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It is often noted that the health of any system is predicated upon a healthy dose of doubt and intrinsic scepticism. This is a requisite for identifying areas of improvement, blind spots and biases as well as culling out weak and diseased variables that might pose an eventual risk to the overall health of a system. Equally applicable to biological and natural systems as well as humanistic branches of epistemology, cosmology, sociology and other defining features of the human condition, suspicion ensures that the operational integrity and guiding principles of a collective are maintained, optimized and differentiated from other like bodies. This paper endeavours to resuscitate the forgotten historical lineage of doubt that constituted the early genesis of therapeutics in depth psychology and psychotherapy through the following question: 'How can suspicion facilitate self-awareness and existential clarity within the therapeutic alliance?' Answering this question will be done primarily through a case-study that makes the point that suspicion is not something fabricated by psychology after the fact, but rather, that psyche itself is implicitly guided by contrarian ways that draw out the meaning and messages of symptoms, impulses and unconscious imagery leading people to seek therapy in the first place. Doubt, it is argued, is not something to be reductively paved over in counselling, but is the very therapeutic crucible of transcendence and self-awareness necessary for authentic, embodied transformation to unfold. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to examine the phenomenon of pathological gambling and addiction from the perspective of writer and teacher A.H Almaas. By drawing on his Diamond Mind approach we trace the origin of addictive behaviors and pathological gambling to narcissistic wounding, which constitutes the loss of connection with the Essential Identity. A phenomenological hermeneutic methodology was applied in the research process in which Penny, the subject of this case study, willingly shared her life journey through addiction. A thematic analysis clustered into 5 themes revealed a link between her experiences of childhood trauma, addiction, pathological gambling, and the manifestation of fundamental narcissism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]