Safety
Connection
Passion – full aliveness – relaxed
Beyond conflict – tension but not oppositional.
~
The quality of the presence is what counts – not the words or the behaviour.
Harville Hendrix – Beyond conflict
Reply
Tag Archives: Harville Hendrix
Psychological Eclecticism and Nothing
I recall being advised by my then supervisor, about 30 years ago, to look around for a psychotherapy modality that grabbed me and then to learn it thoroughly and not become prematurely eclectic. I followed that advice. Psychodrama was that modality for me and I am steeped in its traditions and have practiced it for decades and hope to do that for a few more.
However I have more than a passing familiarity with a some other fields of practice, I have a grasp of Archetypal Psychology and I am qualified in Imago Relationship Therapy. I have grappled with my multiple perspectives, and have written a paper about my tension with Imago for the AANZPA Psychodrama Journal: The Imago Affair. I’ve been thinking about this more of late.
Related Posts:
Imago Audio
Harville Hendrix and Helen L Hunt interview
One of the clearest statements about the Imago method. Shows the originators are continuing to sharpen the method and theory.
Related Posts:
Harville Hendrix Audio
Harville Hendrix Helen Hunt Freud to Buddha
Note from: http://gettingtheloveyouwant.com/thinktank
The Challenge of Creating Change: Freud and the Budda in Dialogue with Imago
Join Harville Hendrix for a preview of the keynote presentation at the 8th Annual Conference
I listened to it and found it quite wonderful.
Harville places connectedness as a form of consciousness akin to or surpassing enlightenment. That is quite something. It makes sense to me as there is a resonance through the cosomos, things connect.
Spotted another Harville Hendrix one there on Behaviour Change:
Related Posts:
Harville Hendrix video
This is inspiring. It takes two to mess up a relationship, but only one to fix it.
Related Posts:
Harville Hendrix workshop
More reports and reflections on the Harville Hendrix workshop for Imago practitioners in Auckland on 20 March 2011. Most of what he said was not new to me, and what I will note here is mostly what I heard him say. What was unexpected was the power of his ability to do, be in the moment with us what he was talking about. Present, connected, empathic, and making eye contact in such a way that if let at times he was talking just to me, in fact he was, totally there with me in those moments.
The Importance of Theory.
The theory allows the practitioner to know what to do beyond the application of techniques. H also mentioned the importance of research. Brian mentioned there was a swag of research quoted in Wikipedia Imago entry.
Relational Paradigm
The main theory he presented for most of the day was the relational paradigm. Summed up thus: being as relationship. Thus placing this as a shift in consciousness going beyond the philosophers of being such as Heidegger and Sartre and also Ken Wilbur, who has a heirachy of consciousness that is about individual beings.
“Being as relation, that is a revolution in thinking.”
Did Harville say Ken was stuck in the past? I think that he is as this relational thinking is deep and profound, and changes everything. This became really evident to me later in the day as H spoke about self. Self is a negative or remainder once all projection and judgment is withdrawn.
Relationship is a spiritual practice one can do any time when there is another.
“Empathy without judgment is my spiritual practice. Everyone offers you an opportunity.”
See the other as Thou
Observer Effect
H referred to quantum physics. I heard a new angle on this, not just that the observer changes that which is observed, but that the thinking the observer brings to the observed, the intention and attitude will change the situation. What power we have, for good or ill!
The medical model is challenged with this understanding. If we see people as sick, then they can’t get well. It might work with physical illness but not in the psychological world.
“It is important how we see people who come to see us.”
Empathy
How to be with people, we can’t be other than how we are. The essence of being in relationship is to be in empathy.
“Empathy is felt connection.”
When a group member suggested that Maori were a people who were in a connected state H noted that this was an earlier level of connection, more like fusion of the tribe. The empathy he spoke of was connection from a differentiated self.
“Move from the imagined connection to the felt connection and there is participation in that. Getting otherness is terrifying, you have to surrender. To abandon the world you have imagined is terrifying.”
The other person “experiences you experiencing them”. Or even further … They then experience you experiencing them experiencing you… the empathic stance:
“I’m experiencing you experiencing me having my experience. ”
Why people come to us…
“Something has punctured their ability to be connected. They are scared. Some are really scared.”
Thus we make a safe place and there is a transference to the space. ‘This is the place we feel safe, you won’t let us fight.’
“How we hold them in our mind is how they respond to us.”
“We can hold them if we are not anxious”
You can’t connect with a person you are merged with. Differentiation is a sort of birth for each. The self emerges not by saying “I am me!” It is by releasing the other, tolerating the differentiated other. Imago is a process of giving birth to the other person. I’m the mother of their birth. and this is where my birth happens as I am the remainder, what is left as I surrender.
How to be non-judgmental with violence. (( missed a lot of this discussion))
Thou.
“You are as dangerous to them as they are to you.”
“You are the co-creator of the transaction.”
Vicarious introspection
I understood this as seeing through the violence to the wounded child and reflecting that back to the person. I think of doubling as we use it in psychodrama.
The talking cure is the listening cure.
Book: Biology of Belief, Spontaneous Evolution – culture is the petrie dish of the cell.
“all negativity causes chaos”
I am nudging, nudge nudge, nudge. It is facilitation not therapy.
Phrases Harville used in a dialogue:
Make eye contact. Feel your eyeballs and relax so your pup is will increase in size and that will relax her. Deepen your pupils by taking a deep breath.
Breathe together, set up a resonance.
Look when that happens you see a glow on her face.
Stay with the terror till it passes.
Lead lines
Am I getting a good sense of that now?
When I feel this frustration in the future I’ll …
… and the gift to our relationship is that …
Related Posts:
Harville Hendrix 3 questions
I just read Maya’s three questions she asks before commencing relationship therapy.
How do they compare with Harville Hendrix’s ones we just heard in the Auckland workshop?
1. What do you want in this relationship when you finish with me?
2. What have you done to prevent this from happening? (You, not the other partner)
3. What has to be taken out? What has to be put in? What will you take out, put in?
If you have the power to make it this bad, you have the power to make it good.
This couple could be creative and take self responsibility”
Just compared them and you can see who taught her!!
Maya’s three questions : http://psyberspace.walterlogeman.com/2009/three-relationship-questions/
Related Posts:
Moreno, Buber, Hendrix
In a recent post I quote the story of how the idea of Encounter found its way from Moreno to Martin Buber. A passage follows by Harville hendric whre he describes the roots of his idea of Validation in the dialogue process… Martin Buber.
It is no wonder then that with this sort of whakapapa, having trained in both Imago & Psychodrama that I see such connection in the approaches.
A passage from Harville Hendrix “The Evolution of Imago Relationship Therapy” in Imago Relationship Therapy: Perspectives on Theory Follows, showing how he connected with the work of Buber.