Dissertation - World Federation of Music Therapy

actually no alternative to “will”, and he proposes several definitions of this
psychological component addressed by the psychotherapist, including the “trigger of
effort”, “responsible mover”, “mainspring of action”, “seat of volition” and, quoting
Hannah Arendt, “the organ of the future” (as opposed to memory as “the organ of the
past”, Yalom 1980, p. 291) The therapist addresses and tries to influence this organ,
but this can very rarely, if at all, be done by simple persuasions, admonitions,
injunctions or appeals to the client’s responsibility. In order to determine how the
therapist may influence the will of the client and thus promote change Yalom sketches
a theoretical framework for a “clinical understanding of will”. His considerations are
based on the theories of Rank, Farber and May, who represent different perspectives
on a will-influencing psychotherapy. Rank developed an understanding of the will as
a “positive, guiding organization which utilizes creatively as well as inhibits and
controls the instinctual drives” (Yalom p. 294) and he defined three stages in the
development of the will: (1) negative or “counter will, opposition to another’s will,
(2) positive will, willing what one must, (3) creative will, willing what one wants”.
Stage three is the goal of all child rearing (Yalom p. 295). Farber thought that Rank
overestimated the conscious dimension of the will and made an important distinction
between two domains or “realms of will”: (1) The realm of unconscious decisions or
choices, not directly open to influence from other people, (2) the realm of conscious
considerations and decisions, object-directed and utilitarian in character. Only the
second realm can be influenced therapeutically by cognitive interventions and appeal
to reason. However the first realm is dominating and can only be influenced in an
indirect way; it “must be approached obliquely” (Yalom p. 298-99). May contributed
to the psychology of will by including the ‘wish’ as an element prior to will: the wish
is “the imaginative playing with the possibility of some act or state occurring” (Yalom
p.300). Wish and effort are separate stages in the process of willing, and the client
may fail in both stages. This is why experiential therapies focus on the expression of
emotions: experiencing and expressing emotions may lead to a better relationship
with self and others, and the ability to wish may be improved.
It is not possible here to summarize the chain of arguments in Yalom’s theory. The
main components in this context are that psychotherapy must first address and
enhance the client’s ability to wish through a training enabling the client to endure the
anxiety related to ‘simultaneous ambivalence’ of having conflicting wishes; second,
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