Learner Therapist (67) … My enduring ignorance and
patient progress
Torrey Orton
Dec. 9, 2015
Wholes and bits
The whole person is the
object of therapy, as is the case for all kinds of learning. What comes broken
into pieces is therapeutic techniques, learning contents and learning
processes, as if readied for piecemeal consumption. Our learning theories tell
us things must be chunked, parcelled and presented.
What’s hard to preserve
in the passage of the bits is the wholes. The whole person, the whole of the
subject, the whole of the practice… anything whole in the moment perhaps. A
first challenge to my deeper engaging this situation is my ignorance across
many domains and levels of human activity. There are so many things relevant to
effective living which I do not and never will know deeply. These ignorances spring
from aspects of myself which were never strong – the mathematical arena for
example, the related natural sciences and their associated engineering
applications.
I know they exist and
that they matter, but I am constitutionally unsuited to engaging them with any
hope of a real grasp arising from the effort. And, I don’t have that much time
anyway.
Action for a change
What I can, and do, do is
this:
·
Pay attention to those domains and levels
which are clearly both important to whole persons and beyond me (and perhaps beyond
them, too, in varying configurations).
·
Choose a few of them to pay persistent
attention to – follow them at different levels of presentation: daily news,
monthly news and annual review level (but in standard educated reader
publications - the best of X for year 2016).
·
Be on the lookout for signs of the chosen
domains in everyday life. This should occur unconsciously as a result of the
persistent attention chosen interests.
·
Develop specialty interests in the domains
which you follow closely enough to be able to lead a conversation among
non-experts about the nature of that enterprise / issue / domain and its importance
for you, us, and them now and into the near future, but especially how it feels
important to you – the kinds of feelings it elicits.
·
Find and maintain a suite of colleagues
with specialisations in those areas of interest to me that are beyond my likely
competence. Engage on the periphery of activities and projects which are driven
by specialists. For example follow target domains in different cultures, easy
to do these days by subscribing to web versions of major papers daily and get
notifications of preferred subjects direct. Many foreign language majors have
English editions – e.g. Le Monde, China Daily, etc.
(I learned this technique living and teaching in
Beijing in the early ‘80’s when wanting to learn to read Chinese and understand
their view of education. I discovered that the Guangming Ribao (the
‘intellectuals’ daily) carried a regular column of matters educational. I stayed
with that pretty much for two years. I could read the then current education
commentary by the end, though very little about specific subjects or courses.)
Domains and levels of
interest for action
So, what are some
candidates for must-know domains and levels for the next 5-10 years with testably
high impact on the lives of our patients (and ourselves!)? Try these for now:
Domains
of action:
1-
The Artificial
Intelligence / Enhanced Performance* industries
2-
The life extension business – to the
century as normal and the planets as possible by artificial starts (IVF, etc.)
and hangings on (replacement parts, etc.)
3-
Climate changes and other acts of gods
4-
Macro (the degradation of democratic
practices in the chief democracies) and micro (local violences) political
disintegrations
5-
Loss
of concrete public language* for expressing and
discussing experience (the prominence of spin across everyday life)
6-
The commercialisation of everyday life and
the sanctification of productivity. (The only measure of worth is money and its
surrogates (stuff)
Levels
of understanding:
7-
What’s normal now? (from the impacts of
the preceding, and their interactions)
8-
Dilemmas
/ paradoxes* (gains are losses and losses are gains?)
9-
Boundaries – defining the spaces which
domains occupy exclusively
10-
Evidences* – the ‘facts’ and ‘values’
which constitute the substance of life.
These domains and levels
can also be seen as the context for everyday persons’ lives which provide
perspective on their purposes, conduct and achievements. Elsewhere I will offer
some approaches to checking for their influences in the course of therapy. One
implication of these domains and levels is that some parts of much therapy will
have to be concerned with “tools and skills” for helping patients get their
power back in domains and levels which are inescapably present to us all.
*These are my current favourites.
