From M. Scott Peck’s People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil:

“The process of deep healing, at least within the psychoanalytic framework, requires the patient to regress on some level to some degree. It is a difficult and frightening requirement. It is no easy thing for adults, accustomed to independence and the psychologic trappings of maturity, to allow themselves to become like young children again, dependent and so very vulnerable. And the deeper the disturbance—the more hungry and painful and wounding the patient’s childhood—the more difficult it is to return to the childhood condition within the therapeutic relationship. It is like a death. Yet it can be accomplished. When it is, healing will result. When it does not, the foundation cannot be reconstructed. No regression, no healing; it is as simple as that.”

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I find it ironic that meaningful progress in any domain requires some level of failure.

Building stronger muscles means fatiguing yourself until you are too weak to lift any more. Learning new concepts means having the humility to make mistakes and have past beliefs corrected. Fostering deeper relationships means risking judgment onto yourself and wounding the other party. It seems that one key ingredient for progress is to decline to a lesser state and be reborn, time and time again.

Our success then, is measured not only by our time or effort, but our ability to regress and grow.