When psychotherapy is driven or directed by ideology or caring-empathy, personality factors and resonance between client and therapist will be seen as more important than what is necessary and perhaps moreso than what is beneficial (see pgs.28-9 Therapy With Difficult Clients). Otherwise, the purpose of therapy is to evoke universal human potentials in a manner consistent with and/or beneficial to the client’s wellbeing as well as to develop unique abilities and appreciation based on individual experience. Therapy is moved by potential shaping reality (see pgs.42-3, “Change as a Skill”).
This change-focus is similar among individuals, dyads, small groups, and large groups. On an individual level, if one’s will and purpose are not consistent and clear, change is driven by conceptual beliefs, emotional shifts, and external circumstances. When one understands how changes may occur within a human milieu, reliance shifts towards: universal potentials, unique attributes, flexible wisdom, and resilience. The major drive, then, is felt to be creative potential unfolding instead of avoidance of negativity (in concepts, emotions, or circumstances).
Tolerance is a test of egoic strength and strategies along with functional fit between individual and environment. Too much time or intensity turns tolerance to frustration, which then leads to anger and/or avoidance. One standard “enlightened”/politically-correct strategy is to go directly from tolerance and mild frustration to avoidance in order to sidestep obvious frustration and anger.
As tolerance is a matured form of impulsivity (in that one maintains individual purpose/desire while recognizing other’s purposes/desires), appreciation is a matured form of tolerance (in that one recognizes mutual interactions of complex individual actors and multiple purposes within a larger system of relationship. Relationship with appreciation may be called communion.)
Appreciation incorporates a matured sense of pleasure or enjoyment. Where one may experience pleasure without recognizing other actors, and one may enjoy social interaction without a significant degree of understanding oneself or one’s fellows, appreciation allows individual pleasure, shared emotional enjoyment, and also mutual agreement along with conceptual disagreement. Democracy is an example of the appreciation of disagreement.
Appreciation incorporates conceptual, systemic understanding, and allows one to appreciate (if not necessarily enjoy) relinquishing individual purpose or pleasure for what may be agreed upon as a higher or more inclusive cause or purpose. In such cases, will need not dominate emotional motivation in an overbearing manner. One might understand one’s ability to reprioritize, enjoy the sense of communion that remains due to reprioritization, appreciate one’s own willingness to reprioritize, and also choose to realign one’s emotional allegiance from prior opinionations of value.
Appreciation (including understanding) encourages active realignment of emotional investment and allegiance. Tolerance is a halfway step that allows the possibility of such change, but it is not the conscious choice to embrace such change. So tolerance allows for progression whereas appreciation encourages progression. Appreciation can be developed and maintained individually, in dyads, small groups, or large groups.
Copyright 2007 Todd Mertz