To Ed and anyone else who has comments on the topic,
At the conference you mentioned to me how "an unhappy past does not intrude
on a happy present." This made sense, but at the same time I was hesitant
to accept it given that it most therapists don't seem to think that way.
Still not convinced, I think about the fact that many control systems are
operating below conscious awareness. Many "autonomic functions" and
probably many other systems are operating on other issues and problems
(should I stay in school or not) even when we are attending to some other
problem (should I call Marcy or Amy). Some of these systems are not
attended to probably because the error is too great to be aware of. Now I
don't understand why attended error is worse than unattended error, but
don't you think that "working through the past" works (sometimes) because
it somehow reduces or eliminates the error that is always there. I can
kinda start to see how various unresolved psychological stresses would
result in specific health problems (which the doctors never figure out),
for the "body" is experiencing stress even though the "person" doesn't know
it.
Certainly, I agree that one should not attempt to fix what one cannot
control, but doesn't some of the psychoanalytic therapy attempt to take the
child's perceptions of an event and make them into adult perceptions? It
seems to me that PCT explains why working through the past is necessary,
and how it should proceed (change perceptions so that error no longer
persists).
Mark
Educational Psychology 210 USmail: 405 South 6th St. #4
College of Education Champaign, IL 61820
Univ of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
phone: (home) 351-8257 e-mail: (Internet) m-olson@uiuc.edu
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