Therapy as 3-Body Problem
Credits: NASA, ESA, M. Stute, M. Karovska, D. de Martin & M. Zamani (ESA/Hubble); CC BY 4.0
Liu Cixin’s 2006 novel Three-Body Problem (三体) leapt into the imagination of Americans last year when Netflix transformed it into a series of the same name. As with most compelling sci-fi stories, the plot produces an uncanny eeriness by blending an outrageous scenario with themes that are hyperrelevant to people in the present moment. In this case, the themes of perpetual surveillance, the irredeemability of the human race, techno-authoritarianism, and the failed ideals of intellectual progress all hit pretty hard. So even though Liu is confronting his readers with a story of alien invasion, he’s really commenting on something we know too well; namely, humanity is suffering a slow death. What will save us? Math? Science? Extraterrestrials?
Even though readers can easily side-step the nuances of the physics and mathematical problems named in the book’s title, I’d like to argue that therapists could benefit from slowing down and grappling with the complexity of the 3-body problem. Why? If you have clients suffering from “co-occurring disorders,” then you effectively have clients suffering from a biopsychosocial three-body problem.
Consider that term, which therapists use all the time but rarely deconstruct: Bio-psycho-social. Three “bodies” acting upon and within one individual client. We assess our clients’ biological, psychological, and social circumstances as if each of those “dimensions” was exerting its own physical power over the person whose problems we’re helping to navigate. If we add the spiritual dimension, then a fourth “body” enters the picture and the scenario gets even more complex.
As it turns out, the n-body problem of the Bio-psycho-social-spiritual dimensions of our client is a perfect analogue to the mathematical three-body problem highlighted in Liu’s novel. Mastery of Newton’s laws governing gravity and motion help us map the complexities of one planet orbiting another body, such as the sun. But when another body exerting its own gravitational effect enters the picture, Newton’s laws start to become less helpful. In fact, once a third-body enters the celestial picture, it becomes impossible to accurately predict the precise motions of bodies. As such, it becomes impossible to develop certainty about the effects of each body upon the other. This mathematical problem becomes a “real” problem if you live on one of the “bodies” tangled in the 3-body celestial orbit. And if you’re thinking that such phenomena are relegated to the world of sci-fi, I will politely redirect your attention to the chaos of the biopsychosocial-spiritual reality in which you’re ensconced and point out that, hey, you’re gonna need to brush up on your “math.”
“Math” here equals many things, from “sense of self” to “phenomenology” to “insight.” When a person comes into a therapist’s office, they are basically coming because they are occupying a “chaotic era.” In 3-Body Problem, this term names the span of time on the alien planet of Trisolaris during which civilization’s progress must halt because of the unpredictability of the gravitational problems generated by the celestial configuration of the planet’s orbital path. For the clients, a “chaotic era” is a period of instability produced by an inability to figure out how to attain balance due to known and unknown mitigating factors. The goal for Trisolaris and for clients is two-fold. First, achieve a “stable era,” which is to say a span of time during which the success of daily functioning can be adequately predicted and maintained. Second, learn how to tolerate the perpetual transition from stable eras into chaotic eras. That is, no therapist will tell their clients that biopsychosocial-spiritual harmony will reign for all-time. Instead, therapists endorse acceptance of the present-moment conditions while making good-faith efforts to cultivate clients’ modes of being-in-the-world that lead to favorable mental states regardless of the era in which they find themselves.
The problem of addiction (i.e., substance use disorders) is a great theoretical case study in which the 3-body mathematical problem, Liu’s novel, and real-life therapeutic scenarios overlap harmoniously. Start with the admission that living in a two-body system is far from a walk in the park. Sure, Earth’s rotation around our sun is stable and, despite the negative effects of man-made climate change, my current life in the United States is unlikely to suffer unduly because of global, meteorological chaos. Mental chaos, however, is another story. The average person, even if they have no official diagnoses, will experience a fluctuation between chaotic and stable eras throughout their lifespan. If someone suffers from Major Depressive Disorder of Generalized Anxiety Disorder, then the bruising acquired during chaotic eras may be more severe, and the length of the chaotic eras may feel unbearable. The more “severe” the diagnosis, the bigger the problems. Thinking in this way, the therapist enters the picture as a clever mathematician and physicist, armed with a slide rule, a theodolite, and a sextant. We measure the land, calculate the client’s position, perhaps perform some dead reckoning, draw up an almanac in which to record predictions of future seasonal change, help the client become fluent in their knowledge of these instruments and documents, and, voila, stable era achieved. But if the client suffers from a mental disorder and a substance use disorder, things change. All of a sudden, our tools for predicting the conditions necessary for a stable era stop working with regular frequency. In fact, all calculations stop resolving harmoniously. We appear to be in an incalculable situation.
Addiction is the presence of a third (or fourth or fifth) body in a client’s system. What type of wizardry is required to stabilize the chaotic era of the client who suffers from MDD, GAD, and SUD? In Liu’s novel, the Trisolarans evolved the capacity to dehydrate themselves during chaotic eras so that their bodies could be stored until the return of a stable era, at which point the bodies are rehydrated and civilization resumes its progress. This isn’t a great situation, obviously, but it is a form of coping with the problem. Our version of this coping skill is pharmaceutical medication. We take medication in order to replicate as closely as possible the experience of a stable era during times of chaotic conditions. But medication is not a complete solution to the problem. In some cases, no medication provides the right amount of relief, as is especially the case when someone is suffering from addiction. In these cases, the solution is going to resemble that discovered by the Trisolarans. Move. Leave the solar system.
For addicts, “leaving the solar system” is the same as ceasing the use of alcohol and other drugs, at least the “drugs” that perpetuate long chaotic eras. Clients suffering from SUD and another mental health disorder need to leave the substance in order to adequately address the other issue. Easier said than done. To “leave the solar system” in this way is akin to leaving one’s homeland. Even if home was kinda shitty a lot of the time, it was still home. Even if dehydrating and rehydrating oneself was a drag and left you dependent on the whims of the de- and rehydrator, it wasn’t so terrible being out of commission for certain stretches of time. What’s so great about being hydrated when you live in a world that could all of a sudden burst into flames? Such is the problem faced by addicts. Asking someone to give up alcohol, or crack, or fentanyl is like asking them to leave their home.
Yet, this is precisely the core problem faced by therapists. We find ourselves in need of convincing our clients to leave their homeworld and embark on an epic trek through the universe in search of other habitable planets. Even if we find a new home, we then have to help the clients not feel like aliens when they interact among others. I once had a client who was attempting to quit meth after using it excessively and daily for 20+ years. She described the experience of treatment as “leaving planet meth and living life on Earth for the first time.” That description ended up being the basis of her treatment plan. Goal 1: Feel less alien. Objective 1: get to know the other inhabitants of this planet and keep a record of everything that feels weird about that process. Intervention 1: Therapist will use Ian Bogost’s “Ontography” from Alien Phenomenology to help the client minimize self-critique and remain curious during this process of exploring planet Earth.
As in the case of Bogost’s work, metaphor becomes a powerful tool in the case of therapeutic philosophy. He asks us not to use metaphor as a way of subjugating things to the perception of human beings, as though that perception was “normal” or “right.” Rather, he wields metaphor as a tool for speculating about any given thing’s strangeness, thereby letting its alienness remain intact and, further, providing humans with the capacity to think the world from the viewpoint of the alien other. In this way, the metaphor of the 3-body problem can help therapists and clients alike to honor all the “bodies” and “dimensions” that are at play in any given “problem” as invitations to explore the mysteries of being and becoming. The goal of such therapy is never to “return to normal” or force a “stable era” into existence for all time (as if that was even possible). Instead, the goal is to think in such a way as to expand our understanding of what’s possible.