JamesLawley
16-02-2004, 09:05 AM
I was recently asked:
"Does Symbolic Modelling subscribe to the idea that a gap exists between the Real Self and the Wanted Self which leads very often to inner disturbances of the system's equilibrium?"
I replied:
Symbolic Modelling does not hold to the notion of a "Real Self" as this implies some aspects of the client's experience are not 'real'. All subjective experience is real to the person experiencing it. Of course, their description of their experience may or may not approximate to "consensual reality," but that does not invalidate it. A good example is phantom limb pain. A person who has had a limb amputated may experience sensations that appear to come from the missing limb. This pain can be excrutiating and is very real for them. Similarly their experience of the source of the pain is also very real to them, even though they know they do not have the limb anymore.
Symbolic Modelling takes a self-organising system's approach to the 'self'. This means 'the' self is not considered a something, but a dynamic property that emerges from the organisation of all the components and the interactions between them (called by Maturana and Varela the "pattern of organisation"). The 'self' is an ever-changing emergent property. All that an observer sees (and the 'self' itself sees!) is a snapshot of part of the system at any moment in time.
James Lawley
"Does Symbolic Modelling subscribe to the idea that a gap exists between the Real Self and the Wanted Self which leads very often to inner disturbances of the system's equilibrium?"
I replied:
Symbolic Modelling does not hold to the notion of a "Real Self" as this implies some aspects of the client's experience are not 'real'. All subjective experience is real to the person experiencing it. Of course, their description of their experience may or may not approximate to "consensual reality," but that does not invalidate it. A good example is phantom limb pain. A person who has had a limb amputated may experience sensations that appear to come from the missing limb. This pain can be excrutiating and is very real for them. Similarly their experience of the source of the pain is also very real to them, even though they know they do not have the limb anymore.
Symbolic Modelling takes a self-organising system's approach to the 'self'. This means 'the' self is not considered a something, but a dynamic property that emerges from the organisation of all the components and the interactions between them (called by Maturana and Varela the "pattern of organisation"). The 'self' is an ever-changing emergent property. All that an observer sees (and the 'self' itself sees!) is a snapshot of part of the system at any moment in time.
James Lawley