[From Bill Powers (2008i.04.12.0252 MDT)]
Keith Daniels 4.12.08 00:24 CDT--
?Should the header time be in CT or in our own local zone?
Notice the above: MDT, CDT. Local time. We can figure it out from there, but usually it's just the unique number that matters. People used to write "In Yrs. of the 21st Inst. you said..."
Therapy:
All these references to different nuances, flavors, and techniques of therapy ought to be making you wonder. When you read Tim Carey's book you'll see his slant on this. What is it that helps people get better? Is is possible that each person who gets better just happened to pick a practitioner who does the exact things that will help just a person with that exact problem? Or could it be that what helps a person is always the same, and that in each successful case, each practitioner accidentally or on purpose includes that ingredient? And is it possible that all the other things the practitioner does that are unique to that approach are irrelevant, or even a wee bit counterproductive?
In PCT, what causes change in a person is reorganization. Reorganization is driven in proportion to intrinsic error, and intrinsic error is a deep sense of wrongness stemming from basic malfunctions in the organism. In other words, what causes change in a person is internal, and no outside agency can do it for the person.
The only handle a "guide" has on the "explorer" (well, we need some way to tell them apart) is that the guide can listen to the explorer and direct attention to topics the explorer brings up in passing, with a bias toward higher-level topics. When I call attention to your nose, suddenly your nose is there in the conscious field. We can assume it was there all the time, but awareness is mobile and not all-encompassing, so there are always perceptual signals that exist but are not in awareness.
This is the key tool of the method of levels. The explorer is encouraged to describe what is currently in the foreground of attention, and the guide listens for disruptions, comments that are outside the flow of the description and are about the description rather than part of it. For example, the explorer pauses and asks, "Did I make that clear?" This indicates another point of view, a concern for the clarity of the description, and is not part of the description. We can assume that this concern was not invented on the spot; it was already present and was determining how the person communicates. It is involved with the control of a higher-level perception, a perception of clarity -- and it implies a reference level or purpose: a high degree of clarity rather than a low one.
That's basically all there is to it. The guide is there to help spot the up-a-level comments (or expressions or body language -- anything) and ask about them before awareness moves on to something else. If the explorer is having problems, we can assume that reorganization is going on. But a basic hypothesis of the method of levels is that the main focus of reorganization is the place where awareness is focused. So when awareness moves from one viewpoint to another, so does the main effect of this reorganizing process. The guide tries to keep attracting the focus of awareness to higher levels, as indicated by background comments or other communications. This is rarely done prescriptively and never analytically. Ideally, it's always done by selecting some aspect of what the explorer says or does, so the guide is following rather than leading. The idea is to call attention to what is actually there, and not put thoughts into the explorer's head. That's why we use the term "explorer." The explorer is the only one who can see what is actually going on in there.
If there are no hitches in this process, it will result in a sort of random walk up the levels to an interesting state of mind which we term the "observer self." It's been called a lot of names through history. It's a state of serenity, of pure awareness, of awareness without involvement in thought. I'm sure the idea is familiar to you, Gavin and Keith, as well as others in CSGnet.
There are almost always hitches. The one most often encountered is internal conflict. You find not one higher-level thought, but two (or more) and they are mutually contradictory. In fact, this is where we find most people when they come in for help: they are stuck in a conflict, or a whole network of conflicts, and are reorganizing like mad but at the wrong level. Now the job of the guide is to bring the conflict itself into the foreground. And this brings up another basic hypothesis of the MOL.
Awareness, the hypothesis says, is always centered somewhere in the brain's hierarchy of control system, receiving perceptions from below but remaining unaware (for the time being) of all the control systems which are working at higher levels. You are aware of what is good and bad about what you're aware of, but you're not, at the moment, aware of why they're good or bad -- what they're good or bad FOR. All you know is that Daddy's hitting Mommy is bad. Why it's bad may take you another 20 years to work out.
In MOL, the way it's worked out is to keep trying to bring all sides of the conflict into the foreground AT THE SAME TIME. This side, then that side, then back to this side, then some more of that side. After a while, the explorer will let you know that both sides are now in view, and a few simple questions (such as "what are you thinking about these sides now?" will verify this. Or the explorer will spontaneously comment that it's like being up above or backed off from the conflict, perhaps thinking "Well, I sure can't do both of those things at the same time." This shows that awareness has moved to a higher level viewpoint, involved in some superordinate system, and if reorganization is going on is is likely to resolve the conflict then and there. That is usually what happens: the conflict simply dissolves. It doesn't take long, and is sometimes quite sudden.
Then the upward movement continues -- or the session ends.
I think that if you look at various forms of therapy, you will find in them interactions between therapist and client that very often accomplish the same things I have described above. Bringing background thoughts to the foreground. Examining them for a while; then noticing a new batch of background thoughts and repeating the process. Or exploring conflicts: I want this, but if I get it then I can't have that, which I also intensely want. Backing off from a point of view in order to look at it -- and thus moving to a new point of view from which to look. Any therapy, any technique, any philosopy, any meditation that accomplishes these ends will move the focus of reorganization from wrong or useless places to places that will actually improve matters. And any therapy, or therapy session, in which these things don't happen will fail to help.
What the MOL does is simply leave out everything that doesn't help, and focus on the one thing that does put reorganization to work where it will do more good: going up a level. One of David Goldstein's clients who was an old hand at psychotherapy said, after a few sessions with MOL, "This is fast-track therapy, isn't it?" It certainly is. Tim Carey's group of associates, in the National Health in Scotland, was the only group in the clinic that had no waiting list, though they had as many referrals as any other group.
So while you folks are bandying about all the latest fashions in Zen and Shrinkdom, consider this: maybe they're all doing the same things that work, and a lot of different things that don't have any effect, or maybe work the wrong way. If you can figure out what the parts are that work, then you don't need the rest, do you? Except socially, I mean.
If you want to try an MOL exercise, try this. Get an interested friend to monitor, and start seeing how many times in a row you can catch a background thought and bring it into the foreground. You have to talk out loud while doing this; the friend is there to say, occasionally, "Did you hear what you just said?" and things like that. Do you go in circles? Is this infinite regress? Do you reach an endpoint? Do you hit a conflict that stops it?
Best,
Bill P.
But thank you