Working with people as I do, I see a lot of disappointment, sadness, loss, and pain when the ones they love and want to be close to do not meet those hopes and expectations.

These are very intense feelings. I've been with otherwise strong and rugged men, beautiful and capable women, promising and energetic teens ? and all have fallen apart in tears because of the crushing intensity of unreturned affection or attention.

As a psychologist I am like the farmer who turns the soil, plants the seed, and then waters, but I can only watch while something in the situation, in the person with whom I'm working, takes over and supplies the growth. Psychologists have a way of describing that. We tend to say that it's the client's work ? the client must work, must put effort into the process of therapy if there is to be any change. I believe that, but if the whole situation could be reduced to that, then humanity would have reached perfection by now. No. That's not reality ? not the whole picture.

Whether you call it "the force," a higher power, a confluence of energy, or you know this power to reside in a personal deity, a creator God, the fact remains that we have a part in our own growth, but then something greater takes over. We find that in the place where intense sorrow, pain, and emotional or psychological suffering yields to peace.

In the book , Peter Berger uses the term, "signals of transcendence." What he means are those phenomena that are found in every-day reality appearing to point beyond that reality. He illustrates with something I think relevant for psychotherapists. He calls to mind the picture of a child crying from fear in the night, and a mother who rushes in, saying "It's alright. Everything is okay. I'm here."

How does the mother know "it's alright?" Is the mother lying to the child by just wishing to herself? Berger asserts that that instinctive statement points to the order in the universe that allows a mother to see beyond the scary chaos of a child's dark room at bed time and to be able to say with honest confidence, that indeed, tomorrow will come, and we will wake from our sleep.

There are some therapists who do lie to their clients. They lie for effect rather than voice what actually resides within them, out of the reality of their own sense of being. They play a professional role, and they rely on techniques and "interventions" they employ for effect. In a sense, they attempt to practice magic.

When psychotherapy works, it is not magic, nor is it a well-intentioned lie. For me, the experience of seeing therapy work is like a miracle; it is a signal of transcendence. I go about my business, and I know how to attend to my work.

I observe. I listen. I take in. I accept the person as he or she chooses to present in my office, with as little or as much as they disclose. I attempt to the best of my ability to bracket my own issues and unfinished business, my own insecurities, trusting myself to the moment and the occasion of our meeting.

Then, I describe what I am observing and experiencing in the presence of this unique person who has come for help. It is a signal of transcendence to me that that simple process can change things.

What is there about the simple meeting of one person to another, a real meeting, that becomes healing? Is this an indication that all of reality involves relationship of some kind? Without others, we die. Babies die without someone to take care of them. Without others we die emotionally and psychologically, even though our bodies may live for many, many years.

I think even the pain of broken relationships and the suffering people can cause those close to them are signals of transcendence. Intense emotional broken-ness and anguish is a sign that something is out of order, something does not fit with a larger and more mellifluous design.