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WITTGENSTEINS THERAPY: MAKING PROBLEMS DISAPPEAR by Alan Parry, Ph.D.

Dont think, but look! (66) Philosophy simply puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything. --Since everything lies open to view there is nothing to explain, for what is hidden . . . . is of no interest to us. (126). Philosophical Investigations. ............. The way to solve the problem you see in life is to live in a way that will make what is problematic disappear. The fact that life is problematic shows that the shape of your life does not fit into life's mould. So you must change the way you live and, once your life does fit into the mould, what is problematic will disappear. Culture & Value, p. 27 Ludwig Wittgenstein

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) is one of the most fascinating and influential intellectual figures of the twentieth century. Indeed he has become a mythic figure, a character in many novels and the subject of several poems. A movie has been made that portrays his fascinating life and often Zen-like utterances. In mythic stature, he is comparable among intellectuals and scholars only to Einstein. While everyone has heard of Einstein and most have not even heard of Wittgenstein, fascination with him is probably due to the fact that, as Eagleton (1993, p. 5) says, "Wittgenstein is the philosopher of poets and composers, playwrights and novelists and

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snatches of his mighty Tractatus have even been set to music." Born the youngest, and considered the dullest, of eight children of a wealthy, renowned and highly cultured family in fin de siecle Vienna he arrived, unannounced and uncredentialed, as a young man at Cambridge where he pestered Bertrand Russell until the latter, as much in exasperation as interest, began to discuss philosophy and mathematics with him. Russell soon recognized the genius of this singularly intense young man and saw him his successor. World War I intervened and Wittgenstein went off to war on the side of the Central Powers where he became a decorated war hero. While a prisoner of war he wrote the only book published in his lifetime, the great Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922/1961) for which he was eventually awarded his Ph.D. in 1929. Concluding that he had solved all the great problems of philosophy he abandoned the field, gave his siblings the immense fortune he had inherited from his father and became an elementary school teacher in rural Austria where he taught for six years. He designed to every last detail a house for his sister which is a masterpiece of modernist architecture. He had discussions with members of the Vienna Circle, but they were with those with a Marxist philosopher, Pietro Sraffa, that he realized there was more to philosophy and language than he had previously realized. He returned to Cambridge in 1929 as suddenly as he had left and established a second distinctive approach to philosophy, best represented in his posthumous Philosophical Investigations (1953) the only other book he actually ever wrote. He left philosophy again with the outbreak of World War II to serve as a hospital orderly. Wittgenstein died in 1951 of prostate cancer; his dying words: "Tell them I've had a wonderful life." While he can be said to have founded two distinctive approaches to philosophy, in many other fields his influence is only beginning to be felt. One of these fields is the talking cure where language is obviously central, particularly in the relationship therapies about which I hope to demonstrate the singular relevance of "Wittgenstein's therapy" in as close as my limited abilities are able to manage to his unique style of writing in propositions. I found, in fact, that Wittgenstein's work lends itself to this way of writing. 1. It is remarkable that so little effort has been made thus far to spell out the therapeutic implications of Wittgenstein's philosophy. Newman (1996) himself a philosopher, has addressed this subject, as has Shawver (2001) in many of her writings and communications. Although not writing from a specifically therapeutic position Shotter (1994, 1997) has clarified

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Wittgenstein's work in a way that makes it most helpful to therapists. Wittgenstein himself saw connections between philosophy and therapy stating, for instance, that: "The philosopher's treatment of a question is like the treatment of an illness" (PI, 253). He also said: "There is not a philosophical method, although there are indeed methods, like different therapies" (PI, 133). Their application should result in "complete clarity" which should then have the effect that "philosophical problems should completely disappear" (133). Since, from Wittgenstein's perspective, philosophical problems are problems that have to do with language and the ways we use and misuse it, they must, of necessity, be problems in living. Indeed, he makes it clear that he sees no reason for doing philosophy unless it makes a difference in one's life (C & V, p. 85). "Working in philosophy . . . is really more a working on oneself" (C & V, p. 16). He also said: "Thoughts that are at peace. That's what someone who philosophizes yearns for" (C & V, p. 43). In that sense we must surely all, then, be philosophers! 2. One of Wittgensteins most frequently quoted statements is that, Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language (PI, 109). As far as therapy is concerned, the source of this bewitchment is threefold. First of all it lies in our habit of assuming that the words we use are all that is necessary to get our message across. Secondly it lies in the assumption that words simply correspond to the objects they refer to such that the words we are using, even with someone who disagrees with us, describe an objective state of affairs. In other words, in view of the assumed correspondence between words and the objects they refer to, one's own perceptions offer one a privileged view of reality. Anyone who disagrees with that is either a fool or a liar. Thirdly, language bewitches us when we look for explanations of people's actions in hidden sources of motivation. Probably most of our theories of behavior are mounted on that foundation. Instead Wittgenstein argues that nothing is hidden. It is sufficient to limit our efforts to understand each other to the ways we commonly talk with one another, for when we talk that way we usually understand each other quite adequately. Thus we have only to describe and not to explain what is going on when people express themselves for there is nothing to explain. 3. Language is a social activity. It is not a preparation or rehearsal for action, but the activity that gives meaning to relationships. The meanings

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such activity gives rise to are products of culture. Indeed, language is the primary event and possibility of human culture (Z, 567). A given set of words put together in a series of sentences are meaningless apart from the total context in which they occur. This includes the tone of voice, gestures, facial expressions and postures that accompany the words themselves, but also the customs and forms of life which language uniquely embodies (C & V, p. 31). The words we happen to use at any given time, in other words, are only part of a gestural and cultural activity. As such they are performative in nature in that language, shows its meaning at the same time as it states that meaning (McDonald, 2001, p. 9). 4. When we realize this and pay attention not only to what we are saying, but how we are saying it and what it means to the other person, says Wittgenstein, the problematic nature of language evaporates or dissolves. We are then able to engage in those thoughts that are at peace for Wittgenstein, the aim of philosophy. The obstacle to this attainment lies in acting as though words are sufficient and simply stand in for the objects they presumably define (PI, 1). 5. In attaching such importance as we do to words we use apart from how we say them we neglect what actually gives them the meaning they assume for others and to which others respond. This involves the overall interactional performance of which the words themselves play only one part and within which they are couched. 6. Anytime we speak, whether to others or even to ourselves, we are participating in what Wittgenstein calls a language game. He is characteristically imprecise about what he means by the term. In probably his most oft-quoted description of what he means by language game he says: Here the term language game is meant to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or a form of life (PI, 23). 7. But what is a form of life? The following description comes as close as any: We are not, however, regarding the language games which we describe as incomplete parts of a language, but as languages complete in themselves, as complete systems of human communication (B & B, p. 81). As such, language games follow implicit rules which emerge out of the recurrence of the activities in question. They follow rules specific to the activity according

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to which they are practiced. That, presumably, is why he called them language games. 8. Wittgenstein did not go into a great deal of detail as to how such rules become established. As usual he is suggestive rather then definitive, as in the following example: "Doesn't the analogy between language and games throw light here? We can easily imagine people amusing themselves in a field by playing with a ball so as to start various existing games, but playing many without finishing them and in between throwing the ball and bombarding one another for a joke and so on. And now someone says: The whole time they are playing a ball-game and following definite rules at every throw. And is there not also the case where we play and--make up the rules as we go along? And there is even one where we alter them--as we go along" (PI 83).

9. We also know from the field of group processes that when a given interaction repeats itself without any of the parties involved objecting or taking issue with the way the activity is performed a rule becomes established. This does not imply that the participants have set or are even necessarily aware of the rule they are following . Generally speaking language games are what people are engaged in when they are performing tasks together or are simply spending time conversing with each other. If it is a set activity such as painting a fence the nature of the task will heavily influence what rules are established by the participants. If it is a predominantly social activity the rules may be made up as those involved go along, most often by a subtle process of ongoing negotiation conveyed by looks, gestures, expressions and tone of voice suggesting acquiescence or varying degrees of reservation. Yet as long as the participants continue playing without one or the other explicitly opposing or even refusing the game will continue; challenges to the ongoing rules as are allowed, even when they are not appreciated and may have the effect of introducing a new rule. 10. Wittgenstein describes language games, then, in terms of the rules that govern various, more or less characteristic ways people do things together. He wants to distinguish between the different ways words are used during particular types of activity. He is challenging the positivist approach to

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language which he himself had been instrumental in developing through his work with Bertrand Russell, George Moore and other language philosophers at Cambridge. According to them words which did not refer to a specific thing in an unambiguous way were meaningless. His first great work, The TracatusLogico-Philosophicus (1922/1961) was written in this vein. His later philosophy, by contrast, was at pains to legitimize languages that were more elusive and ambiguous such as the characteristic language and terminology specific to religious, artistic or everyday conversational discourses could not be otherwise dismissed as unscientific or nonsensical. In short Wittgenstein sought to understand language according to how humans typically and variously speak to each other and, in so doing, seem to understand each other quite well. Wittgenstein went from there to include not only the languages of various specific activities, but the accompanying tone and overall social context in which the actual words were addressed. He notes, for instance, that: "Imponderable evidence includes subtleties of glance, of gesture, of tone" (PI, II, p. 194) 11. Once it is understood that words are part of a social activity, which includes their context, philosophers, for instance, could no longer accuse theologians or even those of different approaches to philosophy of talking nonsense. Such accusations are a product of using words independently of the rules of their particular language game. Words thus misused could be made into weapons to heap scorn on people we disagree with. Instead, then, of asking how a word is properly defined it would be far more helpful to ask how it is being used (PI 1). 12. Thus, while Wittgenstein adopted the concept of language games to clarify philosophical discussion and to legitimate other disciplinary languages he seems to have regarded what he was doing as a form of therapy to enable philosophers to overcome the bewitchment of language. Yet this is a bewitchment that we all seem heir to. It is unquestioning faith in language which leads us to focus almost exclusively on the words we use to influence each other while overlooking the fact that it is the tone and the context in which they are used that influences the recipient often much more than the words. The frustrated parent who yells a command to "Stop it this instant!" adds more to her own frustration than to her effectiveness when the child responds more to the context than the message. 13. In regard to the implications of Wittgenstein for therapy the issue for

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me relates as much to the way words are often used as when the assumption is made that when a particular word is used within a conversation or report of one to another, the listener understands the word in the same way as the speaker. It is helpful, then, for a therapist to seek clarification, particularly when the words used have an ambiguous or imprecise quality. She will keep asking such questions as "What do you mean by that word?" or "Just how are you using that word?" The therapists job, from a Wittgensteinian perspective, is to help people participaate in the same language game with each other, that is to say to 'talk the same language' when they are attempting to come to a common understanding or achieve a common goal. If they do not, they are apt to find themselves working at cross purposes, antagonizing rather than supporting one another. 14. Troubles, confusion and distress arise from at least two sources. Thje first of these occurs when the rules of particular language games are broken or when those involved misunderstand the rules (PI, 125). The second of these occurs when one perwson, or even both, seek to impose their preferred and accustomed language game on the other (C, 609). To the latter end sometimes hitherto agreed-upon rules are broken covertly so that one may gain an advantage over the other. This frequently happens when there is confusion or a struggle over who gets to set the rules. this frequently happens in a family when one parent frequently undermines the rules they were supposedly observing. At times such as this words can disguise a covert agenda of, for instance, gaining an edge in the relationship. It is when rules are broken covertly or there is confusion concerning the rules of a particular game involved that problems enter our lives. This frequently happens when there is a struggle for who gets to set the rules, always keeping in mind that such rules are implicit, rarely explicit. 15. Wittgenstein conceived of language games to address ways that words are used by people who are 'talking the same language' or who are working together on a common task or practicing a particular discipline. Everyone appears to be understanding each other even though the language they are using might seem nonsense to those who do not share the rules of the language game in question. Even though notoriously a moralist, particularly toward himself, he did lnot concern himself so much with the aggressiveness and deviousness alltoo often foujnd in human relationships. At such times it is not so much language games that are being played as it is the 'oneupmanship' games so wonderfully mocked by Stephen Potter (1952) which

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were even turned into a very influential school of psychotherapy by Eric Berne (1964). Their usage camto inform much of the general public's concept of what is meant when the term 'games people play' is used in relataion to human interaction. 16. In Wittgenstein's examination of Freud (L & C, pp. 41-52) he indicates his appreciation of the inventor of psychoanalysis for his creation of a brilliant mythology, while criticizing him for insisting that what Freud was offering was scientific. His criticism was not against the explanatory power of psychoanalysis, but against Freud's insistence of its scientific merit. As such Wittgenstein suggested that what Freud had invented was a new mythology, a "manner of speaking," the effectiveness of which lay in its success in persuading the patient of its interpretation of her situation. A mythology for Wittgenstein was an exercise in persuasion. It does not solve problems, rather it dissolves them by describing them in a new and unexpected way. That is, in fact, how Wittgenstein viewed all human problems. They are not and cannot be solved, they can only be dissolved by describing them in a fresh way. He spoke of Freud and psychoanalysis, but what he says is as true of any form of psychotherapy. 17. By describing a problem differently and seeing it from a new perspective one will no longer see it as a problem. It will simply disappear. Therapists are of course familiar with this way of speaking as positive reframing. Wittgenstein saw other ways of describing a problem so that it disappeared Pi, 144). Freud offered a new mythology as a way of making problems disappear by explaining them as due, not to personal faults or failings, but as due to forces and experiences from childhood that were beyond the person's culpability. Instead they have the force of something like fate: the trauma of birth, of the primal scene, of the Oedipus Complex. The secret of Freud's great appeal lies in a certain compelling persuasiveness combined with that sense of fate over which one has no control, hence is blameless. For Wittgenstein, then, psychoanalysis represents a "way of thinking" which allows a person who is persuaded of it to "go certain ways; it makes certain ways of behaving and thinking natural for them" (L & C, pp. 44f.) 18. When Wittgenstein says that nothing is hidden he also means that our words do not need to be seen as carrying with them hidden meanings nor are they driven by forces at work from deep inside us. Different ways of speaking reflect simply particular language games, ways for people to engage

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in different kinds of activity with one another. It is not necessary to look further than the grammar or rules of a given language game to understand what is going on. It is a descriptive and not an explanatory matter and it is about a social activity that is there for all who would use their eyes to see. 19. Our insistence, for instance, that we think our thoughts intentionally, hence deserve credit or blame for them, is itself a language game one, moreover, that has given rise to the grammatical fiction of an I that conjures up thoughts which it then puts into words. This misapprehension is yet another source of confusion and misunderstanding, both for ourselves and our activities with others. Indeed, Wittgenstein writes: "One of the most dangerous ideas for a philosopher is, oddly enough, that we think with our heads or in our heads. The idea of thinking as a process in the head, in a completely enclosed space, gives him something occult" (Z, 1981, 605. 606). A language game guided by the assumption that it is more or less separate thinking "I"s who interact with one another is utterly misleading and gives rise to endless confusion. The social activity between the participants is all that is necessary to attend to. An assumption that each is acting from behind a separate, enclosed identity cannot but give rise to a needless speculation about who and what is behind the activity pulling the strings to make it happen, so to speak. It introduces a separate reality where none is needed to understand what is happening. "Don't think, but look!" 20. In most cases what is taking place between ourselves and another proceeds spontaneously. It does not even occur to us, in such instances, to ask ourselves what is driving either ourselves or the other person. It is only when we are puzzled by something between us that is not adding up that we say to ourselves, "What's going on?" Thus, Wittgenstein wonders if it is necessary to assume, as Kerr puts it, that "what we have to do sometimes is . . . what we have to do always" (1986/1997, p. 80), namely struggle to understand each other. Most of the time we understand each other remarkably well without trying or wondering what the other person is thinking. To the extent that this does happen, however, it may be an artifact of the assumptive belief in the Cartesian self, namely that something is going on inside the other person's head and, in fact, that what is going on there is the most important thing of all. But what if, indeed, what is going on there most of the time is of little or no account? The only time there is, is

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when there is a problem, a discrepancy, a departure from the usual. That is the "sometimes" to which Kerr refers. 21. The very assumption that what is most important are the hidden thoughts in the other person's head creates a problem all of its own making which we must take steps to solve. By trying to solve a fictitious problem we then create several more, mostly by asking ourselves unanswerable questions and then making up our own questionable answers to them and acting on the basis of these equally fictitious conclusions. Entire schools of therapy have been built on these unprofitable speculations. 22. This does not mean that nothing is going on within those involved in any interaction. There is, after all, the ever abundant chatter we all engage in with ourselves, perhaps at least partly what Wittgenstein means when he refers to those situations in which "language takes a holiday" (PI, 37). Even such chatter is readily available to us. It might be hidden to others, but not to oneself except that it is often, like so much else in our gestural language, overlooked. Thus we are still able to agree with Wittgenstein that it is not necessary to posit some kind of additional spectral mind or an entity called the unconscious to explain actions that seem disproportionate. To do so is part of a language game of its own, or a manner of speaking. 23. Hence we have Wittgenstein's famous injunction: "Don't think, but look!" (PI, 66). In other words, it is all there for our eyes to see if only we use them for that purpose. As he also points out, "everything lies open to view" (PI, 125). Thus it might be said that for Wittgenstein the unconscious is not hidden from view in the depths of the psyche, it is instead on the surface if only we look and pay attention. It is only unconscious, however, in that we overlook virtually everything about how we act except for the words we use. 24. Wittgensteins therapy consists, in an overall sense, of inviting us to pay attention, not only to what we are saying, the tone we are using and the gestures accompanying our words, but to the context in which we are speaking, in giving often unintended meaning to our words. He is asking to realize that when we speak we are engaged in a performance. We are not just using words dispassionately to designate objects and states of affairs. We always speak within a sociocultural context in the interests of accomplishing particular goals. There are times, in fact, when the words we use are

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secondary to the rest of a particular performance or language game and to its goals. Thus: "Only in the stream of thought and life do words have meaning" (Z, 173). 25. Central to "Wittgenstein's therapy" is the encouragement of persons to pay attention to the gestural aspects of their language performances. An important, but all too neglected resource for letting us know the finer details of our gestural language is the other person, the audience to our performance. Those present during each other's performance can give singularly helpful feedback on the tone of voice employed, any gestures and their effect, facial expressions from the most obvious to the most subtle as well as the effect of each person's overall posture, whether straight backed or hunched. If only such feedback would be listened to. Most of us do not appreciate the realization of how much of ourselves we give away even when we think we are keeping things hidden by saying nothing. 26. As Wittgenstein has observed: "The human body is the best picture of the human soul" (PI, Pt. Ii, iv). It is the embodied soul which is there for all to see that exposes the trickery that we play on ourselves and would play on others, It is not from within the hidden depths of an unconscious mind that we are betrayed. 27. The therapist is to challenge with what Wittgenstein calls "charm," which is how he describes the appeal of psychoanalysis. Its charm has to do with its metaphorical power in the use of terms that carry with them their own mystique, terms such as the unconscious the Oedipus Complex and later on the ego, the super ego and, most fascinating of all, "the seething cauldron of the id." Freud's eventual great rival, Carl Jung, if anything outdid even Freud in the creation of an entire mythology with which to appeal to the imaginations of his followers and patients. Currently the Australian family therapist, Michael White, has been singularly creative in his ability to invent imaginative words with which to appeal and persuade. 28. As charming and persuasive as a therapist might be, nonetheless Wittgenstein is clear on the following: "Anything your reader can do for himself leave to him" (C & V, p. 77). He might well say that of us all in any circumstance. Wittgenstein suggests, in the third epigram at the start of this study, that "The way to solve the problem you see in life is to live in a way that will make what is problematic disappear" (C & V, p. 27). Since, for

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Wittgenstein, nothing is hidden it is for each of us to open our eyes and look around in order to notice any way in which our "life does not fit into life's mould" (ibid.). This represents an utterly fresh way of considering the role of therapy as part of a search for a happier life. Most forms of therapy have been built upon the assumption that emotional and behavioral problems have to do with what goes on inside those involved. Wittgenstein's therapy, by contrast, assumes that our problems have to do with our unwillingness or felt inability to join in and participate fully in the forms of life that comprise "the whole hurly-burly" of human social existence (Z, 567). 29. Participating fully in the forms of life involves simply a willingness to play by the rules. This is never more so than in the language game of what we might call "getting along with others." While this is implied in language games generally, getting along necessarily gives rise to such basic rules as give and take, taking turns, treating one another fairly, not taking unfair advantage of one another, not ganging up on one person, in short of acting decently and fairly with one another. Moreover such rules are, not so much extrinsic as intrinsic and emergent in the task or situation involved. 30. Stanley Cavell, one of the most sensitive and penetrating commentators on Wittgenstein, writes on the subject of getting along: "The extent to which we understand one another or ourselves is the same as the extent to which we share or understand forms of life, share or know, for example, what it is to take turns, or take chances, or know that some things we have lost we cannot look for but can nevertheless sometimes find or recover; share the sense of what is fun and what loss feels like, and take comfort from the same things and take confidence or offense in similar ways. That we do more or less share such forms rests upon nothing deeper; nothing ensures that we will, and there is no foundation, logical or philosophical, which explains the fact that we do, which provides the real forms of which our lives, and language, are distortions" (quoted in Kerr, 1986/1997, p. 75). of

31. Where we need to get, whether the therapy be philosophical or psychological, is, therefore, quite simple. Problems disappear when people participate fully in the forms of life in which they find themselves. There is very little that is complicated about such participation. It involves people figuring out how to get along with each other in the manner in which any

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small group gets along: by taking turns, playing fair, not taking advantage of the other person, exercising courtesy and mutual respect, taking care never to hurt or humiliate the other person intentionally and to take responsibility and make up for it if one does. It involves acting as decently toward each other as possibly as a conscious policy. 32. The task of therapy is to address the obstacles that interfere with or prevent such participation. It is considered a given that the goal of such a therapy would concern the simple matter of being able to act decently and fairly with those with whom we enter into relationship. The obstacles toward this kind of participation might involve the usual suspects: childhood fears or trauma, including the effects of physical, sexual or emotional abuse and relationship histories of abuse, betrayals and disappointments. Other obstacles involve confusion over how much can legitimately be expected of oneself or of others in the case of children and adolescents or those suffering from specific disabilities. 33. Addressing obstacles is especially complicated when it comes to getting along in families. A firstborn child is born into an ongoing relationship between two people who already are engaged in working out their rules for getting along with each other. At birth the child is almost totally exempt from expectations regarding adherence to these rules. As she grows older she is gradually included into more and more of the rules, particularly those relating to manners and simple courtesies being worked out and sometimes made up as the family goes along. By the time she is an adolescent her exemptions from helping out with the daily maintenance of the family through the medium of meaningful chores is gradually being lifted. Once she becomes an adult she has few exemptions left for that is what adulthood means: full participation in the rules of getting along in the family. If this process has not been made clear expectations become the source of misunderstanding and conflict as the child continues to act as though many of her exemptions were still in place while the parents are deciding that they should be withdrawn. Many a parent-adolescent conflict is about just this: the parents now expect the children to "do their chores" while the adolescent insists equally that that is not part of her understanding of the "job description" of being a teenager in this family. At the same time the same adolescent may conclude that, since she is no longer a child, she is entitled to make what the parents consider extraordinary and unearned claims for freedom from one of the central understandings or rules of family life: "We'll

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protect you from the dangers of the world outside the family in return for the exemptions we grant you from the family rule of doing your full share." The adolescent, meanwhile, may be insisting that, being now "an adult" she has the right to make up her own rules! 34. By the time individuals, couples or families come to a therapist looking for help in working out problems that have arisen from seeking an exemptions they may insist that their problems are uniquely complex and, as such, will require even complex, but not too difficult solutions. While untangling and identifying the obstacles to full participation may well be difficult and complex, the solutions are simple enough. They ask of each person only what is asked of anyone in relation to another: to work out with each other the rules implicit in the language game of getting along: acting decently and fairly, and refraining from insisting that oneself be regarded as a special case. 35. Wittgenstein was notoriously hard on himself and he was also demanding of others. There is the famous story of his confessional encounters with people he believed he had hurt in the course of his life. When he made his confession to his friend Fania Pascal she responded with exasperation: "'What is it? You want to be perfect?' 'Of course I want to be perfect.' he thundered" (Monk, 1991, p. 369). This story by itself demonstrates a crucial element in Wittgenstein's work, namely that, if one finds oneself unhappy or beset with problems, it is up to oneself to take whatever steps are necessary necessary to get back in step, recalling the words from the final epigram beginning this work: "So you must change the way you live . . ." (C & V , p. 27) Wittgenstein's therapy, then, is a demanding one. It is one that expects people to do their part, to play the games of life by the rules that make full participation possible. It would, moreover, trace doing anything less to the ways language is misused, that is in this case to justify oneself in holding back and seeking to be excused, to be made an exception when the games of life permit no exemptions other than those graduated for children and granted for those simply and clearly disabled from the very possibility of full participation. 36. In "Wittgenstein's therapy," success is measured by the extent to which those involved are willing and then rendered able to participate in the hurlyburly of life with others, the choices this makes possible, but also the demands. To the extent that this therapy is successful the participant is

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able to play by the rules of the social world, its give and take, and does not make oneself an exception. The rules, in this case, are understood as mutually negotiated and adaptable to changing circumstances. They are not imposed, explicit rules, rather they emerge out of the demands of changing situations and apply equally to all. 37. Often a person experiences obstacles in participating fully in the language game of getting along because their actions and attitudes are regarded in a critical manner by other family members. It is in such situations that the introduction of a more affirming manner of speaking allows the person to feel more included and family members to soften in their critical way of speaking of him. I once saw a family in which the 10 year old boy who had been diagnosed with ADHD was constantly compared adversely with his more compliant and academically superior 12 year old brother. The single area in which his skills exceeded his brother was in athletics. I suggested that, like most superior athletes, such as Wayne Gretzky and Michael Jordan, he probably possessed "peripheral awareness," of which ADHD was an accompanying effect. The boy's entire mien changed. He sat up, began to participate in the conversation. In both of the only two session in which it proved necessary to see the family the boy arrived carrying his basketball as a kind of badge of his athletic prowess. 38. Adherence to 'the rules of the game' does not mean simply complying with the conventions of the society, nor strict obedience to the family rules, in which one lives. It does not mean mere fitting in. Wittgenstein understands that there are different kinds of rules for different phenomena. There are grammatical rules, mathematical rules, game rules, fixed rules and circumstantial rules. Those governing the life forms of everyday human interaction refer to an active and ongoing process of making up the rules as we go along, that is to say acting with each other in an ongoing, collaborative way in order to adapt to evolving circumstances. 39. Within this adaptational framework, however, it is the fact that certain overarching, more or less stable rules which include give and take, taking turns, being honest, giving the other person the benefit of the doubt are practiced that makes it possible for those involved to hear and trust each other sufficiently that it becomes possible to make up workable rules as we go along. It is also through observing such basic rules of decency that it becomes possible for creativity and innovation to arise and find a foothold in

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human affairs, thus to provide the possibility of something that Wittgenstein valued supremely: the achievement of a fully human civilization. 40. Wittgenstein was extremely critical of the state of Western civilization and of the decline of reverence, basic civility and personal responsibility that he saw as characteristic of life in the twentieth century. We can only assume that he would have been even less impressed at the cultural state of affairs as it stands early in the twenty-first century. He had a great regard for the historic achievements of Western civilization about which he wrote these words: "The earlier culture will become a heap of rubble and finally a heap of ashes, but spirits will hover over the ashes" (C & V, p. 3). We may still allow ourselves to be influenced by such spirits if we choose. 41. For Wittgenstein modernity's belief in progress through scientific advancement and technological invention, thereby making life easier and more comfortable, were factors that have had the effect of severely undermining traditional values. Chief among these have included the importance of assuming responsibility for one's actions, hence taking it for granted that, if one found oneself out of step with the surrounding life forms, it was up to oneself to take action to remedy the situation. Wittgenstein still saw this as the most effective and most ethical approach to take in the face of a life problem. He had little regard for the direction that Western culture was moving and, one can only suppose, would have been appalled by the contemporary drift toward looking for someone, if not society itself, to blame for problems in one's own life. 42. A major factor in the increasing prevalence of the latter may be the increasing individualism of modern society which has emerged both out of two sources: the decline of the moral consensus that was still holding up, albeit in rather tattered condition, perhaps until the early 1960s at least in North America; the rise of the consumer society which made it possible for everyone to fancy being able to gratify their own material desires. In an individualistic world the very idea of governing one's own actions according to various rules of the game became virtually incomprehensible. Instead the ideal has perhaps come closer to an assumption that it was not only desirable but possible to make up one's own rules as one goes along come what may. 43. Indeed the very modernism of which Wittgenstein was a major if

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reluctant exemplar was transgressive at its core. Its achievements, whether in literature with Joyce, Pound Eliot, Woolf and others, in art beginning with the Impressionists through Picasso, Matisse, Braque and the cubists, architecture with Wright, Courvoisier, Mies de Rohe and more, or philosophy itself with Russell, at least the early Wittgenstein, and the Vienna Circle and others, modernism enthusiastically broke the rules. In this sense, postmodernism carries on the transgressive program of modernism save only that it has trimmed its sails and aimed for far less. The world in which it finds itself is one in which the postmodernists insist cannot be remade. But it is still a world in which there are only, at most, local rules for local situations and those only tentative. 44. Although postmodernists often claim Wittgenstein as one of their own, avant la lettre as it were, I am not sure he would have welcomed their embrace. I can see their sense of an affinity, one which Lyotard (1985) for one claims, for Wittgenstein's language about games and their rules offers perhaps a pathway out of the relativistic cul de sac which leads many to dismiss some of the important ingredients of the postmodern critique. Otherwise the contemporary world would be the obverse of almost everything Wittgenstein stood for in his own person and in the positions he took, both on philosophical and cultural matters the way he described language games and the pragmatic nature of their rules offers a way beyond the nihilism and relativism for which postmodernist positions are frequently criticized. He would also perhaps have found some common ground with the poststructuralist deconstruction of the self (Derrida, 1982; Lacan, 1977; Foucault, 1977). For him the self supposedly possessed by the individual who seeks to play by his own rules has no substance. it is a grammatical fiction, a manner of speaking which implies something like ownership of our bodies, as in "my back hurts," or to a subjective distinction such as "I am in pain" with reference to emotional states. It is also used to state or claim personal identity. Thus, the statement, "I am LW" is not so much an assertion that this person is the one who is making a particular claim, but is an expression of who this person is who is experiencing various subjective states (Peters & Marshall, 1999, p. 193). 45. Wittgenstein clearly had a strong and notoriously demanding relationship with himself. Indeed Cavell (1969, pp. 70-72) proposes that the key to appreciating Wittgenstein's unique style is that he wrote as he spoke in the genre of confessional dialogue. His own struggles to understand were never

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expressed as assertions, but as questions, wonderings, conversations with himself. jokes, parables, idiosyncratic examples and propositions. They all bespeak a sharing of his struggle with himself. He did not, then, have to elaborate directly on the subject of whether what we call the self simply has to do with the ongoing conversations we have with ourselves. His entire body of work is a testimony to this. 46. What he perhaps did not speak to in so doing were the ways such conversations serve to build and maintain a self-image for purposes of presenting ourselves in a predictable and enhanced way to others and in the families and communities in which we live. Perhaps this had to do with the extremely critical stance he took toward himself. Even this, however, suggests that he had a great deal of concern both for how he appeared to others and how he appeared to himself. Toward others he appears to have been dubious about being seen as, for instance, the founder of a Wittgensteinian school of philosophy. Toward himself he was painfully aware of his personal and, above all, his moral failings. Thus his self-image, like so much about him, comes from an earlier age when a confessional mode of self-criticism formed the crux of one's self presentation, a far cry indeed from the contemporary preoccupation with enhancing and polishing one's image in the eyes of others perhaps first then of oneself. 47. It is possible and eminently desirable, Wittgenstein tells us, to make problems disappear. If we would do therapy that is informed by Wittgenstein we would be advised, first of all, to encourage clients, and to make sure we follow suit ourselves, to pay attention, not only to what is said, but more importantly, how it is said. The words may be the centre piece of what it is one wants to say, but they will not be heard as such unless care is taken to watch the overall tone with which they are spoken. It needs to be realized that words are actions and take place within a total context that includes the tone of voice, gestures and the state of the relationship that exists at any particular time with those with whom one is interacting. One's words are likely to be heard as they are intended, to the extent to which they are congruent with the expressive language with which they are presented. 48. The second principle to be employed to make problems disappear involves Wittgenstein's fascination with therapeutic language as simply a manner of speaking rather than as a something it cannot be, namely a science. The genius of Freud was that he invented a mythology that enabled him to speak

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persuasively to his patients and, indeed, to the world so they could understand themselves in a new way, one that left them less at war with themselves and others. Freud's failure was that he insisted he was practicing science, that he had found a universal prescription for the ills of humanity. We can learn from Freud to accept that the job of a therapist is to persuade people by using language that makes their problems seem less like problems than as opportunities. 49. The third principle in the practice of "Wittgenstein's therapy" lies in encouraging people to consider that, if their lives are not going well, it is something they can do something about. The therapeutic task, then, might be to persuade people to believe that they may be living their lives within their families and other important relationships according to rules that are outmoded and about which there is no longer agreement; or rules that are regarded by others or oneself as unfair or concerning which oneself, another or both are excusing themselves from observing even as they are demanding them of the others. To the extent that all those involved could be persuaded to set rules that are agreed upon and mutually observed they will then find that their problems have disappeared. 50. A culture such as ours that is suffering from a worsening case of cultural amnesia is very likely both the cause and the consequence of a disproportionate focus on the importance of self-enhancement at the expense of a willingness to accept responsibility for the consequences of our actions and to engage in constructive self-criticism. A culture that increasingly lacks vibrant institutions and values, the adherence to which yields a sense of personal pride, leaves its members with questionable, even trivial standards with which to value themselves. In such circumstances we are bound to be left in states of personal fragility and doubt, afraid of being unmasked and altogether terrified to be held to account. Small wonder seeking exemptions from the expectations of others and reasons for making oneself an exception to the rules of the game has become a way of life. Can the problems that arise out of these circumstances be made to disappear? I commend the strong medicine of Wittgenstein's therapy.

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Wittgenstein, L. (1966). Lectures and conversations on aesthetics, psychology and religious belief. C. Barrett, ed. Berkeley: University of California Press. Wittgenstein, L. (1967/1970). Zettel. G. E. M. Anscombe G. H. Wright, ed. G. E. M. Anscombe, trans. Berkeley: University of California Press. Wittgenstein, L. (1980). Culture and value. G. H. Wright with H. Nyman, ed. P. Winch, trans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.