Psyberspace

Clean Language

Clean Language Questions

The aim of Clean Language early in the process is to allow information to emerge into the client’s awareness by exploringtheir coding of their metaphor.

Let’s revisit the above example, this time using Clean Language questions:

Client: I’m stuck with no way out.

CLQ: And what kind of stuck with no way out is that stuck with no way out?

Client A: My whole body feels as if its sinking into the ground.
Client B: I can’t see the way forward. It’s all foggy.
Client C: Every door that was opened to me is closed.

This gives the client maximum opportunity to describe the experience of ‘stuck,’ and therefore to gather more information about their representation of the Present State.

OK this is full of NLP jargon, but I like the idea of accurately reflecting and probing the situation at the same time. Also I like the idea of how this leads to the client’s own metaphors. In other words it is about holding off on the empathy and sticking to the image.

links for a rainy day

Another article from BPAS this a journalistic one about psychoanalysis is readable and broad enough to include all depth psychology. Here is one paragraph:

And yet in any of the recent millennium lists of the greatest thinkers of the 20th Century, Sigmund Freud, the Viennese medical doctor who was the discoverer and founding father of psycho-analysis, is always among the top few. And these same, sceptical, no-nonsense citizens entirely accept and are often guided by ideas and attitudes that come directly from Freud, or from later psychoanalytic writing. For instance, everyone knows what a Freudian slip is, i.e. the sudden ‘accidental’ betrayal of a person’s true thoughts, unthinkingly blurted out from his or her unconscious. Indeed, the very idea of an unconscious from which such personal truths might spring is a psychoanalytic concept. As are ‘ambivalence’ (as in ‘I have ambivalent feelings about him’), ‘sibling rivalry’, ‘neurosis’, and ‘Oedipus complex’. At the end of the twentieth century, we all speak Freud.

BPAS:

…it is good to talk, of course; but it’s best to talk face to face.

Prof. Paul Williams, Anglia Polytechnic University

The item is a bit bland but makes some interesting points – mostly about addiction – and I find the closing remark not so much wrong as a futile comparison. I’d say letter writing has undergone a revolution, and that is the point to get.

Found the movie stuff in the previous item from the Guardian Item: Guardian Unlimited Books I am making a note here to go here after the 28th. :

Daniel Pick is a psychoanalyst and professor of cultural history at Queen Mary, University of London. His most recent book is Svengali’s Web. Bloomsbury and Psychoanalysis, an exhibition of photographs and documents, will appear on the website of the British Psychoanalytical Society at www.psychoanalysis.org.uk/archives.htm, from August 28.

British Psychoanalytical Association Be interesting to be part of the discussions, but for the rest of us it is at least a good list of video picks.

Semi-Kiwi

The barn roof needs painting

and the spouting is ruined.

Likewise the roof of this house

in which we live, borer here,

rot there. I’m neither handy

in the great Kiwi DIY tradition,

nor monied, which rather leaves

us up shit creek without a shovel.

I grub to find what Stevens called

the ‘plain sense of things’

and come up empty-handed

more often than not, but

I’m a dab-hand at recognising,

if not suppressing, self-pity,

and I can back a trailer

expertly, so all is not lost.

Best New Zealand Poems 2001

This book by Robert Mitchell Lindner, Jonathan Lear (intro) from the reviews this sounds like a classic – written in the 60’s. I was interested to hear in an Amazon review:

This book is particularly interesting in light of Gene Brewer’s novel (and now film) “K-PAX”, based on “The Jet-Propelled Couch” episode in this book.

I quite liked the film but not as much as the similar “Man Facing South East”.

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Philadelphia Inquirer | 08/10/2003 | :

“Evoking the Greek word psyche, which means ‘life, spirit, soul, self,’ he writes, ‘etymologically, culturally, and ethically, psychiatry means ‘healing the soul.’… That can never be answered simply by prescribing an alteration in brain chemistry.’

Frattaroli defines the soul not so much in Judeo-Christian terms but by combining Freud’s ideas with insights from Plato and Rene Descartes.

For him, the soul is ‘the experiencing self’ or the ‘seeing I’ – it’s the self-awareness always present in the background when we have specific thoughts and feelings. He describes it as a dynamic force that ‘integrates processes happening at four levels of experience: body, brain, mind, and spirit.'”

An interesting newspaper article – partly because Tirdad Derakhshani, the author refers to a book I am now interested in by Frattaroli.

Did some more surfing:

An interview with Elio Frattaroli Re-Introducing the Soul I like what he says here, it is a well put case, much in the way I think of the question of medication and psychotherapy, a quote follows:

The Psychotherapeutic Model is based on the idea that it is through inner conflict that we grow. Even though inner conflict leads to painful emotions and to disruptions in social functioning, which can look and feel like illnesses, it also offers an opportunity for growth. Of course the ideal is to have both models in mind. You can’t have just a growth philosophy that ignores the need for stability but you can have a stability philosophy that ignores the need for growth; however it is very limited. As I understand and practice it, the Psychotherapeutic Model takes both models into account.

I am very much in favor of using medications in certain situations. Medication can be necessary and helpful as long as it is used within the larger context that respects not only the chemical and stability aspects of illness but also the emotional-existential aspects and the need for growth.

He has a book on the subject:

Here is what one reviewer says of it:

A Wonderful Companion to the Psychoanalytic Process, May 27, 2003
**** Reviewer: John from Miami , FL United States
I had been immersed in the psychoanalytic process for over three years when I came across this book. Having experienced, first hand, the soulful aspects of analysis, both pleasant and painful, I connected instantly to Dr. Frattaroli’s accounts of his work with patients. I am convinced that the only sane and solid path to emotional well being is the long, introspective one described so eloquently in this book. If you have ever considered beginning psychoanalysis (or you are simply interested in learning more about what it means to be fully human) then I strongly recommend that you read this book.

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