12. The Manifestly Motivated is Constructive

A manifestly motivated person is someone who decides to do something constructive about his problem. Granted, he may find it equally as difficult as the latently motivated, but he does have a securely rooted constructive will on which to build his choices. In other words, the manifestly motivated is constructive.

Usually, however, the life context of the latently motivated client is much more destructive since his life force is weaker than in his manifested counterpart (Motivational Work, Part 1: Values and Theory, pages 79 – 83).

The manifestly motivated client has the capacity to do something constructive about his life. This does not mean that he has achieved self-actualization; he also has harmful destructive urges but is able to deploy greater forces to counter them.

The Case Study

Laura has been raised by both her parents and is an only child. They live in a village, and Laura finds the strict, overbearing atmosphere of their home oppressive. She, therefore, spends a great deal of time with friends and obtains by default a number of surrogate parents.

When Laura is ten, the family moves to another town, and she finds herself separated from her friends and their parents. Two years later, her mother and father get divorced, and she spends the remainder of her childhood in the custody of her mother.

Married

She leaves school at 16 and gets a job in a shop. In her early twenties, she meets an older man and they get married. The man is an established and renowned scientist. Laura feels inferior to him and is intimidated by his intellect. After some time, She quits her job in the shop to become a housewife. Laura and her husband have three children, to whom she is devoted.

However, her marital problems increase. Her husband has drinking problems and acts in a threatening way at times toward Laura and the children. Laura refuses to become financially dependent on her husband and enters teacher training.

Divorce

The husband’s drinking grows worse, and after ten years of marriage, Laura divorces him. She wins custody of the children, completes her training, and gets a job. Shortly afterward she realizes that she needs some sort of help, as she has started to feel increasingly remote and unable to be a proper parent to her children. Eventually, she contacts a psychotherapist.

Psychotherapy

Laura initially talks calmly and sensibly about her problems, but the psychotherapist notices that she seems to disengage her emotional responses to her life situation.

Despite this mask that she appears to hide behind, the therapist still connects with her client. Laura gradually begins to open up about her remoteness, and when the therapist asks about her children, Laura starts to cry in despair at being a bad mother.

She is extremely worried about her remoteness, which is alien to her as a person; yet she is also aware that there is no one else to blame, and that if something has to change, it’s something within her. Laura is desperate for help and is prepared to undergo psychotherapy regardless of how severely it will strain her finances. The psychotherapist concludes that Laura is motivated toward psychotherapy and accepts her as a client. To sum up, the manifestly motivated is constructive.

Discussion: The manifestly motivated is constructive

Laura’s motivation is explicit in her actions: she takes constructive initiatives to seek help and cares about herself and her children. She has an existential awareness that she is partly responsible for her problems, and she has the energy to connect with her suffering. She seeks to change. All in all, Laura is manifestly motivated, her motivation being explicit in her actions. Once again, the manifestly motivated is constructive.