to give it a more "medical" feel. Great effort had been taken to minimize or eliminate variations from room to room, in the halls, and in the common areas. And all of this had been done overnight by our landlords in violation of our lease and without our permission.

Jung observed that some dreams are meant both for the individual and for the collective, and I wonder if this was one of those dreams.

Many people I talk with these days--clients, family members, friends, colleagues--feel the same way I did at the end of the dream: dismayed at what has been forced upon us under cover of darkness, and anxious about how to respond. It's as if all traces of idiosyncratic vision and individual experience are being squeezed out, each person's allotment of individuality cut by a third. The "landlords" of the world, the larger forces that feel beyond our control (the economy, politicians, corporations, schools, even some of those entrusted with the care and feeding of our healing professions and our sacred traditions) rather than being stewards, co-creators, and partners, enforce a kind of "factory" mentality, a "one-size fits all" approach in the name of productivity, efficiency, and even "health."

In the face of such things, there are still reasons to be hopeful. Because just when the powers that be seem to be getting too good at herding us into uniformly remodeled "offices," the soul brings us Georgia O'Keefe, "Field of Dreams," The Beatles, Martin Luther King Jr., Harry Potter, Pema Chodron, "Whale Rider": reminders that the soul is alive and well--quirky, defiant, quiet, creative, subversive, visionary, unpredictable, comforting, empowering, evocative.

Psychotherapy at its best helps us cultivate life at this level--not the level of "famous examples of great achievements," but the level that dares to defy the distorting outer forces, and turns instead to draw vision and strength from the wellspring of resilience and creativity rising up from within each of us. While helping us find short-term solutions to the acute problems that sometimes befall us, the best therapy goes beyond that, provides us with a container, a safe space and time where we can ask "Who am I? What gives my life meaning? Where does my everyday life merge with the deeper currents of the soul, and flow out in contribution to the great ocean of Life?"

Over the holidays, one of my office mates gave me a hand-made gift, a quote from Jung cross-stitched into a piece of cloth and simply framed. The quote reads: "Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens."

I've hung her gift on the wall of my office, right next to the door, in the hopes that each person who passes through that portal will be reminded of their own value, and that the portal will be one into and out of an office that remains warm and personal, a worthy home for the soul's musings.

As this New Year continues to unfold, I invite you to look inside, to treasure the glorious, idiosyncratic mess that you find there, and to awaken!