Psychological & Counseling Practices: Exercising Client's Personal Freedom/Free-Will

It seems to me that a very great deal of one's well-being is determined by how much personal freedom one exercises, that includes how much one accepts the way they exist in this world (with one's gender, ethnicity, status, etc). A philosopher once pointed out the importance of living by one's own subjectivity, getting in touch with one's own point of view in making decisions so that they can have the ability to take responsibilities of whatever decisions they have made, and thus becoming a moral person. While it is a matter of fact that one cannot have it all, one must live in accordance to the way they have already decided to live, with what they can have and they cannot have. 

Some people, however, may have already been content automatically with themselves, regardless how much control they feel they have over their choices, for example for embracing the fact that oppression is inevitable and by surrendering to a greater Being to find justification of their condition. Though I personally believe that to some extent they will somehow express their need to exercise their free will, it is of great benefit for everyone's well-being to do so. By this I mean they will become happier of the present and optimistic about the future; by this it means they will give positive energy to their environment which can be felt especially to the people around them. After all somehow it is easy for one to spot a company who is not happy even though he or she is not being grumpy, simply by the feeling that it is not comfortable being around him/her. My idea of free will then, despite its necessity for the society (philosophically speaking), it is also a necessity to one's sense of well-being. It is basically a good human gift.

Perhaps it is reasonable then to regard a certain approach in psychotherapy and counseling, which is the humanistic approach, a very beneficial discovery in the field of mental health. While striving to become a practitioner I have come to experts in the field as clients, finding that  it was that kind of feeling I wanted to experience after the session - finding that despite the oppression I have received from certain powerful figure, despite the great tension I have felt from it, I would always have a choice; that I could choose whether to fall under it or make my own destiny. This, however, includes the necessity for me to accept both choices' costs, and benefits. Sometimes one has to make choices that are hard to make; choices that are limited by time, space, and other circumstances which are simply inevitable. Therefore it is crucial to weigh every options and determines what is best to choose, and it is not easy especially when things like time constraints in decision-making process become part of the limitations one should count. Even though the one's final decision is to go with the oppression, feeling that such decision is made by full awareness and as a result of exercising one's free will to do so may make one feels a lot different then when the decision was made without it. The process remains different when the result is still the same. Yet, especially if the decision is a hard one, one may show different behaviors once the decision was made and one has to live by it.

Conflict of interests have always become the problem of men since ancient civilization. In fact the postmodernism view which is adopted today is based on the recognition that reality is actually a subjective matter; everybody sees things their own way, sometimes this relates to the interests they have. Even during psychotherapy and counselling sessions, professional practitioners may have already a concept in their mind on the best choice the client should take; yet, making the client feel free to choose is important so that they make the choices at least not in a negative light, for they have the chance to exercise their free will. What a practitioner can do perhaps pointing out the consequences to each option of choice that is available, and letting the client decide which option he/she would prefer to take. 

The Practitioner-Client Relation Problem

One careful note however, must be made in relation to the relationship between the practitioner or client, which is of course more related to the characteristic of the client and not the practitioner, since it is the practitioner's job to understand and assess the client, not the other way around. I am very well aware that while some people may benefit from exercising their free will while making their choices, some may not, for they regard the practitioner as more like an authority figure - a figure from whom they expect to find enlightenment in terms of the best decision they should take without caring pretty much about the arguments that based such decision. In other words, providing more options or giving a lot of freedom would lead to confusion instead of positive feelings from being able to exercise their free will. Instead of putting themselves as the center of the relation, these people put the practitioner in that position. What they expect to do is listen and follow; not listen, reflect, and decide. 

Some colleagues have asked me about whether a practitioner is allowed to give suggestions to clients (in terms of directing the client). Honestly since I have not done any clinical training (for the record, I base this writing based on my experience as a client and reader) I cannot give any certain answer to that. But I believe that in every action that one takes, one should have pretty good arguments that makes it reasonable. In this case, I guess what I can say is that whether or not a practitioner should give suggestions to the clients depends on the characteristic of the clients. I have already articulated the reason behind this. In addition, this is also supported by some references [1, 2] I have read about how culture affects the way a counseling and psychological intervention should be carried out and putting it to a smaller scope, which is the relationship between the counselor and the client; some cultures prefer therapy and counselling that involves reflection with placing their selves at the center of the therapy/counseling process (e.g. psychodynamic approach, humanistic approach), while others prefer a more structured and directed approach, placing the practitioner at the center of the process. Therefore client assessment during the first minutes of encounter plays a great role in choosing the best approach to deal with the client. While it is inevitable for the practitioner to start by looking at the client's cultural background from the data available (e.g. ethnicity and nationality), it does not necessarily give a reliable information: the degree to how much a person confirms to such culture should be assessed too. Globalization is a phenomenon that impacts every human being in every country, therefore it is not surprising to find westernized individuals in East or Southeast Asia, or the other way around. While some people, regardless of their ethnicity and nationality, may feel that being directed is annoying, others may benefit a lot from it and perhaps even expected it. On the other hand, perhaps what some need is the belief that they have control over their own choices, and they will feel happier that way.

Finally, the problem I have put forward is limited to the issue of how much a self-focused psychological and/or counselling practice should be carried out in relation to practitioner-client relationship and the culture the client has adopted, not whether or not exercising personal freedom or free-will is of necessity and is a need of individuals who adopt one culture and not the others. I myself believe that the latter is a universal phenomenon; an individual may exercise personal freedom with full awareness or not. Thus, regarding this I agree with Kierkegaard's view of an individual who embraces their whole existence as a human being. While one can experience a lot of tension of all the rules and regulations to which they must obey, others  may not, because they have embraced the rules and regulations and chose to obey them as part of their individual existence.

Note: Move cursor to the image to see the image source.

Pursuit of "Harmony" Backfires

Collectivism conveys the idea of being rewarded when we successfully follow the group norms in order to bring harmony (while individualism is the opposite). However, it seems that the idea of reward-and-punishment that lies behind this concept of culture may follow with implications that do not bring the members of the group actually come to harmony. Moreover, it might lead to disharmony instead. The root of this may be is the different beliefs people hold about the norm itself, and the norm itself is vital because it defines what actions or attributes that deserve to be rewarded and/or punished. How this is the case can be related to how the human mind works.We all know how extraordinary the human mind works that even one behavior or mental activity cannot be reduced to simple elements of the brain, and instead they are distributed across the brain. It makes associations so fast; sometimes we are aware of them and sometimes we are not. Simple pressure to conform with the group norm may lead to development of internal motives to be the same as the other member of the group, especially if the member's attribute is thought as a desirable quality one has to have; while in reality, there never exists such pressure to be the same (the norm never says so), and we simply invented it ourselves. This also applies the other way; the pressure to conform with a certain group norm may lead to development of internal motives to make/force other people to be the same as us.

Basically, both motives are developed in order to eliminate differences, up to those that are not listed on the shared norm in the first place. People feel that they have to always be in a harmony, perhaps up to the point this unconsciously makes them feel they have the right to control other people when that harmony is translated into "sameness", again, without their own awareness. Maybe they thought that they are trying to do something good, but what they are doing is actually violating other people's rights and is no other than being disrespectful. What is right and wrong becomes blurry when people do not have a clear basis, but clear basis, in form of the consensual rule/norm, can actually have been there all along. It is our own doing (thinking) about that basis that drives us away from what it actually says. Of course, one can join different groups at once, for one has so many aspects in his/her life that need to be expressed through interaction with other people with the same characteristic of such aspect (one can join sports team and debate team at once in school). Usually, this phenomenon happen in a group that particularly has no clear grounding rules; perhaps merely brought together by liking or the positive emotional feelings one have when being with the members of the group, such as friendship - the bond that satisfy one's personal need for well-being. Because we open ourselves to our friends this may create a sense of psychological ownership distributed through all the group members; we feel we own our friends that we can do anything about them.

"You're wrong if you're not with me.
No explanation, just wrong; especially
with most of everyone agrees with me
as well." -from this source.

Problem rises when one expresses that he/she is right as differences rise among the group members, for one can easily get hurt for being accused to be wrong when he/she simply has different code of conduct which serves as the basis of his/her own concept of right and wrong, making this a disrespectful act. While this is a form of ignorance of differences, other problem may occur due to an anxiety or uneasy feeling one has as he/she sees a discrepancy underlying the qualitative difference he/she has with other member/s of the group. In the first case, the difference is simply rejected or claimed that it is not supposed to exist; thus, leading to conformity pressure toward the member that is claimed wrong based on one's own concept of right and wrong (to be elaborate: I think right and wrong is a very serious concept; it involves morality which so far I believe is valued everywhere as long as humans feel the need to get along with others. One feels guilty when he/she does something immoral, and for that he feels not worthy. Thus, to claim someone wrong on such matter means to claim him/her not worthy, and it can be considered a personal attack to the person).

Portrait of a woman suffering
from envy; Jean Louis
Théodore Géricault
(1791-1824), from
this source.

In the second case, the  subject of difference becomes the focus on which one believe he/she is supposed to deal with, not by rejecting it, but by minimizing the discrepancy that creates such difference. This can only happen when one acknowledges the subject of difference to be a desirable quality (in contrast with the first case, where one rejects the difference right away, thus claiming it to be undesirable or even despicable). Here, one can try to make oneself closer to the desirable quality, or make the one possessing cease to have it. Which of these one will choose to do may have to do with one's own concept of control/agency over such discrepancy, for minimizing it always involves an activity and an activity always depends on one's own sense of agency. Problem exists when one takes the latter action, for it can also be considered as a personal attack by the member possessing the desirable quality. However, back to where we start, the main problem lies on whether people think they have the right to do all these effort in eliminating differences in their own group, including ones that involve personal attacks.

Harmony never states that differences are to be eliminated, and I am sure assuming the group is sane (by this,  I mean still holds into moral principles) it will never state doing personal attacks to the other members of the group is worthy of reward. Instead, it tries to find the common ground among the members, and common ground itself would always involve respect. Therefore, if there is an effort for harmony, it is an effort to minimize the differences (not eliminating them), and it can be done not necessarily by removing them one by one literally (seriously, who is able to do that?), but by shifting focus to the original norm: what drives us together in the first place and not the ones we created based on our own elaborative thought that goes beyond it; thus, making us more comfortable standing the differences that exist around us, and eventually accepting and if possible embracing them. We all join and create groups to have a good time or at least making something good out of it; this reason behind should always be kept in mind if it is harmony we seek.

Getting It Right: A Huge Error People Make When They See The Individualistic Culture as a "Selfish" Culture

Summer in London 2012 (Personal collection)

In the summer of 2012 I joined a 5-week summer program in one of the universities located in London, United Kingdom. There I met and made friends with so many people from many countries all over the world. In my own group there are people from Western Europe and United States in addition to one person from Southeast Asia (same like me) and another from Middle East. Living in London with people who mostly came from individualistic culture has challenged the assumptions I had about the characteristic of individualistic culture. It is to be emphasized that these assumptions of mine came from my engagement with my own culture, which is considered collectivistic for I came from one of the countries in Asia.

First of all, I think it is necessary to describe what I have observed from my own experience socializing with people in my own culture (it is to be noted that I live an urban life). Despite the fact that we keep the collectivistic culture alive, from a simple observation like what kind of music the radio play and what kind of clothes people wear, I can conclude that Western culture is welcomed here. At the same time however, it seems that people hold a negative view toward it, especially in terms of socializing. This ambivalent attitude is actually an okay situation; for we can show respect to a certain person, idea, or object in one aspect, but not the other. However, what bothers me is the fact that people often make judgments out of an incomplete understanding, or as I can say, impulsively, which lead them to have false assumptions about the individualistic culture. Fortunately, despite the fact that I was struggling to incorporate so many new information during my summer experience in London, I was able to keep an open attitude, and therefore was able to gain some positive insights from it.

A while ago a friend of mine posted a Facebook status expressing his concern on what he called "care for other people"; yet underlying his use of the term "care" is not exactly the same as the literal meaning attached to it. He was actually referring to the tendency of minding other people's lives. Explicitly he talked about religion and beliefs, on which he thought that regardless of what people often say that we should take "care" for other people, the world would feel more beautiful if people kept their mouths shut (about other people's lives) and mind their own businesses. The first comment on that status explicitly mentioned the "individualistic" nature of Western culture, on which such particular person equate it with "selfish" culture. Of course, I don't have to say what comes next from this kind of view the people here hold about Western culture, for I believe nobody in this world would appreciate selfishness, regardless of what kind of culture they came from. As far as I have observed myself from interacting with people around me, it seems that this view of individualistic culture as a selfish culture has been held by quite so many people in this culture I live in. At some points in my life I probably have assimilated the same view, for I remembered clearly how surprised I was as I actually experienced the culture during my summer in London for real.

Responding to that Facebook status I tried to articulate my own views regarding the matter while mentioning some examples of my own experience experiencing the individualistic culture for approximately one month; an experience I am quite sure the people who still have the view of individualistic culture as a selfish culture do not have. First of all, I would like to highlight the issue of human rights which I believe are essential in order for all people not to eat each other and ultimately able to cooperate. Regarding this it has been my concern to point out that human rights are not without proper grounding, but instead are formed by what every human being in this world strives for: goodness in life.We don't want other people to cross our lines, therefore we don't cross their lines. Who does not protest when people cross our lines, when they do not knock on our apartment doors before coming in or when they peek us while showering in the bathroom. What about people who get pleasures from hurting other people? I believe that it is a different issue; a special case concerned with mental illness, where I might want to consider discussing later. But the point is, human rights are not just a rule that we have to follow, but a rule that we have to follow to have a good life. From here, we come to the individualistic culture.

What is an individualistic culture anyway? For this question, in order to support my argument based on my personal experience I felt the need to include one reliable source I believe everyone would easily accept: textbook. I draw an explanation about both individualism and collectivism from the nearest sources physically available as I wrote this post, my Social Psychology textbook by Baron, Branscombe, and Byrne (2009).

"Groups can powerfully affect the behavior of their members via norms - implicit rules that inform us about how we ought to behave. ...In collectivist groups, the norm is to maintain harmony among group members, even if doing so might entail some personal costs; in such groups, disagreement and conflict among members are to be avoided. In contrast, in individualistic groups, the norm is to value standing out from the group and being different from others; individual variability is to be expected and disagreeing with the group is often seen as courageous. Therefore greater tolerance might be expected for those who deviate from group norms in individualist groups than in collectivist groups." (Baron, Branscombe, & Byrne, p. 387)

From this description it can be seen that the difference between the two cultures lies on what behavior each cultures rewards: maintaining harmony or standing out. This can be traced back to the values each culture is built on, but what I am more concerned about the passage above is the issue of tolerance. Here the issue is shifted from a matter of reward to another matter concerned about the consequence one has to take when he /she deviates from the group. Drawing this specifically to the context of reward and punishment, it can be implied that the characteristic of the culture is not only concerned about what behavior is rewarded but also the intensity of punishment one has to take from the group when one member deviates from it, whereby in individualistic culture, it can be said that the punishment would be less severe. Overall, we can see that it makes sense for the individualistic culture to tolerate deviations, because it gives reward to standing out. However, from my own perspective, it is important to see this relation of reward-and-punishment, as logical as it may seem, as separate from each other. Why then does it become the case? The answer is simply because both talk about a qualitatively different matter. Consider this: I stand out in my group because I am the only one brave enough to help a woman being mugged down the street. If my group holds a collectivist culture, would I be kicked out from it? If people and society are still sane, nobody would punish someone who does a good deed, even if it is the group where one deviates from. So, it all comes down to what is different from the group, and what is the behavior the person shows. Is it in align with the basic human rights, or is it not?

Speaking of basic human rights, I think we all agree that among them are privacy and adopting their own beliefs (a widely adopted understanding of human rights derived from Immanuel Kant's work which assumes that in moral universe, every person has certain basic rights; one of them is the right of privacy, which refers to the right to do as they wish in their private lives, and they have the right to control what they reveal about private activities, and related to that is the right of freedom of conscience which is understood as the right to refuse to do what violates their moral beliefs, as long as these beliefs reflect commonly accepted norms), and I think one of the clearest ones is concerned about treating other people in a way that we want them to treat us in return. Validating all these rights then I guess it has become clearer that no matter what kind of culture you are in, collectivistic or individualistic, any behavior that are in accordance to them is at least acceptable or not punishable.

The concern now is what I have considered as an error to quickly judge individualistic culture as a selfish culture. From what I have written it is supposed to be clear that there is  no relationship between them, and thus considering them to be the same is simply a mistake. What I would like deliver next is that it goes the same for the other culture, the collectivism. There is also no relationship between it and selfishness and therefore there is also no relationship between it and selflessness (considering selflessness as the opposite of selfishness). Thus, drawing from literature and a bit of analysis it can be concluded that there is no relationship between what kind of culture you have and selfishness/selflessness, for being selfish is the violation of human rights, and respecting them doesn't have to do with what kind of culture you have. We can all imagine how we would feel if people cross our lines.

Now, it has been brought to my attention that people who reply to my friend's Facebook status and who see individualistic culture as a selfish culture would consider individualistic culture as bad, for nothing good comes from being selfish (honestly it has been validated by further elaboration of the argument; explicitly it says that such culture brings destruction). While this is the case, further support of the argument was also made by seemingly equate collectivistic culture with selflessness, so now I guess there is not one, but two errors that were made. Yet, what the commentators show throughout the post, a form of rejection toward the idea of not minding other people's privacy/private businesses (in this case: religion and spiritual life), show that they have actually violated the human rights, and therefore show themselves as being selfish instead. I personally think that in large part, this irony can also be attributed to their own concept of religion and spiritual life as being private or public, with their concept of religion being public. Regarding this matter, honestly I can see why that is the case, for religion is indeed a necessary attribute that must appear in the people's identities card (and not only appear, but what kind of it is also a concern). I am not going to say this policy as stupid or simply wrong, for it is not my concern to criticize or give my opinion on that. This writing concerns about errors people made in believing an individualistic culture to be selfish or bad while ironically being unintentionally selfish themselves from the rejection of the fact that people have different beliefs or views or there are people who are different from them which ultimately lead to disrespect. Why am I so concerned on this is simply because failure to see the reality will eventually lead to damage, at least hindering ourselves from growth that one can benefit from getting things right. But what is important is that there is nothing good comes from holding such negative yet false beliefs about other people. Moreover it does not stop there. It is also accompanied by the thoughts that we are good while we are actually exercising bad things everyday by not respecting other people's rights in form of differences. I guess it is fair to say that not only that nothing good comes from it, something that is not healthy also comes from it: a delusion.

Perhaps, the term "individualistic" as a culture is closely related to the concept of individuation, which refers to the need to be distinguishable from others in some respects (Baron et al., 2009). If you ever wondered why we are created different, then based on this, it can be said that because we have such need to be different. In general, we want to be like others (especially others we like or respect), but we don't want to be exactly like them. Why is that may be related to our own need of personal control. I believe we all have at least one or two experiences being overwhelmed by what people tell us to do. At that time somehow we felt helpless and all we wanted to do is to have a break and go to our own private space (bedroom, bathroom, maybe home if we're outside). That privacy gives us a good feeling, and therefore it can be said that we all have the need for that. Being a culture that has more tolerance on differences (as what the textbook says), this individualistic culture may be based on the realization that people have this need of personal control, and therefore the people are more aware in the matter of respecting other people's need for personal control; it does not  mean that there is no such thing in the collectivistic culture (perhaps we just missed, that's all), and this is exactly what I felt during my time in London.

So what exactly happened? Basically, in group, talking about what we have in common was what we spend most of the time talking about (for example: How's your high school life? What do you think about Olympics, global recession, London, etc), while talking casually about personal things such as family life, sexual life, religious/spiritual life or beliefs, or simply things that other people cannot relate to are not rewarded, if not being ignored (some would explicitly say: "I don't want to hear about it", or just left the group and did something else that they felt more useful other than unnecessary pleasures from hearing things they think they do not deserve to hear). These are the things which are considered private; part of people's rights to exercise their personal control over.Why did they prefer not to talk about it? First, speaking sensibly, it is a waste of time. Why would you talk about something that other people cannot relate themselves to if there is nothing good comes from it? If we did happen talk about differences between us (in fact it did happen a lot), it was brought to an open discussion with one positive goal: learning from each other and thus promote our own personal growth with our knowledge being expanded as a result of the conversation/ dialogue. Second, bluntly speaking it is annoying; it gives a feeling of uneasiness because by exaggerating differences between the members the group out of the context of learning from each other would be the same as exaggerating the fact that we cannot fit together as a group. People happened to get together because they have a common goal, and this kind of act may make them forget that such goal exists. Just as people feel respected for their membership of the group because they realized that they can fit in, people will exactly feel the opposite if they start to realize they are not accepted because of the differences that are part of their own rights as humans.

As you can see, there is no relationship between individualistic culture and being selfish. In fact, by being aware of privacy and tolerance of differences respect is easily formed in this culture and it is this kind of respect that actually bring people from different backgrounds and countries come together in harmony, something which is actually encouraged in the collectivistic culture.This seemingly overlapped quality between the two kinds of culture has led me to think that the root cause of the false belief people here often hold about Western people is not whether people are exercising collectivistic or individualistic culture, but because those people exercise collectivistic culture in a way that does not promote harmony, which is actually the goal of the culture. As Baron et al. (2009) has described, cultures are norms; implicit rule about what we ought to do, and the function of norms are to get people together in harmony. If what we ought to do is to have the same personal beliefs then the norm itself as lost its way to the final goal (bring people together), because personal beliefs are in themselves part of people's privacy and more importantly it is not something that is actually possible to have in common (that is why they are called "personal" beliefs). If our goal is to get along with people, we just have to be unselfish. It is as simple as that. It is not about the culture, it is about willingness to exercise an act of selflessness, appreciation of differences and privacy.

- The real unity in diversity -
Doesn't matter what kind of culture you came from,  and what kind of
culture you are in, we can always get along, when we want to
(unless of course, you have no idea on how to get along)