For Those Committed to Living the Optimal Life
In this section, I wish to propose a brief sketch of one aspect of optimal living from a psychological perspective. For it to be most effective, it should be combined with a more holistic health plan including physical and spiritual health. Credit for these ideas should primarily be given to Yalom (1980; Existential Psychotherapy), as they are primarily a discussion of his suggestions.
Yalom encouraged therapists throughout their career to engage in therapy every several years in different formats. While this is vitally important for therapists, it can also be applied to all people wishing to life an optimal life. By optimal life I mean a life of happiness, joy, meaning, and deeply satisfying relationships. I do not mean a life with no suffering or sorrow, as these may be part of a life of joy, meaning, and deep relationships.
Up through college, it is important to engage in therapy for more serious problems. This often will be in the form of brief therapy or family therapy, though, as the person gets older, depth therapy may be preferable more often (and also can be appropriate at younger ages). While this is often beyond the control of the child or adolescent, it is important not to engage in therapy as a punishment or out of over-reactivity. Some emotion, behavioral, and interpersonal struggles are a normal, healthy part of adolescence. If the person is inappropriately forced into therapy, this can leave a bad taste making future therapy more difficult.
Beginning in college, it is important to begin engaging in psychotherapy. During the college years it is important to review issues from how you were raised, your relationship with your parents, and your parents relationships with each other. Through exploring this process, the individual can begin to make decisions about changes they would like to make to not follow their parents patterns as well as embracing patterns they would like to keep. Additionally, as most people end up marrying someone very much like their parents, or the opposite of their parents, without going through some reflection on their childhood, therapy at this age can free a person to make good choices about a spouse as they get older. At this stage of life, I would recommend a depth therapist, preferably of the psychodynamic or psychoanalytic orientation, that is of the same gender of the parent or caregiver of which you had the most difficult relationship.
Up to this point, brief therapy may be sought for more specific problems or crises. The early these can seek resolution, the better. Also, as the person approach getting married, seeking professional premarital counseling can greatly benefit both the marriage and future children. Professional premarital counseling often will be between 8 to 16 weeks and include some psychological testing.
As a person gets older, they should continue to seek different depth therapists of different orientations every couple of years. Some of these may be relatively brief periods, for 4 to 6 months, while others may be longer. The better a person learns to build relationships and utilize therapy, the more they will be able to make good use of the therapy time. From the late 20's to 50 or 60, it would be beneficial for the person to engage in group therapy and depth therapy with both male and female clients. In particular, I would recommend seeing a therapist from each of the orientations of humanistic, existential, and Jungian. For some individuals, transpersonal therapy may be very effective during this period, too. Depending upon the individual, the break between rounds of therapy would be between 3 to 7 years.
As a person becomes older, they have developed good support systems that function very similar to therapy and choose to transition out of therapy to other forms of growth and development. However, if therapy is needed, existential and transpersonal therapy can be particularly effective during this time of life, especially if they have developed an ability to use therapy well over the years.
This may seem like a lot of therapy, and potentially it is! This proposal would probably be a least 3 to 4 years of therapy over the life span on the low end to up to 20 to 30 years on the high end. For most people, it would probably be 6 to 8 years worth of therapy. Keep in mind, I would propose this as an ideal for people really committed to a meaningful life and those who believe growth and self-awareness are an important part of optimal living.
While some may scoff thinking this is a nice proposal to create job security for therapists, I think it is more than that. I deeply believe in the power of therapy for healing, growth, and helping resolve many of the problems in the world. At the same time, I also recognize the dangers of therapy. As therapist James Hillman and writer Michael Ventura point out in the title of their book, we've had a hundred years of psychotherapy and the world's getting worse! The danger of psychotherapy is that it can make people too comfortable with what's wrong with the world and overly concerned with themselves. However, this is not very good therapy. Therapy can also help people become more sensitive to problems in the world and more concerned about others.
Keep in mind, too, that this is a proposal of an ideal. It's not realistic the world to be like this in 5 years even if we wanted it to be. Furthermore, I'm not so naive to think that a majority of people would agree with such a radical proposal or that this will ever occurs. However, if more people sought to live such a optimally healthy life, I do believe therapy could change the world for the better!