Curiosity Recaptured

A few years ago, before blogging became prominent,  Mornum Time Press published a book of short essays centred on people's experience of the Alexander Technique -AT. I am not sure whether Jerry Sontag, who edited the book, came up with the title or someone else did, but whoever it was, in choosing 'Curiosity Recaptured', they chose well. For 'Curiosity Recaptured' says something about an attitude to life and to others ,that we can consciously choose, whatever life throws at us. It allows us not just to be curious but to wonder.

I was reminded of the book today, during a conversation with an senior psychotherapist about how they see their work. They described their work with couples, as helping people to make the most conscious adult choices possible, through being curious about the other. It was a nice simple explanation of where dialogue begins, where what Kelly called sociality starts.

Sociality is something that distinguished personal construct psychology back in the 50's. Now psychologists and other psychotherapists are catching up, as they talk about theory of mind and mentalization. Their contributions are all illuminating and helpful but lack something of the clarity of Kelly was getting at. Namely, that in order to play a role with regard to somebody, it is helpful to be able to predict them by being able to 'stand in their shoes' so to speak. The extent to which we can do this helps determines the type of role that we can play.

At a very simple level, this occurs every day while driving or walking along the pavement. Sometimes it goes wrong, as today when I encountered someone walking towards me. We both did that dance that sometimes occurs, with each person trying to step one way and then the other. In this case, our anticipations went astray, we both went the same way and collided. Thankfully this is rare, particularly when driving!

In work and at home we play more complex roles and have to navigate not just relationships with one other, but amongst groups. We need to make sense not just of the individual people involved but of the multiple relationships that exist between people, as well as the relationships horizontal and vertical that exist between the group and the outside world.

Personal Construct Psychology - PCP has some lovely ways of working with these that have been developed by Harry Proctor in the form of Perceiver Element Grids, PEG’s for short. I have used them with both therapy clients and pupils to help them think about the various relationships in their families and most importantly, help them suspend, a PCP word, or inhibit an AT word, old constructs, a PCP word, or conceptions, an AT word.

Whichever words one chooses, whatever theory one starts with, both refer to the same ability of stopping, looking and beginning to see the situation a fresh - as I blogged about last week. It is always a matter of finding our sense of wonder, our sense of curiosity, possibility, no matter what assails, no matter how troublesome a situation or a relationship is. As it is the freshness of being present, that presents the future with new horizons, new vistas, ways forward, whether together or apart.

The Art of Loving and Sociality

There is a dimension that is common to most, if not all psychological theories, which spans the need to be ourselves, individual and free, to being one with the other, or others in a moment of fusion. A friend of mine refers to this desire for fusion, in its unhealthy form, as the 'urge to merge'. It is something, that is with us from birth, and requires re-construal throughout the life span, as we learn to be ourselves with, and amongst others. Before we reconstrue, the desire for fusion, often manifests itself, as a quest to be loved, to find someone, who will love us. Eric Fromm the German psychoanalyst and social psychologist suggested that the solution to this quest lies, not in finding someone but in giving it up and learning to love somebody else. This is not an easy task according to Fromm, in his classic book 'The Art of Loving," as it requires us to develop, not just an objective love of the other, but an objective love of oneself, and through these come to an attitude of love for others in general.

To do this we have to know the other person, we have to know ourselves and to know is a task which involves prediction, anticipation of what we ourselves will do and how others themselves will react. It involves an idea of of what human flourishing and growth consists in, which involves an awareness of ourselves and others. Practically speaking we need to be able to direct our attention from ourselves to others. To shift attention to the other, is to start to make sense of not just them, but of ourselves in relation, as someone who attends, tends to others. To tend others, to care, to actively love in a Frommian sense, requires sociality, not in a superficial sense, as when we drive and we mostly successfully, anticipate and predict other drivers, but in a deep sense. A deep sense requiring not just an ability to be with another but with ourselves, in a unity where each is separate, individual, yet joined together, in a moment of being, a unity of purpose. In that moment of being and unity of purpose, an attitude starts to take hold, which extends beyond that single relationship, into our other relations, allowing a depth of maturity and wisdom to develop, so that in our becoming, we become fully human.