I visited my wife's (Margaret's) school today and spent time in some of the
classes. When I was at the preschool (these kids are all either 4 or 5) I
became engaged in a conversation with a boy who was reading some books.
While I was chatting with him I wondered if whether I could do anything
MOLish with him.
I'll call the kid Fred. At one point we were talking about trains and the
conversation went like this:
Fred: I like trains
Tim: What tells you to like trains
Fred: Well my dad loves trains so I love trains
Tim: What tells you to love trains because your dad loves trains
Fred: I just get a feeling that says to love them
A little later we had got onto the conversation of dogs. Trains and dogs
were this kids favourite things. This conversation was:
Fred: I like reading dog books
Tim: What tells you to like reading dog books
Fred: Because I see the books and that goes into my brain and that tells me
to think about books
Tim: What tells you to see the books
Fred: Because I come to school everyday and the books are here
Tim: What tells you to come to school everyday
Fred: School's just a part of life
I am not sure what the point was here, except perhaps that it is hard to
do MOL with kids.
With respect to the train conversation:
Fred: I like trains
Tim: What tells you to like trains
Fred: Well my dad loves trains so I love trains
Tim: What tells you to love trains because your dad loves trains
Fred: I just get a feeling that says to love them
Perhaps just to engage the child in a conversation about trains would
seem more natural and would suggest some higher level stuff about it. I
just don't think one gets very far in the MOL business by being so
direct. We are asking a person to monitor what is going on inside other
than the words being spoken. This is hard. With children I think that we
have to provide more help than with adults.
Same sort of comments about the dog topic.
···
From: David Goldstein
Subject: Re: MOL for kids [From Tim Carey (980828.1715)]
Date: 8/28/98
I am not sure what the point was here, except perhaps that it is hard to
do MOL with kids.
I thought it was a cute story that's all. Currently I'm finding it hard to
do MOL with everyone not just kids
Also, I talk about the MOL to people in schools I work in when they're get
interested in the theory. One of the first questions they ask is "Can you
do it with kids?" I had always thought that in principle it should be
possible but I'd never tried it. That was my first attempt.
direct. We are asking a person to monitor what is going on inside other
than the words being spoken.
You could be right about this David but I have a different idea of MOL. I
don't think I'm asking people to monitor anything. I actually don't know
how you could discuss what you are experiencing at any point in time _and_
be monitoring what thoughts you have about that. Monitoring seems to bring
in yet another level or something or are you referring to the observer self
that I've heard Bill and others refer to.
For me, MOL is primarily an experience. It seems to be the case, however,
that when people are describing something they are experiencing, they
usually have thoughts _about_ what they are describing. If their awareness
shifts to those "about" thoughts and stays there, they may be able to
describe their experience of these thoughts. As they are describing _this_
experience, they may well have thoughts _about_ it ... and so on.
Is that how you see MOL? If "no", how do you see it? If "yes" where do you
fit monitoring in?
When I explain MOL to a person I am working with, I say something like
this: As we talk about a subject, I am going to be tuning into stuff
which may be going on at the very edge of your awareness, background
stuff. This may be a thought, it may be a feelig/mood, it may be an
attitude, etc.. If you notice such "on the edge of awareness" or
"background" stuff, please mention it. It is possible that we may want
to switch our discussion to that topic. If I notice it, I will ask
bring it to your attention and we may switch to that topic.
The MOL is an exercise in which a person is trying to understand the
meaning of something, "X", by being aware of what he/she is aware of as
he/she disusses "X." In HPCT, the meaning of "X" is the set of
perceptions which are involved when "X" is experienced. Our awareness
may only be on one part of the set of perceptions related to "X" The MOL
is an exercise to reveal what the other perceptions are. To be aware of
all the perceptions related to "X" is the outcome of the MOL. Usually,
this means "going up a level."
···
From: David Goldstein
Subject: Re: MOL for kids [From Tim Carey (980829.1350)]
Date: 8/29/98
When I explain MOL to a person I am working with, I say something like
this: As we talk about a subject, I am going to be tuning into stuff
which may be going on at the very edge of your awareness, background
stuff. This may be a thought, it may be a feelig/mood, it may be an
attitude, etc.. If you notice such "on the edge of awareness" or
"background" stuff, please mention it. It is possible that we may want
to switch our discussion to that topic. If I notice it, I will ask
bring it to your attention and we may switch to that topic.
I explain the process a little differently but it seems as though the
meaning is essentially the same. Following one of Bill's suggestion (I take
very little credit for any MOL stuff that comes out of my mouth :-)) I
explain to the person I'm working with that whenever we're talking about
something it seems to be the case that we have foreground thoughts that are
to do with whatever we are talking about and we also have background
thoughts which tend to be thoughts about our foreground thoughts. I then
generally give them an example right there saying something like: While I'm
explaining this to you I can identify the foreground thoughts that are to
do with what I'm saying and I can also identify some background thoughts
which are things like "I wonder if this is making sense; I hope I'm
communicating clearly; This guy might think this sounds really silly". Then
I generally ask the client how that sounds and whether they can identify
with this idea and usually we might then do an activity where I ask them to
describe something like their hand or a box of tissues or something and as
they're doing that I ask them about their background thoughts.
The MOL is an exercise in which a person is trying to understand the
meaning of something, "X", by being aware of what he/she is aware of as
he/she disusses "X."
Again, I see the process a little differently and at the stage of MOL,
David, I think it's probably a good idea that there are different people
playing around with different perspectives of it.
