Is Clean homeopathic?

[Corrie van Wijk]

Hi Steve:

"the homeopathic principle underpinning clean".

That would be your belief, Steve, and whatever truth may be in it, I don't think you are doing the concept of CLEAN a favour by putting your own metaphors to it (and put it in a statement as if it were the only possible truth), which may or may not apply in general.

Homeopathy is a term applied in medical (science), for me it has to do with curing or, as you wish, self-healing with the aid of some kind of medication. As science doesn't agree on how it works, if it does at all, you drag along this kind of discussion into clean and confuse it.

Of course we can use metaphors to come to a mutual understanding of what clean is 'like'. But it would be more like you to stick to 'the Tao of Clean'.

Love,

Corrie

[Steve Saunders]

Hi Corrie,

I've already posted Davids words - its his metaphor:

"
Guiding Principles
A. The nature of Clean Language is homeopathic: we are looking to language the minimal that excites the curious.
"

These are his verifiable own printed words, Corrie.


Steven

[phil]

A. The nature of Clean Language is homeopathic: we are looking to language the minimal that excites the curious.

I notice that David was talking about 'Clean Language' being homeopathic rather than 'Clean' - was he perhaps referring to its use in the context of healing? Clean has far wider application than that.

The poetic and cryptic clause after the colon doesn't bear much relationship to any description of 'homeopathic' I've ever seen or heard. Maybe a good indicator that he was being metaphorical - languaging his own minimal as best he could, if you will.

My own experience of as a client doesn't match with my concept of homeopathy. My own metaphor would be more in the domain of exploration, understanding, acceptance.

I believe:

Homeopathic therapy is an intentionally interventionist therapeutic approach - the intention being to intervene minimally physically while using suggestion maximally (to enhance placebo). A practitioner 'prescribes' a medication for the client.

Clean in therapy is an intentionally non-interventionist approach - the reality being that we do impact the other's system and we continually strive to minimise that by creating processes that restrict our suggestions to client. The practitioner does not (should not) prescribe for the client - the client prescribes for themself.

So the difference is in the intention.

Maybe David devised Clean as a means to prevent himself from 'prescribing'?

[Steve Saunders]

David referred to the homeopathic principle quite a lot when speaking to me about his work. I think it was around his upbringing (his father). And the approach of helping the symptoms with minimum dose is precisely his purpose in removing F; we spoke of this a lot.

The homeopaths I've taught this work have "got it" so quickly compared to other people; maybe a coincidence, but I believe not.

I expect others can corroborate this world view - in terms of healing the "child within".

Yes, there are other applications of "clean", but its primary purpose, as his creation, was for healing. It is as it is! The other applications have different contexts and therefore I expect David would create different forms for those specific applications. He was doing that for coaching, addressing the 1-hour constraint and adapting emergent patterns to fit coaching sessions and ongoing coaching work that was safe to teach and perform as a coach.

Steven

[Corrie van Wijk]

Steve: "And the approach of helping the symptoms with minimum dose is precisely his purpose in removing F."

Yes, David did talk about homeopathy, and I disagree with him for the same reason.

A medication, in whatever form, works differently than a psychotherapy. Brain medication needs to cross the blood-brain barrier to react with brain cells; psychotherapy needs the client to map out his or her thoughts and memories and try to make sense of his or her mind, or by some sensory input or (me)chemical process change its brainstructure.

Using a metaphor helps to explain an analogy between one concept and another. Clean moves help the client concentrate on what is going on, (without having to deal with more information from outside, that alters the map), or get the client involved in an unconscious process that selforganizes the system.

To me that is not putting in a minimum dose to get a maximum effect, it is aiming the arrow to land just in the right spot.

[Steve Saunders]

Corrie: "Yes, David did talk about homeopathy, and I disagree with him for the same reason."

Whether anyone agrees or not with David, if he has repeatedly expressed a point of view, especially in his published words, then the view stands.

If we are to diverge from his fundamental approaches then this goes into the "related clean approaches" threads.

The homeopathic principle is fundamental because:

1. The symptoms are being helped to do their job - being worked WITH.
2. The minimum dose is the minimum dose of F input, of outside-world input that works WITH the symptoms
3. The principle of "like healing like" applies - hence space with location, moving with momentum, metaphor because its relating one thing in terms of another (like)
4. It's in David's heritage, and lies throughout the work.

This does not make the work "unscientific"!

So WWIL2HH?

That we continue to develop the shared knowings.

Steven

[Corrie van Wijk]

The problem with metaphors is that they can be restricting. Just because David used this metaphor doesn't mean that the way clean works, if so, is identical with the way homeopathy works, if it works. David would have accepted my arguing his point of view.

You mention a few points that you think David thought clean and homeopathy have in common:

"The homeopathic principle is fundamental because:
1. The symptoms are being helped to do their job - being worked WITH."

In my view the symptoms are being mapped, so one can consciously make sense of them and relate them to others. I think that what happens in clean space is that symptoms are being triggered by different sensory combinations. Just triggering memories within a different context than the one from which they originate, can already change them and alter the synapses in which they are encoded and the paths they have imprinted.

"2. The minimum dose is the minimum dose of F input, of outside-world input that works WITH the symptoms."

Input from f should be restricted to encourage the system to navigate itself; that's different from a minimum dose of outside-world input. Also, input of information is probably different from the effect of some sort of medication.

"3. The principle of "like healing like" applies - hence space with location, moving with momentum, metaphor because its relating one thing in terms of another (like)"

I don't know if homeopathy works in terms of "like". That might be just a presupposition.

"4. It's in David's heritage, and lies throughout the work."

Perhaps David just tried to explain what clean is 'like', without meaning it to be 'identical'.
He wouldn't want us to stick to a metaphor if we find a better one.

Love,

Corrie

[phil]

I take the point that David made a metaphorical link between clean language and homeopathy. This forum is about Clean. Therefore I have shifted this discussion to Clean Language forum. I think it's reasonable to explore there what he meant by associating Clean Language and homeopathy.

The wiki on homeopathy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy) states: Homeopathic practitioners contend that an ill person can be treated using a substance that can produce, in a healthy person, symptoms similar to those of the illness. According to homeopaths, serial dilution, with shaking between each dilution, removes the toxic effects of the remedy while the qualities of the substance are retained by the diluentAn external agent ('substance') that is like the illness is applied to the ill person. Presumably this is the 'like healing like' Steve refers to.

Meanwhile David says in Lisa's Tapestry (http://www.cleanlanguage.co.uk/articles/articles/42/1/Lisas-Tapestry---A-Quadrant-II-Intervention/Page1.html):These kinds of questions help grow and develop the metaphors so that they are able to confess their strengths. They then can become useful, powerful, and healing metaphors instead of dysfunctional symptoms that the client originally presented with.Here, the external agent is clean questions which develop the metaphors into healing metaphors. To me this sounds more like 'developing sameness' than 'like healing like'. The questions don't contain the illness, except in so far as to contextualise the question, to direct it. In fact the cleanest questions don't contain it at all: 'Anything else?' 'What do you know now?'

I think the clean language in Grovian Metaphor Therapy could be loosely defined as homeopathic in that a) no attempt is made to apply a conventional cure (like poisoning a tumour or cutting out a diseased organ or getting rid of an unwanted symptom) and b) the principle of working within the problem domain is similar.

Personally I find the association with homeopathy distasteful because of the association it has, rightly or wrongly, with quackery.

[Steve Saunders]

Duck if you don't like this one! ;-)

Any analogy or metaphor taken too far will become erroneous - except of course the client's own metaphor relating to their own issue - I believe precisely the point of the like of the metaphor healing the like of the issue - David was being as adjacent with the tools as were available to adapt and develop at the time given his constraints of minimising pain, reality intrusion and simple small steps through clean questions and instructions.

Is clean essentially homeopathic? Well the two highly experienced homeopaths who I know trained in this art both say that this is homeopathy without the pill and they have largely stopped offering "cures" and now use these processes. Indeed one of them is trying to teach other homeopaths about homeopathy through this work ... work it out ...!

And is it? Well, I believe the GM qualifies and so does the emergence. Clean Space: maybe it could be argued its less so. Does it matter? If the word is pejorative then it does for reputations for those concerned and as a community perhaps we should explore this more?

Steven

[phil]

Is clean essentially homeopathic? Well the two highly experienced homeopaths who I know trained in this art both say that this is homeopathy without the pill and they have largely stopped offering "cures" and now use these processes.


That's like saying a chicken is like a duck without webbed feet. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck... :)

It sounds as if your colleagues have concluded that their treatments are really wholly psychological and to that extent, presumably their new way of working will be more like a talking therapy. How clean they are will depend on how far from embedding suggestions they choose to stay.

[webmaven]

Part of what seems to be argued here is the question of how much of a "science" is David's work, and how much of his work is an "art." This is an antique argument when it comes to psychology, and it is also pertinent in the field of medicine.

I would argue that the two (science and art) must occur together for David's processes to really work--what makes it more difficult to comprehend is that the processes David developed cross the boundaries of multiple disciplines quite freely and are therefore difficult to quantify scientifically (though David was certainly keen to try to measure them scientifically).

I recently unearthed this quote from one of David's early pieces entitled "Problem Domains and Non-Traumatic Resolution through Metaphor Therapy" and I think it may be appropriate to the discussion here:

"There seems to be in the therapy field a shift which is similar to that which has taken place in medical science long ago. In the late 1880's and early 1900's the emphasis in medical science was on the descriptive process of the disease. It was enough to identify and to describe it. Then there was the advent of antibiotic drugs. This caused the whole field of physical medicine to shift away from the simple descriptive to the bio-molecular description of pathology. Thinking turned toward the germ model, to the genetic causation of disease, and to the action of drugs at that level.

In psychotherapy, we have a need to shift away from describing things to looking at the actual structure of how particular psychopathological mechanisms work. We have to move away from just talking about issues and sharing them and trying to recover some of the information that is on the descriptive level only. We have to shift levels to one which is a lot more 'process orientated' and to the actual structure and mechanism of a person's particular pathology if there is to be a thoroughly accurate healing."

In this description, I see the germ of an idea that may provide some resolution. There may be parts (or a part) of the process that mimic(s) homeopathy, where the therapist is working with the symptoms in small doses such as in metaphor work, but that is only one level of the work.

Of course, I'm still trying to put the whole picture of this together, so feel free to correct me here, but I think one of the guiding principles David had of his work is that it should provide a way to understand the actual structure and mechanism of each person's particular pathology, because within the technology of that pathology lies the cure. He also discovered from working with thousands of clients that there are more "efficient" ways of healing than just working with a person's metaphors (especially if the person has lots of them!), which is what I think led to his Clean Space work and beyond.

David is one of the only therapists I have ever encountered who could actually do this--develop such a complete understanding of a client and how a client "operates" in the world (or how their pathology operates), and he always did it with such humor, kindness, wisdom, and appreciation often approaching awe at the versatility of the human psyche.

Cheers,

webmaven

[Corrie van Wijk]

Webmaven: "In psychotherapy, we have a need to [...] looking at the actual structure of how particular psychopathological mechanisms work. We have to move [... to] sharing them and trying to recover some of the information that is on the descriptive level only. We have to shift levels to one which is a lot more 'process orientated' and to the actual structure and mechanism of a person's particular pathology if there is to be a thoroughly accurate healing."

That is what clean does: map the territory and try to assess what mechanisms keep it together.

"There may be parts (or a part) of the process that mimic(s) homeopathy, where the therapist is working with the symptoms in small doses such as in metaphor work, but that is only one level of the work."

If a doctor prescribes you a small amount of medicine, which is just enough to cure you, you wouldn't say it is homeopathic, would you? Homeopathy presupposes that instead of giving you the right amount of medicine, you get too little of it, and then you hope your immune system does the rest (which in some cases might very well work).

A metaphor is not a small dose, it is the best representation of an inner experience the client can come up with to be able to make sense of it.

Mind your metaphors!

Corrie

[Steve Saunders]

I agree with webmaven; modelling (understanding the client's system) the pathology - the conditions that give rise to the behaviours.

The client has been projected on and so exhibits aspects of the projectors, the client has dissociated parts which each communicate, the body does, the client is a collective of selves or aspects of a self, mostly not from the here and now. All aspects deserve equal respect although they might have different masses (quantities of information) in their vicinities.

It's having the right model for how people become the way they become that informs the work. Then its much easier - it can still take "forever" though! The only certainty is that the real client is not the "here and now" aspect.


Steven

[webmaven]

The only certainty is that the real client is not the "here and now" aspect. Steven

Steven,

I'm quite intrigued by your statement that the real client is not the "here and now" aspect. How so? And is that ever not the case?

Are you referring to what David talks about in some of his articles, that the part(s) of the client (usually a "child within" or a "child without", right?) that were wounded are the one(s) who have to be healed? This is another radical departure from what traditional psychotherapy aims to do, but it makes a whole lot of sense. If I'm not understanding what you were trying to convey, please explain.

webmaven

[webmaven]

I thought of one more possible way metaphor therapy is homoeopathic, that was a guiding principle for David's work, perhaps across all of its permutations: "what hurts us can also heal us".

webmaven

[Steve Saunders]

Hi Webmaven,

Certainly I agree with what you quote from David: it is the wounded child (younger in age than this moment, either within, without or both).

When I'm completely in the now I have nothing to communicate; unless someone projects something into me - like your request to clarify the statement. The "here and now" self has no needs or desires or urges or healing required; it is at peace; absolutely. Energetic intrusions (projections from others) then trigger my system and I react accordingly - but I react from my legacy inner child - learnt words, learnt grammar, learnt responses - from the past. The learnings are the useful fragmentations that I choose to keep - my chosen suffering if you like.

As you say, it makes sense that 100% of communication is inner child, and that is how and why David got such insight. I keep on falling into the trap of buying a "here and now" story, but by listening to every word knowing its from a child then suddenly a new world of insight emerges.

I have no truck with conventional wisdoms in the field of human development. Personally I believe David, Gurdjieff, Freud, Erickson absolutely knew what they were really working with, as did probably Carl Rogers and C.G.Jung. And they pretty much all said "do your own thing; do not copy me" and pretty much never taught what they really knew - because the world was not ready. David told me it might be 30 years before the world was ready for what I know. I know that a few people are now (5 or 6 people anyway), and more widely as the years progress.

If you've ever read Lord of The Rings? There's a passage where Tom Bombadil talks about his lore to the Hobbits - most will never want to know what he knows. People who ask the right questions get to find out. That's how it works; that's why David taught me.

Steven

[Corrie van Wijk]

Steve: "When I'm completely in the now I have nothing to communicate; unless someone projects something into me - like your request to clarify the statement. The "here and now" self has no needs or desires or urges or healing required; it is at peace; absolutely."

That's your world view, Steve, and I don't buy it. If you were only to react to 'projections of others' that would mean there is nothing inspired by yourself here and now. Your body is a 'doing!'

To think of other people's communication as 'projections' from them, is a smart way to not take any responsibility for your own behaviour and how others perceive that.

[Steve Saunders]

No, my body is the result of me creating what my parents required. I'm not asking you to buy anything. Your body can be a doing if you wish.

I'm happy to disagree, my friend ;-)

I have already posted on projection and pronouns ;-)

[Corrie van Wijk]

Steve: "Personally I believe David, Gurdjieff, Freud, Erickson absolutely knew what they were really working with, as did probably Carl Rogers and C.G.Jung. And they pretty much all said "do your own thing; do not copy me" and pretty much never taught what they really knew - because the world was not ready. David told me it might be 30 years before the world was ready for what I know. I know that a few people are now (5 or 6 people anyway), and more widely as the years progress.

If you've ever read Lord of The Rings? There's a passage where Tom Bombadil talks about his lore to the Hobbits - most will never want to know what he knows. People who ask the right questions get to find out. That's how it works; that's why David taught me."

Just because part of your brain knows more about something than most people, doesn't give you the right to keep it for yourself. "People who ask the right questions get to find out." So if you don't know how to pose the right questions, too bad for you! It's your duty to share your knowledge in a way that people can understand, society payed for your education. "That's why David taught me." David should be your example, he tried to teach in a way that people could easily work with.

And do not associate yourself with the names above!

[Corrie van Wijk]

Webmaven: "what hurts us can also heal us".

Could you explain that?

[Corrie van Wijk]

For Steve:

From a previous contribution of me: "According to Maturana in 'Biology of Cognition' (1970), the 'being an doing of [living systems] are inseparable'.
Ilya Prigogine ('Dissipative structures in chemical systems', 1967) realized that dissipative structures maintain themselves in a stable state far from equilibrium. A living organism is characterized by continual flow and change in its metabolism, involving thousands of chemical reactions. Chemical and thermal equilibrium exists when all these processes come to a halt. In other words, an organism in equilibrium is a dead organism."

[Steve Saunders]

Why tell me that?

At absolute zero atoms still move - zero point energy. Even dead atoms are moving.

New particles spontaneously appear in vacuums - in pairs, one travels forward in time, the other backwards. Life, it seems, has something that brings new physical entities into being in the now in the space between previously created physical entities.

Maybe there is more to life than chemical reactions? Who or what creates these new particles? From whence do they comes? Maybe they are created because a physicist started to look for them, so the projection reflected back the desired perception?

[Corrie van Wijk]

Steve: "Who or what creates these new particles? From whence do they comes? Maybe they are created because a physicist started to look for them, so the projection reflected back the desired perception?"

You know very well that life is different on a quantum level.

There is no who or what creating anything, nor a projection from a physicist.

New particles come out of thin air, a system doesn't choose to be in the universe, it just emerges.

[Steve Saunders]

thanks Corrie,

you're absolutely right, they just emerge out of thin air .... ;-)

love it!

[phil]

There may be parts (or a part) of the process that mimic(s) homeopathy, where the therapist is working with the symptoms in small doses such as in metaphor work, but that is only one level of the work.

Of course, I'm still trying to put the whole picture of this together, so feel free to correct me here, but I think one of the guiding principles David had of his work is that it should provide a way to understand the actual structure and mechanism of each person's particular pathology, because within the technology of that pathology lies the cure. He also discovered from working with thousands of clients that there are more "efficient" ways of healing than just working with a person's metaphors (especially if the person has lots of them!), which is what I think led to his Clean Space work and beyond.


For me there's a germ of interest in the highlighted phrase above that I would like to nurture by asking some questions about it, with your permission, webmaven?

And what kind of 'technology of the pathology' is that?

And whereabouts within the technology lies the cure?

And what kind of cure is the cure that lies within the technology of the pathology?

And what is the relationship between the pathology, the technology and the cure?

And what determines which is cure and which is pathology?

And when cure, what happens to pathology?

And when no cure what happens to pathology?

And when pathology, what happens to cure?

And when no pathology, what happens to cure?

I am not expecting written answers to all these (they are the expression of my own modelling/curiosity of the statement) - and if they come, they come.

[webmaven]

Webmaven: "what hurts us can also heal us".

Could you explain that?

Corrie,

That's a quote from David (early 90s). I'll look through my notes and see if I can find the context or a further explanation.

webmaven