THERAPEUTIC ONTOSOPHY:
THE THERAPEUTIC PROCESS

Francesco Palmirotta

The reality of the ontosophic vision of the Self is evident in clinical application through the solution of different psychopathological etiologies. It consists of the client’s growing awareness (self-awareness) of his own psychosomatic condition as malaise and/or well-being. Starting from this degree of awareness the therapist guides the client towards the identification of the types of disharmony which cause the malaise and shows ways to regain his own psychosomatic well-being.

This process is philosophically connected with the Socratic maieutics of soul-body, to the Alcmeonic-Pythagorean "isonomia" (life principle), to the orphic-dionysian cycle of life of Eros and Psyche (Love for the Living Soul, for the psycho-soma in well-being). It helps one regain: a) self management of the Real Ontic Self through the art of inducing the birth of Psyche from oneself (maieutic); b) harmony of the individual body with either the social or family body (isonomia, Alcmaeon); c) the path of divine wisdom in the human being, as a symbol of being which creates new ideas — in other words, as psychagogy-pedagogy of the self-organizing principle of both individual and collective life towards health, authentic civilization, peace, and love.

Everything becomes relative to the resolution of the initial symptom, which governs the ontosophic psychotherapist’s ethic, like agathoi-iatroi (the therapeutic philosopher in ancient Western culture). The therapeutic process of Ontosophy is founded on: 1) the interpersonal relationship between client and therapist; 2) the psychotherapeutic dialogue; 3) the psycho-somatic perception of both the therapist and the client; 4) the recovery of cosmo-ecosystemic and socio-family conscience.

The client-therapist relationship is egalitarian and empathic, based upon mutual respect and acceptance, even though, especially at the beginning of therapy, it is indicative (rather than directive) of the psycho-somatic ethic. This means that the psychotherapist does not just propose or impose a healthy model of his own on the client, but adopts the maieutic attitude, letting the client rediscover his own way to health. The Ontosophic Psycho-somatic principle of Psyche, is a principle of the self-organization of individual biochemical matter aiming toward health. Psychosomatic Ontosophy comes into being through the Sphere of Action.

The psychotherapeutic dialogue (dia logos) has the function of making the client aware of his own emotions, feelings, thoughts, actions, and so on, through the analysis of both conscious behavior and dreams, fantasies, sketches, and psychological reagents. These are evaluated in a psycho-somatic key, even though interpreted according to psychoanalytical, behavioral, cognitivist, gestalt, and humanistic parameters in order to actuate a harmonious totality (not a meaningless eclecticism), which necessarily activates the healthy being.

Rather than focusing on analysis of the past, the therapy centers on the "here and now" and on the responsibility of choosing healthy behavior in the future, considering the level of well-being reached during the psychotherapeutic process. Constant attention is paid to self awareness through body language, non-verbal language, internal and external perceptions, psycho-somatic variations, and dream, artistic, literary and scientific symbolism. The latter is considered compressed energy, requiring decompression —release, as in unzipping a computer file — so that the client may become aware of their energetic potential.

The recovery of ecosystemic and socio-family conscience starts from the awareness that there is an alienating system of social and family conditioning which interferes with human psycho-somatic well-being and natural wisdom. Once the client has acquired this awareness he can apply it in his own environment.

THERAPEUTIC OBJECTIVES

Ontosophic psychotherapy aims at achieving psycho-somatic and psycho-existential well-being: the realization of the Real Ontic Ego, meaning the Real Self actuated in existence. More than treating the client it aims at reestablishing the self-healing capacity and psycho-somatic harmony.

The immediate objective is to treat the initial symptom (be it either psychic or psycho-somatic) and to at least slightly improve things in the early sessions. The later stages of therapy tend to consolidate the results achieved.

Treating a symptom at the psycho-somatic ontosophic level means gaining an overall view of the programmed biogenetic and environmental influences, and reprogramming the psychobiological software in order to allow the individual organic hardware to function correctly. The health of an individual body is part of the health of the social body, and vice-versa, according to the Alcmeon-Pythagorean law (isonomia) and Rogerian theory.

The client must be made aware of the forms of psycho-somatic and psycho-existential disharmony so that these can be treated and removed. In particular, the therapist helps the client to recognize the psychological blocks which prevent his decision-making and living in full awareness. Some parts of the method are similar to Rogerian humanistic psychotherapy centered on the client: becoming aware of and eliminating the masks which the individual hides behind in relationships with others and which also distance him from himself. The aim is to remove the alienating stereotypes which form the Virtual Alien Ego.

After this extremely important transition, the therapist helps the client to gain self-confidence, to appreciate his own internal experience, and encourages him in the process of growth and self-realization. The client needs to be made aware that there is a homeostatic principle which self heals at the psycho-somatic level — that it is possible to filter situations and behavior through the self, through our own psychic, oneiric intuition-conscience, and to make our own diagnosis of a situation and to recapture/repossess harmony. Through this consciousness-raising, the individual is encouraged to evolve in a successful vital act (Real Ontic Ego). Self-realization revives the choice of the individual.

ROLE AND FUNCTIONS OF THE THERAPIST

The task of the therapist is to give the client the key to that psychobiological intelligence which is naturally predisposed to self governance of one’s own ego, directing its movement towards the individual ontic actuation (Existential Ontic Ego). He opposes the virtual self of the client (Virtual Alienated Ego) by integrating the energy of psychic intentionality (conscious in the therapist but not in the client) as strength of consciousness which determines the client’s psychobiological growth, going beyond the dimension of verbalization and bringing about well-being.

The psychotherapist adopts a maeiutic method in that he tunes into and follows the true internal experience of the client in every psycho-existential decision. He "sees" the interior functioning and acts psycho-somatically so that the client is re-born in his oneness, always respecting the individual pace of the client’s growth . "Seeing", means a scientific observation of kinesthetic behavior, facial expression, and above all psychic behavior, through which each new step in personal growth is noted. "Respect" means simply the resonance of the psychotherapistís Real Ontic Ego with the Real Ontic Ego of the client.

The therapist knows that he must "love" the client. The strength of his love, which springs from the primordial depths of the human being (cf. Hesiod), is the very powerful weapon he provides against the client’s alienation. On the one hand, it is like Rogerian unconditional acceptance of the client. On the other, it embraces the ancient custom of those doctors, therapists and teachers who had profound philosophical knowledge and implies being a "lover of wisdom". This is the reason we consider a philosophical-psychotherapeutic education or training important, so that the therapist can engage a psycho-somatic, historical and existential wisdom with the client.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE CLIENT

Ontosophic psychotherapy is suitable for all types of client even though it has proved to be particularly successful for more serious psychic and psycho-somatic pathologies. Some of the pathologies diagnosed at the start of therapy include:

Since the client decides to undertake therapy, motivation is high, which is an extremely important factor in the successful outcome of treatment. The fundamental proviso assuring the success of therapy is the client’s faith in his own human consciousness, which also implies interest in the psyche and psycho-somatic wisdom. This method can be used with individuals, groups, couples, or families. Involving a number of people in therapy is based on the assumption that the individual malaise is only the manifest aspect of a subtle pathology which affects the family and/or social nucleus to which the client belongs.

Psychosomatic Ontosophy can also be addressed to normally healthy individuals to increase creativity and self-actualization .

SPECIFIC TECHNIQUES

Psychosomatic Ontosophy is not dependent on specific techniques, but uses all those methods which allow the consolidation of the therapeutic relationship, the full recovery from the symptomatology, and/or the client’s self realization. All techniques — relational, behavioral, psychoanalytic. projective tests, analysis of dreams, listening to both verbal and non verbal messages, thoughts, and sentiments expressed by the client, and techniques of body perception — are considered valid, always bringing the client’s intentionality back to well-being in the psycho-somatic sense. Particular importance is attributed to the de-conditioning of the Ego towards sensory perceptions which are fundamental for the real ontic perception of oneself, so that the Virtual Alien Ego can be distinguished from the Real Ontic Ego. The following are some of the specific techniques used by our school. Rather than simply "techniques", they are full modalities of psychotherapeutic treatment, which in complexity go far beyond the usual meaning of the word "technique".

IMAGOGIC ONTOSOPHY (from the word "Imagogy" cf. Klaus Thomas)

There are three levels of Imagogic Ontosophy: psycho-somatic, metaphysical, and ecstatic. These are experiences of onto-existential knowledge, in addition to implementing the immediate integration of psychosomatic health.

PSYCHO-PHILOSOPHICAL MEDITATION

Western scientific thinking has led to the loss of that vision which allowed Thales to determine, with reasonable accuracy, the circumference of the earth and to measure the height of the Pyramids; the Pythagoreans to initiate arithmetic and geometry, music and art, and to establish the correct position of the sun in relation to the earth, (an idea which was confirmed by Copernicus and Galileo 2500 years later); Democritus’ development of atomic theory; and Parmenides’ understanding of Being. Ontosophic activity expressed as philosophical meditation wishes to recover this human capacity, plainly accepted by the founders of Western culture as "open-eyed imagogy", in other words, a state of consciousness which by imagining beyond the forms already present, manifests reality.

ONEIRIC ONTOSOPHY

Oneiric Ontosophy is the study of spontaneous messages from the subconscious through dreams. The elaboration of dream energy (from single images to movement, a repetitive or creative plot, night after night, recreating relaxation as well as tension, resolving enigmas, mathematical or relational questions, and so on) by a self organizing principle (intuited by Schroedinger and Maturana) demonstrates that the subjects belongs to a philogenetic intelligence, which knows what to do during the apparent inhibition of the state of consciousness which, according to ontosophy, is amplified as ontic existential consciousness, during phases of both REM and NREM.

FILM THERAPY

The film module is used to acquire consciousness of and react against alienating conditionings (dynamic hologram) which operate through socio-cultural images. Attention is focused not only on rational reactions to the film contents but also on the psycho-somatic and emotional responses to the images and situations which the subjective mind reproduces in reality.

SOPHOTHEATRE

This is the representation of life , seen and activated by the illuminating wisdom of Being, used to provoke the emergence of the Real human Ontic Ego and oppose every alienating interference present in the person or in the schizophrenic system conditioned by alienated socio-family institutions, so that the true and natural aims of socio-family institutions can be re-appropriated. It uses the spontaneous theater of Moreno and Greek tragedy, comedy and mythology.

RESIDENTIAL ECOSYSTEMIC PSYCHOTHERAPY

A period (minimum of 2 days) of raising self-knowledge in an environment (physical and social, including the therapist, trainer and co-therapists) which aims at the client’s psycho-physical recovery through the use of socio-environmental and individual psychotherapeutic methods such as ergotherapy (work therapy) and hyppotherapy (horse therapy). On the one hand, there is an opportunity to break away from the usual social and family ties which are a source of uneasiness. On the other hand, we underline the importance of constant attention towards one’s own behavior and psychic processes (immediate reactions, symptoms, dreams and so on), which are evaluated by the psychotherapist.

PSYCHOMUSICTHERAPY

This is a psychic and psychosomatic therapeutic method using vocal and instrumental means related to music therapy (cf. F.Palmirotta, Musicoterapia psicosomatica). It is used in psychotherapy as a means to facilitate communication with the client and to intervene on both body and psycho-corporeal rigidity, bypassing rationality, which is afterwards recovered in discussion of the corporeal experience. The therapy is carried out with instruments (the Soma was considered an instrument as well), and aims at treating the emotions (pathos, Thumos, and so on) in the Greek sense, and had primarily been developed by the Pythagoreans, as F. Alexander affirms in History of Psychiatry. Psychomusictherapy is therefore the recovery of that ancient intuitive wisdom.

SYNTHESIS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

This is a synthesis of significant afferences and efferences aiming at reconstructing the Existential Ontic Ego. It takes place in a group or individually. In a way it is reminiscent of Pythagorean anamnesis: a reflection on the single moments of one’s lived experience as a way to bring the multiplicity of experiences back to unity. During the moment of reflection the individual discovers that he is the sum of all his lived experiences. He also discovers that the final moment is not only the sum of the previous ones, but something more. In this respect, it is close to Gestalt psychology. Another reference is Parmenides assiomatics. Pythagorean-mathematical logic, the Eleatic and Aristotlean are delineated, so, moments of the ontic wisdom light a path beyond space-time which allows the mnemonic unity of the living being a happy self-realization. The latter corresponds to the Dionysian divining paideia, which was mythopoetically performed through the cult of Mnemosine. All later concepts of mnemonic unity, in the history of mnemo-physiology, can be referred back to the Orphic-Pythagorean Mnemosyne (including behaviorism, cognitivism, neuroscience, and so on).

METHOD AND METHODOLOGY

Method is not to be considered as a mechanical criterion. Rather than proposing a methodology, the therapist must face the paradoxical need of not having any methodology. Also the therapist is both subject and object of method and therapy (cf C. Rogers). The re-learning of real being can only be reached through oneself, one’s own psycho-somatic unity carried out by the integral principle of ontic wisdom. Not having any methodology clearly sounds like a paradoxical statement, since there are guidelines ruling the therapist’s formation (not information or training) in the school of Psychosomatic Ontosophy.

Thus method comes to mean and be the way beyond acquired knowledge. While the common meaning of "method" comes from the ancient Greek words "met" and "odos", where "met" is meant as "through" or "by means of", and thus "the way by which". We, on the other hand, propose for "met" the equally possible meaning of "beyond": therefore "method" comes to mean "beyond the way" (as already marked and conditioned). The way beyond acquired knowledge does not imply a definitive approval of the rules of the objective method (with all its alienating systematics), but opens up a way towards real experience, intuition and subjective-creative contribution, far beyond the phenomenological facts of hologrammed ego.

Reviewing present-day scientific methodological tendencies, Ontosophy recreates, from an implicit and neglected sense of met odos, a different logos of the process of knowledge (in science and arts). Met Odos is interpreted as path beyond the known way. The immobility of the reductionist objectification of some scientific methodologies and the Cartesian dualism of method can thus be overcome. Neither Feyerabend, nor Morin, nor Popper, or others ever considered the need to re-define the meaning of methodology, in the epistemological sense.

The intuitive contribution of ontosophic meditation on method in the field of knowledge, opens up new horizons for those who want their life plan to go beyond (met). The Pythagorean conception of metemsomatosis helps consider Psyche as both principle and act of every creative innovation in the humanistic evolution of science and arts, aiming at a civilization of Peace, Love, Harmony amongst peoples.

THE TERM PSYCHO-SOMATIC

In the sphere of Ontosophy, psycho-somatic takes on a slightly different meaning from that commonly used, and it is important to underline this. In the English language the term psychosomatic undervalues the psychic sense because it is considered a phenomenon induced into the soma through the mental disposition of the person. At best, it means a somatic condition coming from the psyche (cf. Merriam Webster’s Dictionary). The meaning is not so different in Italian. In the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Medical Sciences it is explained thus: "Psychosomatic: connected with the mind-body relationship," "Somatopsychic: connected with both body and mind."

In the DSM4, the term Somatoform is explained as "physical symptoms which recall a general medical condition, but which are not justified by a general medical condition (that is, there are no clinical analyses which prove a pathological condition , neither through direct effects of a substance or any other mental disorder, they are not intentional."

In P.Pancheri, it is stated: "The term psychosomatic has been used a lot to describe normal or pathological conditions which are very different one from another. Actually, the term seems to be used generally in an a-specific way to indicate every type of somatic symptom in whose determinism an emotional cause can play any type of role".

Psychosomatic is used as an adjective to define a pathological condition referred to psychic causes. However it does not indicate the unity of psyche and soma.

In ancient Greece the word entelechy was used with this meaning, as complete realization, as body-soul (Psyche-soma), complete being in itself. Such an appropriately fitting word was afterward substituted with the term psychosomatic, which, in turn, was substituted, in the DSM4, by the term somatic, as if the sense of connection between body and soul had to be abandoned for the physical only. Through these stages one can see how in human civilization there is a mechanistic intelligence which has tended to expropriate the sense, of these words. It can be demonstrated that there is, in the present international psychotherapeutic theoresis, an appropriate etimological-dynamic cognition of "Psychosomatics", as was meant in the early Pythagorean medicine (Alcmeones and others) and in early psychotherapy and music therapy (Archita of Taranto, Aristossenes, Empedocles, Socrates and Parmenides). On the other hand, in the original Pythagorean etimologies, Psyche and Soma were interchangeable and, more significantly, the term Soma meant a type of instrument used by the Muses, or an instrument of natural (artistic-scientific) harmony. Therefore Psyche was exactly the idea and practice of human-divine harmonization.

The human mechanistic vision, applied to diagnostics, makes it an exclusively descriptive science, excluding intentional causes of symptoms which cannot be explained from a strictly medical point of view. This descriptive aspect, on the one hand, helps understanding amongst specialists of different backgrounds about the types of pathologies. On the other hand it effects, we believe, not only therapeutic theory and practice but the very reality of psychosomatic life in the client and both contemporary and future human mentality. It is our belief that if Western therapeutic philosophy does not embody the philosophical principles from which it derives, it cannot achieve the therapeutic results it intends, and an irreparable or deadly gap between Psyche and Soma will always exist.

The prevailing diagnostic tendency in medicine belongs to the school of Asclepic Hyppocrates. It is the most recent, even though it is two thousand years old, compared to the Orphic Alchmeonic Pythagorean tendency where the therapy and ethos of health (as the objective result of treatment) prevailed, in order to distinguish the true knowledgeable therapist from the false ("many are the thirsus carriers, but few are the real philosophers-therapists" -Plato).

Psychosomatic Ontosophy, as true psychotherapy, does not approach the "diagnosed" subject with the limiting dogma and taxonomic classification of the Western mechanistic medical type, but tries, wants, and succeeds in interacting with the whole of its living being. The dynamic path of the therapy, and diagnosis, at least in its classifying aspect, might be indicative and irrelevant at the same time, as far as the successful outcome of the work and the resolution of the initial symptom is concerned.

Psychosomatic disease, when evidenced and solved, is the first validating element of both methodology and psychotherapeutic theories, but it is not the only one. Since there are also psychic disorders which cannot be clearly pinpointed with traditional diagnostics, the psychotherapist must be able to intervene and solve the trouble exactly where being has been imperceptibly alienated, where the disorder is invisible to diagnosis. This capacity means to put into action the most difficult therapeutics, the most irksome in the prevention of those psychic and psychosomatic disorders, which can be classified as existential anguish, boredom, nihilism, senselessness of life. These are sometimes labeled as philosophical attitudes towards existence but, in reality, according to true ethical psychotherapeutic philosophy, are early borderline or relapse stages, and long-lasting types of false humanistic and scientific philosophy, and ultimately, of pathology of the Soul.

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