David K. Reynolds - Handbook for Constructive Living

A Handbook for

Constructive Living

A Handbook for

Constructive Living

David K. Reynolds, Ph.D.

University of Hawai'i Press

Honolulu

To the readers who buy these books and then kindly loan me your eyes and time and thoughts while reading about Constructive Living. I am in your debt.

The Opportunity for Real Success

There are a lot of pop self-help psychology books in our bookstores. Readers of such books want tips, tricks, special knowledge that will make pain avoidable and life a series of fulfilling highs. The bottom line, however, is that no one lives on a perpetual high and everyone has to live through some pain. Our time is better spent getting done what is important for us to do in life than staying on our guard to bypass suffering. Playing life by the tactics in pop-psychology books can actually distract us from more important purposes and goals.

I am not writing of spartan endurance here. In these pages you will find the strategy that will pay off in greatest life satisfaction. That strategy does not involve minimal misery. It involves maximal accomplishment. Again, don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting that accumulating money or power or fame or such superficial accomplishments are worth the sacrifice of our lives. I am asserting that when major life goals are built around keeping emotional distress at a minimum and feeling good or confident or joyful or loved or any other delightful mental state, then the real-life payoff won't meet expectations in the long run. Disappointment results, and dissatisfaction.

On the other hand, when we set ourselves behavioral objectives, and do something to achieve them, we run a better chance of both accomplishing our aspirations and also (as a sort of side effect) of keeping unnecessary misery to acceptable limits.

Nevertheless we sometimes feel insecure. The human need for security these days may manifest itself in sleepless nights over the decision to invest in treasury notes or gold, in thoughtful voting for elected governmental representatives, in neighborliness and concern for the institution of marriage and the proper use of cosmetics. What will happen to me tomorrow? What will happen to me in old age? How can I increase the likelihood that I will be safe and prosperous and well and comfortable and cherished? Of course there are no guarantees, whatever our course of action. But every culture is designed to increase the odds of attaining future goals for at least some culture members.

We live in a time and culture with its own characteristic forms of insecurity. When the basics of food, water, and air become dangerous with the potential to kill, we become insecure. Understandably. There can be no perpetual high. However, there can be reasonable living and a flexible, responsive disposition toward life. Constructive Living offers such a possibility.

Just as we now recognize that physical health is a matter of lifestyle (smoking, dieting, exercise, etc.) and not merely a matter of what goes on in a doctor's office, so mental health is not something one achieves merely through psychotherapy. Mental health depends on how one lives every day. Unfortunately in some psychotherapists' offices the clients are hearing worn and outmoded advice about how to live constructively.

Constructive Living developed fundamentally from the thought of Masatake (or Shoma) Morita (1874-1938) and Ishin Yoshimoto (1916-1988). One of the goals of Constructive Living is to shake the foundations of clinical psychology and psychiatry in the West. This goal is accomplished by challenging the assumptions and models that underlie traditional Western psychotherapies. The assumptions we seriously question include the following: feelings need to be and can be repaired, expressing feelings "gets them out" somehow, unfelt feelings exist, "getting in touch with" hidden feelings is possible and useful, professional training confers the ability to understand a client's thoughts and feelings better than the client does, a brief weekly session has more impact on a client's life than the rest of the week, improper parenting is the primary cause of client difficulties, neurosis and alcoholism and obesity are diseases, self-esteem and self-confidence are necessary and useful for a constructive lifestyle, shyness is a disorder, clients can be debilitated by anxiety and other feelings, anyone knows why anyone does anything. Watch any daytime talk show on television and you will see that the above assumptions have trickled down into popular culture. They are taken-for-granted truths. And they are wrong. Simply wrong. Maybe nobody told you that before. I'm telling you now.

Letters from CL Readers

Check out the contents of this book, evaluate it in terms of your own experience, and you will understand why we get thousands of letters like the following:

My husband and I are reading Playing Ball on Running Water for the second time. We are convinced that the Morita lifeway is the way to go about living.... I can readily recognize the benefits of doing what needs to be done since I spent so long not doing it. K.W.

I recently read your book. I truly believe that Morita therapy is a pragmatic approach to helping people achieve what they want in their lives. Thank you. P.G.

I have read Playing Ball on Running Water with great interest and find in many ways my counseling practice incorporates the ideas of Morita therapy you outline. F.H.