Inner Child Metaphor Landscape

[Steve Saunders]

David said several times that he never asked a question without knowing the answer.

For a long time I interpreted this as "the form of the answer" rather than the detailed specific answer. And also for a couple of years now I've had a good intuition of the likely landscape and world of the inner child (ultimately the real client of the system because they are the one signalling).

What has been emerging recently is a more conscious awareness and insight into the world of the signaller. The signals come from a far more wide source than I normally consider. And the opening of my perception has been the full range of signals: the environment, the clothing, the food, the home and car and its state/decoration - everything physical as well as the body gestures, the feelings, sounds, smells and linguistics.

So (the mis-hearings are sew, sow and the correctly heard so), the layers between present signal and source are logically predictable if the right topology is guessed - just like the old popcorn expanding in oil advert or a Rolf Harris painting - in hindsight or after enough time it is obvious.

The secret is to know that all communication is not coming from here and now, and therefore needs interpreting not as here and now but as from the past, and thus to be heard as if from a different age with environmental clues and cues. The clues might also be less about the person than about the environment in which the inner child is contained.

More anon

[super_yacht@hotmail.com]

Hi Steve,

I remember David saying several times ‘I never ask a question without knowing the answer’, and like you wondered what he meant. My question would be while this is your definition I wonder what David meant? (A rhetorical question sadly).
When you are saying your perceptions have opened to recognise [the environment, the clothing, the food, the home and car and its state/decoration - everything physical as well as the body gestures, the feelings, sounds, smells and linguistics] the challenge for someone in replicating this is projection. How would I separate what’s truly theirs (from where every in their lives it comes from) from my interpretation based on my world view/life experience.
So the challenge is still reaching a balanced state (relatively un-fragmented) myself to be able to see through the veil of my worldview to truly see what lies behind theirs.


When you say [The clues might also be less about the person than about the environment in which the inner child is contained.] are you talking about scaling as in ‘& what could be around …?’

While I agree hindsight is 20/20, how clean is it to interpret a client’s metaphor (inner child) during a session. Even with out verbally communication this could lead you to influence the client?
I agree that recognising communications are seldom from ‘the here and now’. Understanding this helps but how, if your allowing the client to emerge what’s needed, knowing this could lead to you influencing the session by having an intention!!

Just wondering
John

[phil]

It depends what one takes 'know the answer' to mean. I saw him surprised by a client's answer several times in workshops and wryly comment as much.

Phil

[Corrie van Wijk]

Steve: "…the layers between present signal and source are logically predictable if the right topology is guessed."

Also, the present signal may be connected with a future want, perhaps already imagined in the past but so far never fulfilled. So it is already, or still, a need in the present, making itself known through the signal. The brain doesn’t know dimensions of time (it all comes together in the present), only the mind does.

I don’t think the layers are necessarily topologically organised (except that the brain stores different sensory signals in different areas), unless the client usually stores his experience in terms of space. And it would only be logically predictable if there is a straightaway, linear cause-and-effect relationship, which usually is not the case (however, people may organise their world in simple logical relationships, which don’t necessarily reflect the outside reality).

So for something to be logically predictable it has to be very simple and obvious. We all know better than that: even with a restricted amount of events and a few rules a system can go anywhere. Considere a play of chess: because we have been doing this for ages, we know a lot about possible combinations and outcomes (and so did David about his clients because of his therapeutic experience), yet every play is different, especially if you don’t have the experience of all your ancestors playing chess (would there be a gene for it?).

So the question is, what would be a good clean question to have the system self-organize to whatever the consciousness of the client at A formulates to the question: What would you like to have happen?

[Steve Saunders]

Yes Phil, we are all fallible, and sometimes the hypothesis is wrong. Should one even form them? As John says, is even thinking about the client info helpful?

Well, David also reckoned the logic inherent in the metaphor was relevant to the asking of questions - for example, dissociation into environmental aspects like holes or fabric or dark corners. Games like "hide and seek", "tag" and "puzzles" can be part of a larger experience that a client might unconsciously embroil the F in.

Sometimes the logic of the metaphor defies space-time (e.g. Harry or Alice), but it has to be worked with in order to recover that which is embedded in the scape.

John, no I'm not talking about scaling, I'm talking about the complete signal set in the here and now - so clothing, furnishing, decor all apply. Regarding influencing the client, it is more about being prepared to recognise the real-scaled world of the defining moment, and thus having a cue to slow down and spend time getting all the aspects downloaded - in other words not treating all information equally but according to density of recoverable aspects. Yes the challenge is projection, so "possible hypotheses" not judgements.

Corrie, I'm sure the layers are topologically organised - based upon the last two years retreats and sundry clients.

Regarding the influencing, I'm convinced that like all other David's sayings what he did does not match what he said - to quote P&J. Clean is an attempt to minimise the reality intrusion of F onto the client so that, with minimum projection, the client symptoms can do their job. But, the F does influence, Heisenberg rules! And the F influences in ways we barely recognise, from our website or ads or house or room layout or our clothes. And if the influence is beneficent/harmless then the client can self-heal.

And, and this is my world view, the client comes to serve the F, too - it is mutual. One beautiful emergence from the emerging moving seminar at the conference was the entangling interacting between F and C: and it seemed beneficent to me! I do not seem to get repeat clients or repeat conditions: i get one of each that perfectly suits sampling the whole field of learning, coaching, therapy and mental illness - and thus can I generalise and understand by learning from each.

Corrie, before the system self-organises it first has to self-disorganise, re-arrange and then form anew. and so simply, loading questions and then boundary questions and temporal and moving questioning ...

Hmmn, sure more will emerge!

[Corrie van Wijk]

Corrie: "it would only be logically predictable if there is a straightaway, linear cause-and-effect relationship"

So how does predicting the logic of the client influence the choice of [Steve: "loading questions and then boundary questions and temporal and moving questioning ..."]

What questions would you ask?

P.S. temporal and moving questions are not topologically organised,are they?

[Steve Saunders]

there are chains of cause-effect (or maybe a network thereof).

temporal is spatially stored - mostly.

yes moving is not topological it is the momentum equivalent ...

[Steve Saunders]

also a fragmentation can happen over/through time thus being stored in different time segments/epochs/movings - a car journey might have a time-continuous aspect and moments recorded ...

pondering ...!

[Corrie van Wijk]

Steve: "there are chains of cause-effect (or maybe a network thereof)."

For something to be recognised by the mind as a cause-and-effect relationship there has to be a criterium: adjacency in time is not enough: some event (e.g. behaviour) plausibly is the source of something else happening.

A network can have any kind of relationship.

[webmaven]

Why would one want to predict a client's answer anyway? Isn't the beauty of this work that things emerge from the client that surprise us or that are unexpected, just like the creative process? Seems to me that predicting or interpreting takes all the fun out of the work for the F.

I agree with Phil, I think David was often delighted by a client's response, especially when it didn't follow the predictable route.

I also think Corrie is right that, like an expert chess player, David had a sizeable amount of knowledge of clients' tendencies (especially traumatized clients) or patterns of behavior/responses and so it was more difficult to surprise him. David also (probably) had a good idea of "where he was" in the process and where the client needed to go, perhaps based on cues from the client and David's vast experience with this work. So maybe that's what Steve is referring to--having a sense of "where" the F and/or client is as the session develops or what might need to happen in a general way.

It must be difficult to keep a balance between knowing what you're doing as an F with a client (drawing upon previous experiences) and keeping your experience from getting in the way of truly being with the client where they are in the moment and allowing them to lead you, as it were.

webmaven

[Steve Saunders]

Yes, it is lovely to just let the emergence flow - and for this I use ever-increasingly the emerging-moving and then sit back while clients spend hours self-resolving in all sorts of movings and postures.

And also there are clients "lost in books" - knowing the logic of the book, the person associated into and the landscape helps because the hero does after all escape the story - even if it is the anti-hero's death that causes the person to leave the anti-hero's "body".

I personally use this hypothesising for a purpose that I've only recently realised - to stop myself from "buying the present story". By this I mean that the client really thinks their words relate to "now", which as Corrie says, is true for the brain, but the words come from the events of the past. And by keeping myself active on modelling a "past landscape, time-scape, moving" I avoid engaging in a delusory "here and now" conversation.

I've just completed a week with 8 brave delegates and a co-facilitator. I've been surprised, as have delegates, we have had joys and wonders, times off the record enjoying a drink and engaging human to human. The work is more than processes, the stories need witnessing or less beauty has been beheld. The work is a dance and benefits all involved.

The chess player analogy works very well - yes after time patterns emerge, and surprises are reduced - and it is less life-full that way. Somehow I get new clients with different story books and little "repeat story" business if any at all. I got bored of chess when it hit the "learning all the different strategies" rather than playing intuitively. Perhaps also, with clean language, a lot of the joy comes from the intuitive and the stories twists and turns, rather like life itself. What is necessary is a skeleton of questions and structures which then allows the intuitions to flow for both client and facilitator, and always in the cleanest possible way ;-)

Steven

[phil]

Interesting discussion.

Steve: Regarding the influencing, I'm convinced that like all other David's sayings what he did does not match what he said

I think that's a bit harsh - he did MOST of what he said he did, like any of us. He used to speak aspiringly: describe things he thought were the right thing to do while sometimes not being able to do it, again like any of us.


- to quote P&J. Clean is an attempt to minimise the reality intrusion of F onto the client so that, with minimum projection, the client symptoms can do their job. But, the F does influence, Heisenberg rules! And the F influences in ways we barely recognise, from our website or ads or house or room layout or our clothes.


That's why we are at pains to qualify the meaning of Clean as being to MINIMISE intrusion. The facilitator affects the client, how could they not? The question for each facilitator is 'how much can I minimise my intrusion into the client's world and still be useful to them?' This is always a matter of degree, not absolutes. For me the question 'Am I being clean?' is less useful than the question 'How clean am I being?'

And if the influence is beneficent/harmless then the client can self-heal.

IMO the less we try to be beneficent ('doing good' or 'acting well') and the more we manage to be neutral, the more useful we are to our clients. Rescuers are big on benefaction!

By the way, when what you say above about F affecting clients, what happens to seeking to work with 'no mind'?

Phil

[Steve Saunders]

Thanks Phil.

Did not mean to be harsh - I see that what I wrote is not what I meant - the surface description is often what he thought was going on but also filtered for the persons he described the work to.

By beneficent I mean "not acting with personal needs" - very much the neutrality, although sometimes I feel like some information is more important than others - is that my feeling or the radiated feeling of the client?

There would be three ways of working relating to no mind: 1) not at all, 2) seeking to 3) being in no mind. This latter being in no mind is what I do most of the time, but humanly not all the time, with client. If something comes up for me I process it out in parallel, then returning to "no mind" - no thoughts. As a diversion I often doodle or draw or write without thought while clients are working - this keeps me occupied and out of their psychoactive space.

Well, when facilitating clients with F in no mind, after a week, the clients are also often in no mind. Did I intrude this on them or is the natural result of processing out all issues? Who knows? I feel that the rates of client issue resolution and the gaining of inner peace correspond closely to the no mind state of the F - in other words over the years my clients have got results faster and faster - is this competence or consciousness or both or neither?

So at least one theme is common to those of us within this community: facilitating in ways that do minimise the intrusion/projection of the facilitator subject to the client getting some results from our presence. After all, to minimise my reality intrusion I have to not be present. so the ultimate clean facilitation would be no facilitation. But there are more factors at play - client results, facilitator knowledge of how to navigate generally to enable the client result.

Maybe a thread on the boundary of "how clean" would be fun?

[Steve Saunders]

So, given that an F has to do something, and given that F wishes to minimise the harmful intrusions of F's reality, or any intrusions that detract from the smooth flow of client self-processing, what are the factors and why? What kinds of intrusions are there?

Content Intrusion
Structural and Navigatory Metaphor Intrusion
Question Intrusion
Pronoun Intrusion
Adjacency-gap Intrusion
Feeling and thought Intrusions, Meta-commenting
Gestural and Body, intonation and verbal emphasis on words

any more ... and thoughts?

[super_yacht@hotmail.com]

Asking the question
'and where would you like me to be?'
You are making yourself part of the clients psyco-active space?

Doing a demo! fraught with challenges. LIke saying to the client 'ignore me I'm just going to talk to the audience' how can the demonstratee not be listening?

Try it in an arena with a horse (or other animals) they can do all sorts of things including walking up and nudging the client (or pushing them over), 'is this reality intrusion, as we know it?' Because it has a very different result to F doing it. I'm sure they do it completely cleanly, they live in the present.

During a session I move through periods of 'no mind' and periods of intention. Rather than ask 'how clean am i being' its having a clean philosophy. Isn't this what david meant by 'presse', just enough of a nudge to keep the client off centre and moving forward and thats an art.

Regards all
John