An Interview with Jay Earley

    This article was based on an interview with me in 1999 on my work as a psychotherapist done by a graduate student in counseling as part of a course he was taking.

     A friend of mine, who is a participant in one of Jay Earley’s “Transformation” groups described him as prolific.  As I perused literature he has put out about  various aspects of his work, it was evident that he is, indeed.  Jay offers individual therapy, professional trainings in interactive group therapy , coaching work (oriented around helping people find their life’s purpose), seminars and supervision around  “The Pattern System” (a model he has devised to study interpersonal patterns and treatment strategies in psychotherapy), as well as the group work which my friend is involved in. He refers to the latter as “A Program for the Evolution of Psyche, Spirit and Society.”  In spite of its somewhat grand title, this involves an exploration of the nuts and bolts of how to integrate  personal issues, spiritual issues, and social activism.   Jay is the author of Inner Journeys: A Guide to Personal and Social Transformation , and also Transforming Human Culture: Social Evolution and the  Planetary Crisis. He has written a book on group therapy, which is pending publication. 

    With such a broad range of activities, I quickly became aware of how limited a half  an hour interview can be to explore all this territory, so for the purposes of this paper, I have focused mainly on individual practice, though I may touch briefly on some of the other areas of his work in passing.

    When I met with Jay this September, he welcomed me into his living room, a comfortable room with a big window and lot of light, in Larkspur.  He has an office in Corte Madera where he sees clients, as does his wife, who is also a therapist.  He also has an office in Berkeley and is considering an evening in San Francisco as well.

    Jay has a warm, gentle, spacious demeanor, and there is the sense of a quiet intelligence at work, which I imagine would make him an inviting person to talk to, were you his client.  In our interview, he framed his answers carefully and clearly, seeming neither reticent, nor flooding the room with his input.  When he finished what he had to say, there would be a pause,  with plenty of space for me to consider what I wanted to ask next.   We started our conversation by talking about what models of therapy he uses, and what kinds of clients he sees. 

    Jay is a licensed psychologist, who has been practicing since 1973. A lot of his training comes from the humanistic therapies, particularly  Gestalt therapy, which he is still strongly influenced by.  Yet, although this has been his starting point, his work has broadened and expanded to embrace aspects of other models, particularly modern psychodynamic approaches. He has been influenced by  work he has done with Jean Huston, the anthropologist,  and Joanna Macy’s socially engaged Buddhism, as well as transpersonal approaches like that of the Diamond Heart  School.   I shall discuss the topic of models at greater length later in this paper, after I have described his work more fully.   

    Jay works with individuals, couples, and groups.  He doesn’t work with families or children. When I asked about the course of treatment, Jay said that in the beginning he  focuses on  building rapport, and a sense of safety, with getting connected, and getting a clear sense of his client’s goals.   While this is happening,  there’s some general assessment that is happening.  When I inquired about how he relates to the DSM-IV, Jay said he wasn’t fond of it as an assessment tool. Some of the DSM’s limitations, he said, are that it tends to lead to a mind set which pathologizes people, rather then seeing where they fall on a spectrum that we all inhabit in dealing with human issues.  He also dislikes the way it describes behavior without exploring the underlying core issues.  Jay finds an approach that he has developed, called the Pattern System, more useful.    

    As treatment progresses, while exploring the issues in people’s outer lives which have brought them into treatment, he also helps clients to cultivate an ability to shift their attention to what they are experiencing in the “here and now”, as they are in the session.  Through this,  people deepen their ability to identify and be present with their current feelings, and with  what triggers them.  Explorations become less abstract, more grounded in immediate realities, and  fresh discoveries emerge. It becomes possible to see how issues and patterns of relationship  that  a  client may have in their outer lives start to play out here in the room, and in the relationship between the client and the therapist.

     For instance,  a client might have a pattern of behavior where he acts needy, manifesting behavior that is dependent,  anticipating and overreacting to loss, not only in their his outside life, but also in relationship to the therapist.   Underneath this, one might find he has  core issues about deprivation, accompanied by thoughts that no one cares for him, that he is unlovable.  With other clients other patterns that might emerge: one might have a style that is isolated, compliant, defiant, suspicious, brittle,  charming or entitled to name a few.  We all engage in different components of a number of these sort of patterns, some more habitually than others in different situations.  When these are made conscious, the losses and gains  involved in employing  any of these strategies can be examined.

    In therapy, the origins of these patterns, from childhood and trauma are explored.  As work continues, the aim is to make the therapeutic relationship a vehicle for healing. Although clients often act in ways that paradoxically recreate the same sorts of situations in relationships that they fear, it is important that the therapist understand what is going on enough so that  painful self reinforcing patterns become conscious,  behavior can be revised, and something different can happen. People get to have an experience of relationship  in therapy that is different than the one they had in childhood. In the context of a relationship where they are valued, cared for, protected and respected, clients take risks. Pre-existing assumptions and generalizations get made conscious, challenged, and clients start experimenting with new beliefs and behaviors in their outer lives.

    Since Jay does other work, such as personal coaching, groups about social transformation, and has a spiritual orientation, I was curious about how these approaches might effect his work with people who come to him for individual therapy.  He said that in general, these aren’t things that he introduces as such, however, he has  sensitivity and understanding that he can offer  when these issues are brought in by a clients, and can help further their explorations.  For instance, life purpose and social transformation questions often come up when clients are struggling with work issues. They may be asking themselves questions like, “What satisfies me? What can I can do that can make a difference? What gifts do I have? What are the best ways of actualizing who I am?”  As clients start trying to make changes and explore new options in the world, Jay can help them to take an experimental attitude, and not get discouraged if the first thing doesn’t work out.       Concerning  spiritual issues, he gave the example of a client who was searching for spiritual “answers,” in a way that seemed unsatisfying. He was able to help them become more attentive and engaged their ongoing spiritual process, rather than focusing so exclusively on the answers. This provided a more satisfying relationship with the spiritual, and  helped  them find a more grounded exploratory approach from which answers could arrive.  

    In order to consider what factors contribute to success or failure in treatment , It occurred to me that first, one must decide what success means.  Jay said there are different ways of looking at this.  One has to do with the client’s goals, as they come into treatment.  They are seeking relief from pain, so  success on this level would mean that they find relief.  Another aspect of healing can include addressing characteristic patterns that clients aren’t aware of, that intrude and interfere with them getting what they want in their life.  Change on this level could be an aspect of success.  In another sense, however, therapy can be seen as a part of an ongoing growth process, which never has a specific end.  In this sense, one doesn’t succeed and stop in the sense of finishing.  When you elect to do your growing in therapy, and when you elect to do it outside of it is a  personal decision. Also,  although a certain amount of pain reduction might be a legitimate goal,  a certain amount of pain  is inherent in life.  To be fully alive means not to avoid this, but to have a wise relationship with it.  

    Factors contributing to success are the therapist’s actual understanding of a client, -“getting” where they are, on many levels- intellectual, emotional, spiritual, intuitively.  So some of this has to do with the individual interpersonal chemistry between therapist and client.  Also, how motivated the client is.  Or, as the old joke goes: “How many psychotherapists does it take to change a light bulb?  Only one, but the light bulb has to really want to change.”

    Another factor contributing to success is what we could call the client’s psychological intelligence, for lack of a better word.  This might include the ability to self reflect, and to be in touch with present feelings .

    Conversely, when therapy doesn’t succeed, it can be due to lack of any of the above conditions, or when countertransference interferes with the process. 

    Asked about what he likes about the practice of psychotherapy, Jay said that  it’s rewarding to be there and participate in the moments when clients open,  and they really connect with themselves or others on a deeper level. 

    I am finding it quite interesting to reflect on the different models that come into play in this work, of the ones that we have discussed in class. Though  Jay’s practice originates in the  Humanist / Existentialist camp, particularly Gestalt,   there are many important connections with other models.  It seems like the relationships he builds with clients emphasize safety, acceptance, and positive regard, as the ground in which the work unfolds.  He strives to create an environment that is relatively uncluttered by “conditions of worth”.  This certainly relates to Carl Roger’s thoughts.  Within this situation, there is an emphasis on the “here and now”, as there is in gestalt therapy.  However, exploring how relational issues come up in the here and now  with the therapist is also  part of how psychodynamic approaches have always approached transference.

    When I asked where he felt the gestalt model was limited, Jay mentioned that he felt gestalt was lacking in tools to deal with and understand people with more primitive character styles, which modern psychodynamic theorists have contributed.  Also, gestalt doesn’t step back and look at general characterological patterns.  I believe Jay’s “Pattern System” has some relationship with a lineage of characterological theories that started with Freud’s developmental theory about fixations at various stages of growth, like oral, anal, phallic, etc.    Also, I believe that this interfaces with cognitive approaches that explore faulty thinking and assumptions.  The process of identifying core beliefs through the pattern system, and the breaking up of old generalizations through seeing how they may not hold in the current relationship with the therapist, and   exploring adopting different behaviors and beliefs in one’s outside life has aspects to it that share common ground with cognitive behavioral approaches. 

     When Jay helps people work with what their purpose is in life, this has some correlation with the existential models emphasis on the importance of creating meaning for oneself in one’s life. Accepting and working with, and developing a wise relationship to the inherent pain in life is part of this model as well as some spiritual paradigms.  And although I’m not clear how much it manifest’s in his individual work with people, Jay’s “Transformation” work  clearly demonstrates an awareness of the larger environment that people live in, and how it effects them, and they it, which is part of the socio- cultural model. 

    I’m sure there are other models and distinctions that could be discussed, too, aside from the ones that he have covered in class.  For instance, the transpersonal model may be considered very “west coast humanistic”, and on the fringes of psychotherapy by some. However the grappling that people have done with spiritual issues is ancient, and Jay is clearly tuned to this.  Just as the socio-cultural model deals with understanding the larger social context within which individual issues take place , one can how  the perspectives of both individual people and cultures fit into the still larger world, of nature and spirit. 

    I  have enjoyed talking with Jay very much. Since when I asked for the interview I told him  that what might be in it for him was that it could be fun, and that it might be a little bit of free advertisement (he laughed), and since Jay was so generous with his time,  I’d like to include how to contact him here, in case anyone who reads this paper should be interested.  He does talks from time to time about his work, and has an E mail mailing list on which he can notify people of upcoming events.