Dr Sarah Corrie (Richmond Surrey/UK)
Inner Compassion and Emotional Well-being: A Psychological Perspective
Abstract
The principle of compassion is central to all the major spiritual traditions. However, traditionally, it has been a neglected topic in Western psychology. This paper discusses the recent growth of interest in compassion as a distinctive psychological asset and considers some of wider influences that may have been instrumental in bringing this about. Definitions are explored and an approach to working with compassion in psychological therapy is described. In the context of this development, the author asks what opportunities for fruitful dialogue might exist between psychology and theology – two disciplines whose respective contributions to understanding and intervening in human suffering have often been viewed in polarised terms.
Introduction
The role of compassion in religious traditions is well-recognised and emphasised as both a central aspect of spiritual teaching and a route to healing. However, within Western psychology, it is only relatively recently that compassion has been identified as a specific psychological strength that is worthy of academic interest. In consequence, the psychological literature on compassion has begun to flourish as questions of a theoretical, empirical and professional nature are more clearly formulated.
This emerging interest in compassion as one of a number of positively valenced affect states can be traced to at least three specific fields of influence:
1. The contribution of evolutionary psychology which posits that human beings, alongside other mammalian species, have evolved in such a way as to be highly sensitive and responsive to signals of care and affection from primary caregivers. This sensitivity is deemed to provide survival advantages in terms of eliciting protection and care from attachment figures.
2. Studies in neuroscience illustrating distinct patterns of brain activity in positive and negative affect states. These studies provide convincing evidence that the removal of distress does not necessarily result in greater happiness and contentment. These findings have provided scientific justification for studying dimensions of human experience (such as love, gratitude, justice and compassion) that have traditionally been considered beyond the domain of the social sciences.
3. The emergence of positive psychology, a distinct scientific discipline that aims to define, classify and measure human talents, strengths and happiness. The birth of this field of study at the beginning of the 21st Century has resulted in many systematic attempts to elucidate those characteristics and qualities that lead to optimum human functioning, with the potential to equip practitioners and their clients with a range of positive life practices (see Corrie, 2009, for one application of this).
As yet, there is no consensual definition of compassion. Whilst McKay and Fanning (1992) highlight the qualities of understanding, acceptance and forgiveness, Neff (2003) emphasises kindness, ‘common humanity’ and mindfulness. In contrast, Gilbert and Proctor (2006) provide a definition of compassion as involving a range of care-focused qualities aimed at increasing another’s chances of survival and/or well-being. Specifically, they describe compassion as comprising:
“…a number of key abilities that include a motivational aspect on the desire to care for the well-being of another, distress sensitivity/recognition related to the ability to detect and process distress…, sympathy related to being emotionally moved by distress, distress tolerance related to the ability to tolerate distress and painful feelings ‘in another’…, empathy related to intuitive and cognitive abilities…to understand the source of distress and what is necessary to help the one distressed and non-judgment related to the ability to be non-critical of the other’s situation or behaviours (p.6; italics in original).
Given that compassion is a multifaceted concept it is not perhaps surprising that diverse definitions emphasise different aspects of the construct. However, taken collectively, a number of distinct components, abilities or competencies can be seen as central:
o Feelings of warmth and ‘loving kindness’ towards another
o Sensitivity to the suffering of another
o A willingness to be moved by the predicament or distress experienced by another
o A care-focused outlook
o A sense of commitment to reducing the suffering of another
o A deep feeling for the human condition that is shared between self and another
o A mental attitude of acceptance and forgiveness
As Gilbert (2005) notes, psychology has traditionally tended to focus on related concepts such as attachment, prosocial behaviour and altruisim, and how these are related to specific competencies such as empathy. This raises an important question about how the operationalisation of compassion might enhance professional psychology practice.
Compassion as a basis for healing and transformation in mental health care
What might be the role of compassion in psychological therapy, where the aim is to improve the emotional well-being of an individual client? Given the essentially ‘care-focused’ abilities of which compassion comprises, should the aim be one of enabling clients to experience the effects of compassion when therapists extend it to them, or is it a distinct psychological asset that clients can be taught to offer themselves?
Lee (2005) observes how many clients, particular those with enduring emotional difficulties, struggle to experience self-directed emotional warmth. Indeed, lack of ability to offer oneself compassion has been associated with increased vulnerability to psychopathology (Neff, 2003), suggesting that assisting individuals in developing a more nurturing, sympathetic and compassionate outlook towards themselves and their difficulties would be conducive to improved mental health. However, self-criticism is noted as being difficult to modify with standard therapeutic methods, leading Gilbert and Proctor (2006) to propose the need for a distinct intervention aimed at engendering self-soothing and self-nurturing abilities.
A number of therapies are now attempting to incorporate the development of ‘inner compassion’ in their work with clients. However, one approach worthy of particular attention is Compassionate Mind Training (CMT), pioneered by Gilbert (2005; Gilbert and Proctor, 2006). CMT has been developed as a specific form of psychological intervention that can afford benefits for individuals with long-standing emotional difficulties who concurrently experience high levels of shame, self-criticism and self-loathing. It is hypothesised that adverse life experiences (in particular, abuse and neglect in early years) predispose such individuals towards developing extreme levels of self-criticism, self-attacking and shame, and simultaneously prevent opportunities for acquiring the necessary self-soothing abilities that might reduce shame-related threat.
In CMT, self-attacking is conceptualised as an internal dialogue of critical or blatantly hostile comments that come to represent an on-going source of threat to the self - a threat likely to have the same emotional impact as a verbal assault inflicted by another. These forms of self-attack are understood as representing a particular type of self-to-self relating, whereby one part of the self adopts a hostile and dominant manner, and another part responds in a submissive and defeated manner. CMT proposes that an additional aspect of the self has the potential to recognise and respond to the need for comfort, which enables the beaten-down self to feel soothed. In essence, through engaging in practices that foster self-acceptance and self-care, CMT provides a means through which clients are able to protect themselves from their own self-attacker, with consequent benefits for emotional well-being (Lee, 2005).
Compassion as a basis for balancing individual self-interest and collective concerns
Understanding the nature of the internal relationship with the self, and working towards the development of a healthy self-to-self relationship, is not solely of interest to therapists. Those writing from the perspective of different disciplines have equally expressed concern about the extent to which modern society equips individuals with the ability to develop a healthy internal world. Boff (2009), for example, highlights how ‘Inner Life’, the human depth that comes from a process of searching inward, is a neglected dimension of our humanity and argues cogently for the “…urgent need to rescue it” as a basis for serenity and dignity. This concern would, doubtless, be supported by others who see the cultivation of compassion as a basis for promoting human dignity (see for example, the Charter for Compassion, 2009).
In her work on leadership and organisational change, Wheatley (2002) argues that as a global community, we have unintentionally created many of the problems we face by basing our actions on assumptions that are fundamentally inconsistent with the beliefs needed to develop healthy societies. At the heart of this challenge, she argues, lies an erroneous belief that as individuals we exist “…free of the obligation of interdependence.”
As a reflection of the broader cultural values in which it is steeped, Western psychology is not immune from such criticism. Many forms of psychotherapy have, for example, been criticised for prizing an individualist approach to understanding and treating distress over and above a more systemic focus that recognises the impact of the disabling environments in which people find themselves. The challenge from marginalised groups (see Corrie and Lane, 2010, for a discussion of this) is forcing the professions to re-examine the value they have attached to individual freedom and choice and to reconsider wider social, economic and political factors that impact on how we live.
In his analysis of the individualistic focus of Western psychology, Cushman (1990) proposes that we can better understand these influences through exploring the notion of the bounded, masterful self – that is, a construct of the self as constrained by particular psychological boundaries, as having an internal locus of control, and as wishing to manipulate the external world for its own personal ends.
In the post-World War II era, he proposes that the bounded, masterful self became the ‘empty self’ – namely, a self that experiences a significant absence of community, tradition and a lack of social connectedness. This gave rise to an emotional hunger which consumerism was designed to soothe and replenish through encouraging the acquisition of material possessions (which includes, in his definition, the ‘consumption’ of products such as personal development and psychotherapy).
Cushman argues that the state exerts control through actively creating and manipulating its population’s wish to be soothed and satisfied by temporarily meeting this need. Moreover, he claims that along with advertising, the psychological professions also work to this agenda through helping to construct selves that are subject to control by these influences and by further devising interventions that are then the means of control. In reflecting on this, Corrie and Lane (2010) propose that this self-contained individualism may also be reflected in the exponential growth in self-improvement and personal development programmes. In the absence of cohesive community and greater levels of individual isolation, the promise of self-actualisation through self-sufficiency can become highly compelling.
This critical challenge of contemporary psychology may, therefore, be giving rise to a reconsideration of certain foundational beliefs to which psychology has for many years subscribed. Whilst on the one hand theoretical and empirical advances in psychology and neuroscience provide a vehicle for conceptualising and teaching compassion in a way that is compatible with models in cognitive science, the challenges facing our global community on a social, political and economic scale may equally be presaging a radical change in the direction of our thinking. Taking account of these trends, it is possible that we are witnessing the beginnings of an ideological shift in response to the wider social challenges.
Integrating the psychological and theological? Some conclusions and thoughts for the future
How do we go about developing compassion in ways that will systematically meet the needs of the individual and the collective? Hansen (2006) argues that as a first step towards honouring and serving the needs of others it is essential that we first learn to honour and meet our own needs. This, he advocates, is indicative of the psychological maturity needed to expand our focus from individual to global concerns. With its emphasis on acquiring self-nurturing and self-soothing abilities in order to reduce distress, aid self-healing and promote resilience, CMT may provide an important point of departure for nurturing an individual skill that has broader implications.
Attempting to understand and instil compassion as a human quality raises critical philosophical, social, political and ideological questions about what it means to be human and how to live responsibly. As a psychological asset, it affords emotional protection and increases resilience in the face of difficulty. As a social asset, it may equally represent part of our collective resilience and, therefore, be critical for our collective survival. Without it, we are unlikely to be able to recognise inequity and injustice. The cultivation of compassion within individuals, local communities and indeed the global community may represent an antidote to the individualism that Wheatley, amongst others, argues has created such difficulties.
From a scientific perspective, compassion is a variegated construct that is far from adequately understood. However, recent developments have paved the way for viewing compassion as a worthy topic for theoretical and empirical analysis and perhaps herald the beginnings of a new scientific era in which such ‘moral emotions’ can be better understood. For those delivering psychological interventions with the intention of ameliorating human distress, the notion that compassion is a core skill in which clients may need to be explicitly instructed is a novel idea. If Cushman (1990) is correct in his claim that psychologists must achieve a more sophisticated understanding of how the current era influences interpretations of their role, then training in inner-focused compassion has the potential to raise important questions about their roles as professional healers and the extent to which psychologists should act as agents of social change.
In consequence, a genuine engagement with the issues outlined in this paper is likely to raise more questions than it answers, at least in the short term. Some of these questions might legitimately include the following:
• How is compassion understood and defined in religious teaching and Western models of psychology? Where are the points of similarity, overlap and difference?
• What, if any, is the role of the institutional church in providing compassionate mind training to individuals, as a basis for cultivating compassionate responding to others?
• To what extent should psychologists, theologians and spiritual teachers work together to develop interventions and methods for instructing individuals in the principle of compassion? Is an interdisciplinary approach the most productive way forward and if so, what practical implications might this have?
• How do psychologists and religious leaders construct their identities as healers and as teachers? Does the more visible introduction of compassion in psychology present any opportunities and challenges for how these professionals view and approach their work?
These questions could be productively studied theologically and psychologically, theoretically and empirically. As Boff (2009) points out, attention to the inner life is not exclusively the domain of religion. Nor is it exclusively the domain of psychology. The implicit invitation in these questions is, perhaps, one of looking beyond the age-old tendency to polarise science and religion in order to consider – and embrace – opportunities for further investigation. This article is one response to what is surely a pressing topic for discussion and debate.
References
Boff, L. (2009). Inner Life: The Forgotten Dimension. Available online at: http://www.opentheology.org. Accessed: 22 November 2009.
Charter for Compassion (2009). Available online at: http://charterforcompassion.org. Accessed: 22 November 2009.
Corrie, S. (2009). The Art of Inspired Living. London: Karnac.
Corrie, S. and Lane, D.A. (2010). Constructing Stories, Telling Tales: A Guide to Formulation in Applied Psychology. London: Karnac.
Cushman, P. (1990). Why the self is empty: Toward a historically situated psychology. American Psychologist, 45 (5): 599-611.
Gilbert, P. (2005). Compassion: Conceptualisations, Research and Use in Psychotherapy. Hove, East Sussex: Routledge.
Gilbert, P. and Proctor, S. (2006). Compassionate mind training for people with high shame and self-criticism: A pilot study of a group therapy approach. Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, 13: 252-379.
Hansen, S. (2006). Spirit in Action. Auckland: David Bateman Ltd.
Lee, D.A. (2005). The perfect nurturer: A model to develop a compassionate mind within the context of cognitive therapy. In P. Gilbert (Ed.). Compassion: Conceptualisations, Research and Use in Psychotherapy, pp. 326-351. Hove, East Sussex: Routledge.
McKay, M. and Fanning, P. (1992). Self-Esteem: A Proven Program of Cognitive Techniques for Assessing, Improving and Maintaining your Self-Esteem, 2nd Ed. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger.
Neff, K.D. (2003). Self-compassion: An alternative conceptualization of a healthy attitude toward oneself. Self and Identity, 2: 85-102.
Wheatley, M. (2002). Supporting Pioneering Leaders as Communities of Practice: How to Rapidly Develop new Leaders in Great Numbers. Available at: http://www.margaretwheatley.com. Accessed: 22 November 2009.
|
)
