Polarity Therapy

 Ken Wilber describes Polarity Therapy in the chapter "Miscellaneous Elements" of The Religion of Tomorrow. There are a few interesting aspects that I would like to explore in this therapy.
   The idea behind polarity therapy, if I am understanding correctly, is that whenever there is a deep conflict between two sides in a person, there is a tendency to attach to one side and reject the other to reduce that conflict. Freud was one of the psychologists who talked about how people repress impulses that are not considered acceptable to the greater society, in order to reach a psychic compromise with social norms. In many ways, the only way people achieve this compromise is through a process of repressing one side of themselves which embodies this "negative" or disliked element, sometimes called the "shadow". The problem with repression is two fold: firstly, it takes a lot of energy to repress unwanted elements of ourselves, and secondly, it can lead to all kinds of illnesses or bodily dysfunctions. I suppose that high blood pressure is one obvious side-effect of a repressed anger, for instance, but I wonder if perhaps depression or a mild fatigue might also be examples of the side-effects and symptoms of repression.
   Polarity therapy starts with the premise that there is something fundamentally common to two sides of something, and there is also something purposeful about these sides. Anger or compulsive behavior might seem bad altogether, but if one starts to have a conversation between "the good" and "the bad", one may begin to see that there is some common ground between them, such as a common goal. Getting angry at my computer for being non-functional at work might seem counter-productive (and therefore I repress it), but it can also have the same goal of wanting me to get back to work. So rather than denying my emotion, it might be to inquire: what kinds of concerns does this emotion to relate to? Can I trace the emotion back to the concern? Here, the emotion starts to be accepted as part of an overall situation where choices can be made and a strategy can be built.
  Then comes the part of, if emotions have common concerns, can the emotions work together somehow? Yes, anger might be one emotion, as well as anxiety, but how about recognizing that these emotions are only parts to an unfolding whole that is changing all the time? Here, the emotions are seen and respected, but they are integrated into a whole. Perhaps one can even say that rather than one emotion dominating and being 'true', each emotion is like a color that provides a useful lens for the others. In this way, polarity gives way to more harmonizing of elements.

Wilber ,  K (2017) The Religion of Tomorrow. Boston: Shambahala