-IBIS-1.5.0-
rx
principles (Mind/Body)
process paradigm
psychospiritual approaches
definition
"An explorer with a beginner's mind would see the 'patient' as someone he does not understand, someone to be discovered. The process concept adds to this view the idea that to discover someone you must pay strict attention to his behavior and to the events around him. The human being in front of us is perceived correctly only when he totally agrees with our observations. Experience show that this agreement occurs most readily when we appreciate the content of what he says, the structure of his language, the type of body signals, relationships, and synchronicities associated with him.
"The process approach to the individual is to find the mode of communication in which the patient is experiencing himself at a given moment, and work in that mode or channel by methods adapted to that channel. If he is hallucinating, visualize with him. If he does not talk and looks withdrawn, then it is important to communicate with his vegetative responses.
"Process-oriented dreambody work uses the concept of disease only as it plays a role in the personal psychology of the individual. Many who experience their symptoms discover that they are purposeful expressions of their unconscious which are searching for more expression. Being sick is a primary description of a secondary process disturbing us, a process which an individual does not experience as belonging to him, but rather happens to him from the outside.
"Change, in the process paradigm, occurs through the confrontation of awareness with processes trying to unfold, i.e., the unfolding of patterns. Since many processes cannot unfold completely, they spin in mid-air like a wheel not touching the ground. This spinning may be experienced as a relationship problem, a body symptom, a dream, a neurosis, a psychosis, or combinations of any of these experiences. In the process paradigm, the person will be encouraged to become aware of aspects of himself which are close to and distant from his awareness, and to follow their process of unraveling. Empirical knowledge indicates that insight is most effective when it follows experience; it is then likely to coincide with change.
"The process paradigm is not new. The Freudian encouraging her patient to experience her transference is encouraging insight through process work. The Jungian who uses active imagination to meet dream figures on paper is using a process paradigm. The Gestalt therapist requiring her client to act out a dream is dramatizing an experience which has been secondary. The neo-Reichian working through resistances to aggression in body work is touching the process paradigm if these resistances are allowed to express themselves and are not simply 'broken through.' The process paradigm plays a crucial role in all psychotherapies, and is accepted as a basic concept everywhere in psychology. The process paradigm may even be considered a central pattern in our earliest sciences. Alchemy is based upon cooking what is incomplete and Taoism encourages one to discover the patterns behind reality and to follow their unfolding with appreciation and awareness.
"Process oriented work differs from more popular 'process psychologies' in its differentiated method of observation. Thus a frequent misunderstanding derived from popular conceptions of the term 'process' is that clients can get dangerously or uselessly wrapped up in their 'process,' that is, get too involved in themselves. Would it not be more useful and valuable at times to simply give direct and clear instructions which a client could follow?
"Encouraging clients to follow only one part of themselves is always less useful than helping them contact all their parts. Only the total process is really healing. Following a client in process oriented-psychology means not only following the part which the client identifies with in the moment, but following the total process, that is, with both the primary and secondary signals.
"Thus, encouraging a client to be God when he is proclaiming that he is God and that the 'authorities' are evil would be less useful than enabling him to get in contact with his own inner authorities. Once this is done, he will be able to take simple and helpful directions from others and will even be able to give them to himself. As long as he is identified with God, it is not likely he will be able to hear or follow such instructions. Thus, the other side of the polarization is contacted and its usefulness is accessed and investigated."
(Mindell, 1988, p. 21-28)
see:
process work: basic principles
process work: glossary
process work: observation
process work: channel examples
process work: interventions
process work: working with signals
process work: working on the edge
process work: interview
search for god
the shadow and physical symptoms
footnotes