'clean' and values?

[hansvl]

I am new to the concept of clean language. I allign myself with the Narrative Therapy approach, so the concept of not contaminating the process with my own assumptions makes a lot of sense.

I do run into a problem though: I work in a prison, and as such I work with people who have behavior and interaction patterns that hold others in disregard quite a lot.

I was talking with someone just the other day who talked about his anger outbursts. Although he described 'anger' as a problem, he talked about situations where he seemed very comfortable acting aggressively toward other people. For instance, he talked enthousiastically about pulling a guy out of a car through the driver's side window because he had honked at him. "Nobody ever better honk at me...!", he said.

When I asked him WWYLTHH with this behavior he said it was just fine with him.

This is where I wonder how clean I can really be as a therapist. I am not just talking about using Clean language, I am referring to my intent, my desired outcome in my work with this person.

I find it very hard to not have a specific outcome in mind for this person (i.e. more of a socially respectful orientation). I suspect that even if I restriced myself to clean language questions, my underlying intent would be to accomplish a specific goal, and this intent would inform and influence my interaction with him.

How do others proceed when a person demonstrates values that are diametrically opposed to your own? Can you stay clean? Is it a good thing to stay clean?

Hans

[hansvl]

As I ponder this question some more, I had the following thought:

From the perspective of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), a response to the client who talks approvingly of pulling people out of their car just for honking at them might be to ask about their values:

"And that would be in the service of what?" The assumption is that all behavior is reflective of and expressive of values - operationally defined as abstract principles by which to evaluate actions and which can guide and inform future action.

I wonder if there is space in Clean Language for values in this sense? Are values something that is implied by behavior, i.e. can any behavior or act be understood as an expression of a certain value (or maybe set of values), and therefore asking about this is clean in the sense that the question doesn't add anything but rather brings it into awareness?

Or will clean questions in themselves bring out the issue of values - provided this is important/relevant to the client? I'm thinking here specifically about relationship questions, but I guess the development questions could have the same effect.

Is the value perspective possibly useful somehow as (or towards) a framework for using clean language, in the same way that PRO is a useful framework? And what kind of framework would that be?

Or is the whole values question just a dangerous slide into judgmentalism and social control?

The more I wonder, the more I question...:confused:

By the way, I hope it's okay to reply to my own posts...

Hans

[phil]

Values and beleifs


I looked up 'values' to remind myself of how the word is defined generally:values - beliefs of a person or social group in which they have an emotional investment Merriam Webster
This is interesting for the link between individual and social contexts, of which more in a moment.

In the individual, I think 'values' is an abbreviated form of 'valued beliefs'. Compare these statements:

'I believe x'
'I believe x and I'm aware it's a belief and I may be proven wrong'
'I believe x and I believe I'm right; you believe what you like'
'I believe x and I believe I'm right and you should believe x too '
'I believe x and you'd better believe x too or else'Note the scaling in the degree of conviction (strength of emotion). If we then add...

'Everyone knows that x is true'
'Anyone who doesn't believe x should be executed', etc.... the speaker has now changed context from the individual to the social. However the conviction and emotion still belongs to the individual.

Where do social values come from? Can a system 'believe' something? I don't think so.

I think the 'abstract principles' you mention emerge in a social system; family, religion, workplace, society, etc. These systems are made up of individuals who have valued beliefs, some of which may become system values.

So I think the principles are not abstract when they are in someone - they are loaded with emotional investment. They only seem abstract when they have become separated from individuals, e.g. the Law.

Values as a system

One way to look at values is as a reinforcing systemic loop. An individual has a belief and values it enough to introduce it to their social system.

Some other individuals in that system also value the belief and they take it on, mix it with their own beliefs and feed the resulting hybrid back into the system.

Eventually so many individuals take it on that it becomes a system-wide value. The value can even end up defining the system. The tweaks have got smaller and smaller until what is left is an 'abstract principle' highly-valued by a large numbers of individuals. Wikipedia imitates Life in this respect!

Those who don't 'buy in' to the system's values may be considered dangerous and consequences can follow.

Values as a framework

The point of that grossly simplified model is to consider your question about using values as a framework in a clean process. Whose values would we use? The system's? Or the individual's?

In clean processes, the client's values are already a framework, albeit probably an unconscious one in them. Similarly the facilitator's values are structuring their questions.

If the client is not noticing a link between his values, his resulting behaviour and the feedback he's getting from society ('go to jail, we don't want your behaviour in our system'), one cleaner approach would be to facilitate him to model the relationship between his behaviour and the feedback, then ask where the behaviour comes from (his model of the world) and where the feedback comes from (society's model of the world).

Ethics

As to whether or not to work with someone with different values to mine, first I would want to be sure their values were really so very different to mine. I might be making assumptions.

If they are different and I have a problem with that, I need to consider my position.

What I did in a similar scenario is first establish what the other wanted. I checked with my own values whether I could work with that; I couldn't.

I explained that to my client. He was quite surprised! Then I asked him something like 'given that, what would you like to have happen now?' He thought about it a bit more and came up with a credible outcome that was more related to learning from his experience. That fitted my values and I then worked with him towards that outcome.

I'm not just talking about when a client wants something that I don't think is interesting or worth getting; I mean when what they want clashes with a valued belief of mine.

So in brief: establish client outcome - check own values - if ok, proceed - if not, feed back and ask for another outcome.

Phil