Psychologists are engaged in the business of consciousness. People come to see us about this or that problem, symptom, or trouble in order to become more conscious. We take things apart, that is, analyze problems, feelings, dreams so that they become more conscious.
Now what is this consciousness? What actually goes on in becoming more conscious? What goes on in conversation? If you listened to a tape of an analysis hour, an hour of becoming conscious in therapy, you would hear a conversation. That’s all it is—conversation. You become more conversant with your dreams, about your relationships, your fears
and needs.
Consciousness is really nothing more than maintaining conversation, and unconsciousness is really nothing more than letting things fall out of conversation, no longer talking about something—or what Freud called repression.
Conversation isn’t easy. You know how hard it is in a family, what an art it is to keep a conversation going. You know the tortures of the family dinner table, how more and more is left unsaid. So, of course, Freud found repression mainly in the family. It’s a place where conversation often has a hard time.
Or take a dinner party. Strike up a conversation and keep it flowing—not a monologue, not only opinions and sounding off, not only firing questions, but conversation as an exploration, a little risky adventure, a discovery, an interesting happening. Parties, doing lunch, and
7:30 A.M. breakfasts are terribly important in a city for keeping its conversation going, keeping the consciousness of the City at a certain intensity, moving its mind adventurously toward deeper discoveries.
What doesn’t work, we also pretty well know: personalism—just talking out loud about what we feel. Complaints. Opinions. Information doesn’t work—simply reporting what’s new, where you’ve been, what you’ve heard. And lullabies don’t help either—singing charming little stories to prevent anything from entering the heart or the mind. And boosterism isn’t conversation either—broadcasting, self-advertising what we are doing, have done, going to do. You can’t converse with a sales pitch of positive preaching. All these kinds of talk have to be cured
in therapy; they interfere with conversation.
So, not just any talk is conversation, not any talk raises consciousness. A subject can be talked to death, a person talked to sleep. Good conversation has an edge: it opens your eyes to something, quickens your ears. And good conversation reverberates: it keeps on talking in your mind later in the day; the next day, you find yourself still conversing with what was said. That reverberation afterwards is the very raising of consciousness; your mind’s been moved. You are at another level with your reflections.
--James Hillman, We've Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy--And the World's Getting Worse
