Seishin kogo sayo
Morita therapy posits Seishin kogo sayo as a causative component in the pathology of neurosis. Seishin kogo sayo occurs when a person focuses attention on a feeling or sensation, causing hypersensitivity to it, and this hypersensitivity in turn causes the person to fix still more attention on that feeling or sensation. In short, the term describes a mental process in which feelings and the focus on them mutually influence and intensify one another. This phenomenon is widely known in cognitive psychology and other disciplines by terms such as “the vicious cycle of sensation and attention.”
As a practical example, consider heart palpitations. The feeling of a fast, fluttering or pounding heart is often triggered by a host of everyday causes, including fatigue and lack of sleep. Palpitations may be a concern for most people for the short time until they pass, but the hypersensitive shinkeishitsu personality can start worrying that the heartbeat irregularity is a sign of heart disease. When the individual begins fixating on that possibility, the anxiety sets off an autonomic nervous system (fight-or-flight) stress response, which further intensifies the racing or pounding heartbeat. This, in turn, causes the person to focus still more attention on their heart function, which again worsens the palpitations, giving rise to the vicious cycle that Morita therapy calls Seishin kogo sayo.
Arugamama – accepting reality as it is (obedience to nature)
People tend to interpret the term arugamama to mean to letting things be, remaining in a natural state, or being one’s self. However, as used in Morita therapy it has a somewhat different meaning.
Arugamama describes a shift in orientation, from a mood-governed state of mind to action-based, purposeful living, centered on doing what needs to be done. The arugamama approach seeks to challenge patterns of escapist behavior and attitudes that neurotic individuals tend to fall into. It is a do-it-anyway antidote to rationalizations such as “My mood is too down to do it now, but I’ll get to it when I’m feeling better,” or “I’m too anxious to go school or work. I would be okay to do things if only I didn’t have this anxiety.”
The arugamama philosophy holds that we cannot control our moods and emotions as we cannot control the weather, but moods, like weather, are impermanent. Although we may have no say in the timing, we do know that unpleasant moods will eventually dissipate, just as unpleasant weather will naturally settle down. Therefore, Morita therapy encourages neurotic patients to just let their anxious emotions and symptoms play out without getting fixated on or pushed around by them. Instead, they are directed to control what they can control – behavior – and take purposeful action, such as doing that day’s work, or taking care of the household chores staring them in the face. Accepting the reality of human nature without intellectual resistance and doing what needs to be done regardless of mood is the embodiment of the arugamama attitude.
Guiding principles of emotion
Shoma Morita stated that his treatment focuses on emotion, more than any system of logic or volition. He went on to describe emotion as a phenomenon governed by five laws or principles.
- Emotion allowed to take its natural course will assume a bell-shaped trajectory. It flares up, reaches a climax, then lessens and disappears.
- Emotion rapidly dissipates when the underlying impulses are satisfied.
- Emotion becomes progressively less intense and worrisome when it is repeatedly stimulated by the same sensation.
- Emotion intensifies when its stimulus is continuous and when attention is overly focused on the emotion or stimulus.
- Emotion is learned through new experience, and is then cultivated by repetition.
Emotion, like mood, is not within any individual’s control. Since the experience of emotion is a natural response to living, it cannot be eliminated or manipulated to suit one’s wishes.
Shiso no mujun – contradiction between ideas and reality
Shoma Morita coined the term shiso no mujun to describe the gap between a neurotic patient’s idealized vision of how their reality “should be,” and the actual facts of that reality. Shiso no mujun means “contradiction between ideas and reality,” a type of unrealistic, and hence maladaptive, thinking.
Morita therapy practitioners often refer to similar contradictions involving other opposite but complementary phenomena, such as between subjectivity and objectivity, emotion and knowledge, and intellectual versus experiential understanding.
As an example of subjectivity and objectivity in conflict, imagine a patient who has a morbid fear of heart failure. One or more physicians have informed the patient that their heart is fine. That, then, is the objective fact. Nevertheless, the patient remains fearful. Their fear is a also a fact, subjective fact. To be psychologically sound, the individual needs to acknowledge both the objective fact – that their heart function is normal – and the subjective fact – that they are living in fear of heart failure. A contradiction arises when the person refuses to accept this coexistence.
Emotion and knowledge likewise coexist in counterpoint. This is exemplified by our reaction upon seeing a caterpillar. When we feel discomfort, disgust or fear, those are emotional facts. At the same time, however, we know intellectually that the caterpillar is not venomous and is not going to come flying to attack us. Therefore, if we react to seeing the creature by immediately closing our eyes and running away, we are being governed by emotion. It is the power of intellect that allows us to approach the caterpillar and remove it if need be, in spite of our feelings of disgust. Our ability to do this exemplifies the way emotion and knowledge coincide. Accepting both the subjective reality of our emotional reaction and the objective understanding of the situation is a psychologically healthy arugamama attitude, and it produces the most sensible action in response to seeing the insect.
In contrast to this balanced outlook, it is possible to go overboard with intellect. If we believe that we can’t make the effort to approach a caterpillar unless and until we eliminate the emotional disgust it engenders and create a more positive feeling about it; we are trying to use logic to suppress emotional facts. This is another example of the contradiction between ideas – in this case ideas born of our knowledge, and reality – our emotional reality.
Similar conflict can also arise between intellectual understanding (rikai) and experiential knowledge (taitoku). The former is more abstract, relies on inference, and is used to judge how things should or should not be, whereas the latter is knowledge and awareness obtained from direct practice and experience. It is possible to make an intellectual judgment about how a food ought to taste without having the physical experience of it, but in reality we can never know how something tastes until we have actually eaten it.
Plunge into fear
Trying to avoid fear only makes it stronger. For example, when a person feels fearful, walking calmly can help allay the fear, but breaking into a run will increase the sense of terror.
Since running from fear just makes the pursuit more heated, it’s important to stand one’s ground when fear strikes. Rather than trying to escape, it makes more sense to plunge into the fear and go straight through it.
In Morita therapy, plunging into fear describes a therapeutic method that encourages neurotic patients to directly face the objects of their anxieties. They do this even as they experience anticipatory fear of the symptoms (aggravated inner conflict, panic attacks) that these objects or situations trigger.
The idea of owning and breaking through one’s fear is exemplified by one of Shoma Morita’s patients, whose fear of blushing was so severe that riding on trains was impossible. Morita instructed the patient to muster the courage to get on board anyway, and proudly display his reddened face to all the other passengers.
Therapy for phobias of this sort typically involves exposing and gradually acclimating patients to milder instances of the trigger, then building up to more distressing forms, until they can finally face the most fearful objects and scenarios. However, neurotic patients commonly find that sudden, total immersion into the object, action or phenomenon that they had thought frightening (i.e., plunging into fear), causes the fear to naturally dissipate. Through the experience, they come to understand that they can meet challenges that were once too difficult to take on, and the joy of success spurs them to greater courage.
Put another way, fearful or worrisome situations and actions at first frighten patients like powerful waves in the ocean. However, once they dive through them, the fear naturally passes over and disappears.
Desire for life
The notion of “desire for life” is fundamental to the theory and practice of Morita therapy. It refers to the unceasing human drive to live, improve and advance.
Desire for life is multi-faceted. Human beings inherently wish to live well, to be recognized, to have importance in the world, to maintain good health and so on. In total, these represent a positive psychological force that any sound person would normally be expected to have.
However, another strong, complementary natural force exists behind, and in tension with, the desire to exist. This is the negative psychological energy that manifests as fear and anxiety over the things human beings inherently do not want. People worry that they will be unrecognized, unimportant, beset with disease. They fear they will be dead.
Simply put, desire for life and fear of death (as anxiety and dread) exist within the psyche on opposite sides of the same coin.
Given this reality, the Morita therapeutic philosophy holds that accepting both the desire for life and the fear of death as facts of human nature is the natural way of being in the world.
Thus, in Morita therapy treatment, patients are encouraged to stop trying to eliminate fear and anxiety, and instead direct their attention to constructive action toward expressing the positive energy (desire for life) inherent in their makeup.