Psychotherapy is something that a client may attend for 1, maybe 2 hours a week. But the goal of being in therapy is not to be in therapy. The goal of going to therapy is living therapeutically, living in a way that is healing, or, as I'll explore here, living in a way that reduces the domination of ourselves and others.
Human life is intensely bound up with domination. Our lives necessarily take place within society, and society is invariably organized around rules and roles: generic dictates that say do this, don't do that. Rules and roles are almost always hierarchical. Roles are generally co-ordinate, sub-ordinate, or super-ordinate. Two coworkers at a cafe or construction job work together, doing different tasks that are fundamentally on 'the same level'. There supervisor, however, stands 'above' them in the hierarchical organization of that situation. Their bosses role is super-ordinate (supervisor), while their role is sub-ordinate.
This way of organizing—co-, sub-, and super-ordinate—gets replicated in our own psyches. We make certain 'parts' of us subservient to other parts. In some people anger, or their protector, has the most commanding role. In others shame may predominate. We all have a uniquely distorted community of emotions (forms) with a various hierarchical relationship. I have often avoided pain by giving my intellect a super-ordinate role: I have tried to rationalize and compartmentalize emotions, often not giving them due credit. Thanks to good therapy and other experiences I now have a more balanced hierarchy of emotions. Each part of me has a seat at the table.
I used to dominate myself with my intellect, chastising my shame, inflaming my anger, and cursing the parts of me that feel small, afraid, and alienated.
I no longer dominate myself so badly. I, of course, still keep certain feelings in check. "I can't cry right now... I have to get to meeting my friend..." And so I 'tamp' down a part of me, I force it into a subordinate position.
Even our physical bodies seem to be organized hierarchically. When we are afraid our bodies stop digesting, stop exerting energy to socialize, and focus on the 'core processes' of surviving. Even our guts, our organs, are a community of forms that have their own relations with one another. One of the reasons breathing is such a common coping technique is that our breath is the only part of our autonomic nervous system we can control. In taking control of our breath, then, we place our lungs in a super-ordinate position over the rest of our organs, signalling we are safe to our kidneys, hearts, and brains in the only way we can.
We also have the opportunity to dominate others in big and small ways. Being rude to servers, commanding those who are economically obligated to help us, is one very common form of domination. But we also dominate others by tacitly reinforcing gender roles, racial stereotypes, or other social-political labels and hierarchies. These systems of domination are generally invisible, as they exist in a sort of symbolic-institutional matrix.
Learning to not dominate ourselves and others, learning to live therapeutically, means being able to make the invisible visible. We make the invisible visible through language, through phenomenology in the deep and genuine sense: by producing a logos that allows a phenomenon to be seen.
Learn to live therapeutically means articulating the invisible forms that govern the processes of our lives. In naming these invisible forms we reveal their hierarchical organization. In revealing the hierarchy of invisible forms we initiate the process of reorganizing them. If we reveal them in a kind and loving way (likely the only way), we invite them to reorganize themselves in a kinder and more loving way. The community of forms follows our lead, whatever this implicit 'I' is that is capable of love.
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