Symboldrama in counselling and coaching

Leonore Kottje-Birnbacher

Imaginations similar to Symboldrama have been used for many years not only in therapeutic contexts, but also in professional counselling and supervisions. Imaginations are used to enable the client to clarify his or her position, the constellation of his or her personal relations and the tasks at hand on an imaginative level. The point of bringing in imaginations is to take fully account of emotional reactions not accessible to consciousness but often crucial for behaviour. The present contribution gives an introduction into the use of imagination in coaching.

What is coaching?

Coaching is defined first of all by its aim, that is to improve their client's capacity to work. The aims of coaching are changes in work behaviour, and the central question is how to motivate the client to change his behaviour. - In contrast to psychotherapy coaching is a matter of only very view consultations (which are, in most cases, fixed in advance), it is guided by a very clear definition of aims, is directed exclusively at attaining these objectives and terminates with an evaluation of the extent to which these aims have been attained. In order to be effective within a very few hours, the process focuses on the identification and furtherance of resources and on possible solutions. – Payment is often made by the employer. So the given power structures are clarified and utilised but not questioned.

There are a number of situations in which coaching might meaningfully be applied:

1. Coming to terms with an acute crisis.
   This may be the case if tensions in a department or between departments have become so intensive that they cannot be solved without external help. A crisis may also occur in the course of a restructuring process, that is because of fusion or rationalisations, then fears among employees may become so intense that the capacity to work of entire departments breaks down. A crisis may also occur, whenever departments or employees are confronted with contradictory or insoluble tasks.
2. Indication for coaching: Prevention
   Cases in point are, for example burn-out prophylaxis or improving work-life-balance.
3. Education of employees
   This objective may include career counselling or the development of specific qualifications of work or management.

On the part of the coach coaching requires certain necessary qualifications. These include

1. a general field competence, that means experience with the way organisations function,
2. field curiosity: the coach should be interested in the specific functioning of the client's organisation,
3. psychological experience with accompanying developmental processes,
4. a broad spectrum of methods which might be summarised, following Fürstenau, by the triad understanding psychoanalytically, thinking systemically, intervening suggestively (Fürstenau 2001).

That means, the coach should be able to understand individual fears, conflicts, defence mechanisms and compromise formations. He should further be able to understand systemic structures and group dynamic processes, and he should be able to choose from a variety of interventions from cognitive behaviour therapy, systemic therapy, and solution oriented therapy.

The central effects of coaching can be summerised as follows:

• The existence of a helpful relationship enables the client to calm down and to engage in social learning,
• Understanding the psychodynamic background of conflicts - such as rivalry, envy, fear of success or difficult group dynamic constellations - may enable the client to change his or her behaviour,
• Work behaviour is improved by the teaching of concrete skills such as structuring work by means of mind mapping or metaplan, time management, work techniques and work schedules.
• Work behaviour ist further improved by changing control believes and improvement of self-evaluation,
• Last not least dysfunctional interaction patterns can be changed by systemic interventions.

In the following I would like to say a few words about the theoretical background.

For a therapist trained in psychoanalytic theory the theoretical orientation in the field of coaching is best provided by an ego-psychological approach (Fürstenau 1993/Fürstenau 1994). The Ego mediates between internal needs (Id), normative expectations (Super-Ego) and the external world (reality). It commands perception, thinking, feeling and action. Cognitions and affects are in continual interaction in such a way that affects block certain cognitive factors. That means, that certain things are ignored or denied or perceived in a distorted way because of feelings. On the other hand affects can be changed by cognitions. That means that a change of cognitive perspective leads to a different evaluation of a situation or a person, and then to a corresponding change in accompanying emotions.

Coaching works primarily on the level of cognitions. By getting a clearer and more adequate view of the situation the client is enabled to behave more relaxed and more adequately, and negative affects are dissolved. In this process it is important to attend to the client's dominant coping mechanisms and habitual reactions to tasks and to rules.

The various coping mechanisms differ greatly in their functionality for adapting to reality. Among the more dysfunctional mechanisms are projections (they lead to a distorted reality perception so that behaviour adequate to the situation is less probable), denials (which lead to an incomplete and one-sided perception of the situation), depressive reactions (here help is primarily expected from others, which leads to passivity and helpfulness) and compulsive reactions (here much energy is wasted on the unfruitful discussion of minor details). Furthermore, one should analyse how the client reacts on tasks (some clients work with enthusiasm, some react obediently, some with reservations, some with refusal) and how they deal with tasks (some clients continuously defer necessary tasks or decisions, some are unable to set functional priorities or to complete tasks in a structured way, some are chronically overworked and forget a lot of things or mess about). Furthermore the coach should analyse how the clients interpret given rules. Some tend to be perfectionist, some correct, some flexible, some evasive. The task of coaching is in these cases to call these tendencies into question, to distance the client from what he believes is self-evident in order to increase his flexibility and adequacy of behaviour.

For all these aspects one can differentiate between more or less successful forms of coping, and solutions are situated on different developmental levels: for example there are employees with a marked need for dependence who need a lot of encouragement and positive feedback from their superiors, while becoming highly inefficient without encouragement. Other employees are fixed in a position of counter-dependence, they systematically protest against completing given tasks, and their co-operation can be secured only by indirect methods that stress their autonomy. On the whole, the task of coaching is to further the balance of mutuality, superiors and co-workers should feel that there is a fair balance of give and take.

Organisations offer themselves as a field, in which personal conflicts can be reenacted. Working through the personal history (including the delegation of unconscious assumptions about the world) of leading staff members is often very useful, it helps to save considerable costs of unreflective acting out. The concrete work behaviour is determined by the external situation and by the individual response. The individual belief structures, basic assumptions and mental models should be taken into account in counselling as well as the structures of the environment, that means group dynamics, organisational structure and market environment. The focus of attention, however, should always be on the tasks of the organisation rather than the group dynamics or the pathology of individuals (Fürstenau 1993). By concentrating on these tasks the perception is fixed on the next step to go. Thereby resources are activated and the clients start thinking on how they want to define their roles and what sort of solution would be adequate to the problem at hand.

The use of imaginations in coaching has proved its functionality in quite a number of situations: for the integration of pre-conscious perceptions and feelings, for example unconsciously re-activated transference-reactions to a person or to the organisation, or for clarification of concealed emotions and defence mechanisms, and for activating new learning.

Imaginations enable the client

• to define his or her own aims more clearly and more completely
• to get a clearer view of his or her own position and conception of his or her role,
• to get a clearer view of his or her controlling affects, especially of the "dysfunctional affects" (transferences) activated in certain professional situations such as wishes for dependence, fear of dependence, rivalry, exaggerated strength, violent ambition, feelings of superiority or inferiority, self-doubts, longing for harmony, fear of a break in relations, pressure for success, fear of success, forced singularity and grandiosity,
• to identify his or her own dominant behaviour patterns and to test (and thereby predispose) alternative behaviours,
• to gain insight into one's own problematic behaviour and one's own contribution to the generation and maintenance of acute conflicts.

The following imaginative motives have proved to be useful

In the very beginning of the coaching process, in the initial definition of aims, an imagination can help to discover desires, which are suppressed or denied. – All aims have to be formulated in a positive way (as aims to be achieved, not as negative aims, which one wants to avoid), and aims should be achievable by one's own means and they should lead to a feeling of harmony (Storch/Krause 2002) - otherwise they will not lead to actions.

To make sure that the person completely agrees with his aims one should look for denied ambivalence. Therefore, after having explored the client's work situation and conscious aims I ask the client for a brief imagination, of the kind: "Please imagine a situation which makes you feel good at the moment, a place where you would like to be, or an activity which you would like to engage in at the moment".

In this situation, it can occur that somebody who has the conscious aim of improving his work efficiency has the imagination of a South Sea beach and comes to feel his suppressed need for relaxation and regeneration. That means that his aim is not only efficiency but he should look at both sides of the matter, concentrated work and intervals of regeneration.

Or someone who wants support for a change of employer and for getting on with his career imagines himself in the office restaurant surrounded by his colleagues, discussing and laughing, and discovers his needs for belonging and loyalty, which were suppressed by his ambition.

An instrument that can be frequently applied without much effort is a so called flash: a client, who is in the process of describing an emotionally charged work situation is asked to picture it for himself in imagination and to enter into the situation, that means to give a detailed description of the environment, the persons involved as well as his own feelings, and is then asked to let any image emerge that happens to crop up. This image can then be developed further, and again it is important to perceive, feel and describe everything as precisely as possible.

Example: A manager was the only woman on the board of an company and persistently faced the problem of being excluded by her male colleagues. She reported angrily about a session in which she had contributed an important idea which was completely ignored by the others. Some minutes later a colleague put forward the same idea which then was taken up and developed but clearly ascribed to her colleague. The image she produced in the following imagination was a long straight road on which she drove in a very fast car, enjoying the speed but also feeling lonely. On both sides there were pastures with fences, then four wind-wheels emerged, two on the right and two on the left, rotating monotonously. – She associated the dead and unfeeling wind-wheels with her four colleagues who were only interested in efficiency.

In order to make the group dynamics in a department more transparent, clients can be asked to imagine an animal image for each member of the team and to sketch the animals on a piece of paper. In this way the seize and posture of the animals can be taken as mirroring their position within the group (analogously to the use of animal-images in family-therapy). In discussing the imagination one can stimulate identification with each of the animals in order to find out the perspectives and feelings of each of the colleagues with the aim of furthering empathy and understanding which hopefully leads to more differentiated and adequate behaviour.

Example: A psychologist complained about the deficient co-operation in her team. She imagined a rolled-in hedgehog, a scared mouse, a cuckoo, a sheep, an old serpent, herself as a lost sheep-dog. Hedgehog and serpent had lost interest in everything and looked forward to their retirement, the cuckoo was only interested in his own career, only mouse and sheep gave the impression that they would be glad about support and encouragement and cooperate constructively. So she could concentrate her efforts on them without being to frustrated by the others.

There are quite a number of motives suitable to the furtherance of resources, for example in cases of acute exhaustion it is helpful to imagine a place for feeling good, or a spring with fresh water, or a fruit bearing tree with fresh fruit to enjoy.

In cases of self-doubt the vivid memory of situations successfully mastered by the client is helpful. Other motives, which may be used for furthering vitality and expansion are an enterprising child zestfully exploring his environment, or a fast car to protect one and carry one around whereever one wants; or a boxing match with an antagonist, or the escape from a cage or a triumphal procession in celebration of one's own success – that is good for clients who never appreciate, what they have achieved, only see, what is left to be done.

Difficult situations expected can be imaginatively rehearsed in advance. In this case, an imagination has proved successful by which the client observes himself mastering the expected situation with a subsequent good feeling. In a second round the client is asked to closely attend to all the details: the posture in entering the room, the sound of his voice, his facial expression, his direction of looking, proprioceptive sensations (respiration, muscle tonus, perceived sounds and smells) and his behaviour. Subsequently the client is asked to let emerge an image.

Example: A teacher who had imagined to be relaxed in her class and to give well-structured lessons, saw herself stand on a high cliff, with a stormy sea far below, with herself enjoying the free view and the fresh air. – Afterwards she was able to reactivate this image in class in order to distance herself from the noisy turmoil in class.

Imaginations can also be used to relive difficult situations from the past. In this process it is important to attend to emotionally effective details in order to identify the harbingers of stress. By minding these details, one better and better succeeds in interrupting dysfunctional automatic behaviour in the course of time. Past situations can also be worked upon and modified by the well-known methods of symbol confrontation. In order to change one's behaviour on the level of imagination, and as a first step, enact the situation with positive models. This can be done by asking the client to imagine a person of whom he thinks that he is up to this kind of situation and to imagine this person handling the situation in question. – In this way a sublimal identification is achieved, and at the same time corresponding cerebral predisposition. Afterwards the client should get a clear view of his own resources to handle the situation and then do handle it in imagination himself.

Sometimes it is a good idea to have close look at certain parts of the Ego, specially the part generating a certain problematic behaviour (Bölcs 1986) and to confront the client with the question what he thinks the problemativ behavior is good for.

Another motive that is helpful for clients with a high pressure to perform or with a high ambivalence towards success, is the motive of the internal censor or judge.

Example: A highly capable lawyer intermittently endangered by alcoholism imagined as his judge a huge unmoving man in a hood with ice-cold aggressive eyes towards whom he felt little and inferior. He wavered between hopeless subjection and rebellious escape. In a symbol confrontation the eyes of the man with the hood became frozen and expressionless. Subsequently his head dropped. Afterwards spontaneously a new imagination emerged, in which the client imagined the judge he wished for himself: a king sat on a thrown surrounded by a number of counsellors, he had intelligent and friendly eyes. His kingdom was well ordered and flourishing. The client decided to move to this other country.

Another example: An employed mother was plagued by her bad conscience for being up neither to her work nor to her children. In the imagination she began to hunt on her bad conscience (a plaintive, grey, unattractive being) and to drive it out of her territory. Then she built a hut at the border between her own and her husband's hunting-ground, wishing that the bad conscience should haunt his territory as often as hers.

Sometimes one can also make contrasting Ego parts engage in a conversation with each other and look what ideas they produce, what kind of threats they expect and what their contribution might be to confronting an impending situation.

Example: A creative-director of a big PR agency had identified the following parts in herself: the industrious working-bee, the intelligent, strategic politician, the tender mistress, and a very caring pelican. For an important presentation aimed at acquiring a new big client, the working-bee wanted to do the necessary preparatory work, the politician wanted to provide for a good arrangement of the situation and for the acquisition and instruction of allies, the mistress wanted to choose subtly alluring clothes and the decoration of the rooms, and the pelican wanted to care for herself in order to preserve her fitness in spite of the imminent struggles. Encouraged by these four parts she went for the presentation with the feeling: I indulge in the experience to give my best and to enjoy the situation.

After the imagination there is a subsequent discussion. Here the focus is on drawing conclusions from the imagination for action. A good deal of the task is, however, already done on the symbolic level. It is on the symbolic level that resources are activated and mobilised and ideas are found as steps leading to solutions.

Sammanfattning av artikeln ”Symboldrama in counselling and coaching” av Leonore Kottje-Birnbacher.

Översättning: Kristina Westrup von Hofsten.

Visualisering, liknande den som används i symboldrama, har i många år använts också inom coaching och handledning. Syftet är att de omedvetna känslomässiga reaktioner som är avgörande för människors handlande, också ska tas med i beräkningen i coaching, så att anställdas arbetskapacitet kan förbättras.

Coaching kan användas på ett meningsfullt sätt i ett antal olika situationer:

• när spänningar blir så intensiva att de inte kan lösas utan extern hjälp
• vid omorganisationer som väcker stor rädsla
• när avdelningar eller anställda ställs inför motsägelsefulla eller olösliga uppgifter
• för att förebygga t ex utbrändhet eller för att förbättra balansen mellan arbete och det övriga livet
• för att utbilda och t ex hjälpa till med karriärutveckling eller att utveckla särskild kunskap.

Handledaren eller coachen behöver känna till hur organisationer fungerar, vara intresserad av klientens organisation, ha psykologisk erfarenhet och behärska ett brett spektrum av metoder.

Coaching verkar framförallt på det kognitiva planet, jagpsykologin ger den bästa teoretiska grunden med begrepp som perception, tanke, känsla och agerande. Det är viktigt att uppmärksamma klientens dominerande copingmekanismer när det gäller uppgifter och regler inom organisationen. Bland de mer dysfunktionella märks projektioner, förnekanden, depressiva reaktioner och tvångsmässighet. Både individens och omgivningens tankemönster och reaktioner måste beaktas, men fokus måste vara på organisationens mål och uppgifter.

Att använda visualisering i coaching är användbart på många sätt: för att t. ex. medvetandegöra överföringar på en person eller på organisationen, för att klargöra dolda känslor och försvar och för att aktivera inlärning.

Följande motiv har visat sig vara användbara

Alldeles i början av en coachingprocess kan man låta klienten föreställa sig en situation som känns bra eller en plats där han eller hon skulle vilja vara, detta för att fånga upp ev. ambivalens (kanske en nertryckt längtan efter avslappning eller återhämtning och inte bara ökad effektivitet på jobbet).

Man kan be en klient som beskriver en känsloladdad situation på jobbet att för sitt inre se situationen, gå in iden, noga beskriva miljön, personerna och sina egna känslor och sedan låta en bild ta gestalt, en bild som sedan kan utvecklas vidare.

För att tydliggöra gruppdynamiken på en avdelning kan man be klienter att föreställa sig ett djur för varje medlem i teamet och att måla dem på papper. Identifikation med varje djur kan stimuleras, för att öka empati och förståelse.

För att förstärka resurser, t ex vid utmattning, kan man föreslå en plats där det känns bra att vara, en källa med friskt vatten eller ett fruktträd med färsk frukt att njuta av.

Vid sviktande självförtroende kan man använda motiven ett företagsamt barn, en snabb och skyddande bil, en boxningsmatch med en motståndare, att lyckas fly ur en bur eller ett triumftåg för att fira den egna framgången.

Att i förväg föreställa sig förväntat svåra situationer kan vara framgångsrikt. Man ber klienten se hur han eller hon klarar situationen bra och med en god känsla, iaktta och beskriva alla detaljer och slutligen låta en bild ta form.

Svåra situationer kan genomlevas igen t ex genom symbolkonfrontation. Genom att låta klienten föreställa sig en person som troligen skulle klara situationen bra och sedan få en klar bild av sina egna resurser, kan dessa svåra situationer påverkas och förändras.

För klienter med höga prestationskrav kan motivet den inre domaren användas.

Man kan också låta olika delar av jaget samtala med varandra.

Visualiseringarna diskuteras i efterhand, men en stor del av arbetet sker redan på den symboliska nivån. Det är på den nivån som resurser aktiveras och som nya idéer uppstår som kan leda till lösningar.

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