More on sense of security: Mastering a task

Task mastery

One of my textbooks cites a study on hysicians and their initial assessment of their patients - The young and unexperienced physicians did it "by the book", using their textbook theories. The more experienced physicians started out by just getting a feel for the patient, working by intuition, then switching to theoretical knowledge and deduction, and back to intuition and so forth. When asked to describe what they're actually doing, experienced practicers of all kinds have trouble putting words to it - It's like second nature to them now.

When you know something so well it's automatic, so well you don't have to think about it, that's when you perform best. Actually, asking an expert to describe what hir is doing while hir is doing it, will reduce hir performance significantly. It's a flow state.

So, paradoxal in a way, those who have mastered the conventions, the theory and the structure of how to perform a task, are those who have the easiest time deviating from convention and structure - To improvise and be creative. When your skills are so ingrained you don't have to spend cognitive resources on them, the task in itself is routine, you can use your resources to experiment and improv.

But there is also a sense of security in this: When you know you can do this task, when you feel you have it under control, that's when you dare leave your foundation. You stop using your resources to protect against failure, and start using them to reach beyond, reach something higher and novel.

Imagine an acrobat balancing on a chair. He has practiced falling in the right way, so doesn't have to fear hurting himself. He's practiced balancing on a chair until he's mastered it, so he doesn't even have to concentrate to do it. Now, he can get creative, juggling and balancing the chair at the same time, making little jumps with the chair, balancing another chair on the tip of his nose...

Sense of security

What is interesting is that developing a skill follows the same path as finding a sense of security in a life issue. Let's compare the model for mental health...

(Maybe "Borders" and "Process depth" should be replaced with "External" and "Internal")

With a model for mastering a task:

Panic: Confronted with a task where you don't even know in or out, you probably feel lost and anxious, panicked and out of control. You are occupied with defending against catastrophy.

Control: A task where you know the basics, there is a sense of control. You know what to expect and what to do. You are occupied with working with the tools you've been given.

Creativity: When working a task which you know by heart, you transcend the simple know-how. You do not need to fix your attention and problem-solving to handling the tools at hand, you fix your attention to a vision of creativity, and use these tools to reach it. You are occupied with creating beyond the borders.

So, just as a Bowlby described how a child needs a foundation of security to be brave, to build a secure base with hir parents before sie dares to explore around said base...

Just as Maslow describes how you need to find a basic sense of security in the domains of life to start realizing your higher creative potential...

So too need you build your  foundation of theory and knowledge before you can leave it, venturing into creativity. Hell, I've read huge improv books on how to be more spontaneous!

Does mastery underlie mental health?

Let's go back to the model of mental health. What makes me excited here, is that we may take what we know about skill and mastery, and view life's issues as nothing more than tasks to be mastered and worked out correctly. 

- The one who haven't been given the tools and the confidence to handle a life issue doesn't even feel in control of the situation. Sie is occupied with defending oneself against the threat of catastrophy (real or imagined), and these defenses take the shape of symptoms of mental illness. (Abnormal)

- The one who knows how sie should act in response to a given situation can handle hirself well, feels safe and in control. Sie knows socially accepted ways of resolving these life issues. (Normality)

- The one who feels mastery of the life issue, who feels secure in it, can go beyond it, explore it, handle these life issues in any way sie wishes, choosing the most optimal answers for hirself. (Health)

Hmm, I should really check out the Control-Mastery theory.

Trust is the basic currency of life

Today, I wish to tell you that:
- Trust is the basic currency of life.
- As such, it can be invested, or bet if you will.
- A balance between trust and distrust must be managed
- In finding this balance, we construct working models of how to live our lives
- But perhaps evolution has put a greater emphasis on distrust than is optimal for the modern human

So yeah, I believe that having a sense of security, or trust towards oneself, is the one basic measurement of both our mental health and our ability.

Which is, you know, kind of a given, since a sense of security is just that: It’s an emotional assessment of the given situation, a belief that things are under control and won’t end in disaster. (See my post Man will survive)

But it runs both ways: We can have a sense of security in ourselves because we are well equipped to deal with the current situation, but we can also become better equipped to deal with the current situation by finding a sense of security in ourselves.

I would say that this sense of security, is the one single biggest psychological issue for the modern human. Trust in that I am capable of handling myself, trust that I am a valuable person, trust that I am accepted and loved by my peers. This is sort of an expanding on the concepts I introduced in A model of mental health.

We are today living in an individualistic society without authorities and traditions which can tell us what profession to pursue, what life to live, how to judge our worth as a humans, which was the case in the old collectivistic societies of tradition, family and religion. Suddenly, we need to make these calls ourselves.

There is plethora of psychological and layman-psychological terms for these issues: Self-efficacy, self-worth, self-esteem, locus of control, self-image, attachment style, insecurity-security.

In fact, everything that is good in humanity requires trust.

• Generosity towards others requires a trust in that these people will not exploit us.
• To dream and to work towards that dream requires that we trust in our visions, that we do not fear failure and disappointment.
• When we create and express ourselves, we show others our innermost being, and we need to believe that this is something valuable that other people will respect.
• Listening to and caring for other people requires a belief that their inner darkness won't hurt us.
• Love, to open up to another person, requires trust.

By the same token, many things in humanity which are not so great, are a form of distrust or defense, a way to close yourself up and keep others away.

To be mean-spirited, aggressive, distant, anxious, afraid, delusional, psychotic or borderline are different ways to be defensive, to keep people or thoughts away which could otherwise hurt our selves.


Domains of security
From an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense that this balance of trust-distrust and security-insecurity is so central. For an organism to maximize it's chance of forwarding it's genes to offspring, it should be ambitious in order to gain advantages when the situation allows it, and cautious in order to survive when the situation requires it.

Attachment theory is a great example of this evolutionary readiness for adaptation. Bowlby proposed that we have in our brains basically three pre-wired models of approaching other people; Secure, clingy or avoidant. (Generalizing, of course.) Which model we choose depend on how we are treated by our parents, and this is to adaption to the environment we grow up in. For instance, if we are born in a place where food and protection is scarce, and our parents doesn't always have time available to tend to our needs, it makes sense to be clingy to maximize one's chance of survival. If a child is given a sense of security or trust, sie instead learns that the world is not such a bad place, and that sie should be ambitious, open and trusting, because that will be the adaptive stance to maximize one's chances for survival, development and procreation.

As I touched in my post A model of mental health, one can see Abraham Maslow's model of needs in much the same way.

Attachment theory only accounts for the intimacy need, how secure we feel in that other people care for us and love us. In the same way, Maslow proposes that you can have a sense of security or insecurity in any need.

If, for instance, my need for esteem isn’t satisfied properly by those around me, I understand that I need to work hard to feel esteem, and that it cannot be taken for granted. This becomes an internal working model for how I view and handle the world, what strategies I use to maximize security, love and satisfaction.

With a sense of insecurity in esteem, I become worried and preoccupied with securing esteem, even when I’ve found friends who accept me and who I am - Our internal working models doesn’t change easily.

I believe that confidence and status is a sort of security (or trust in oneself) as well, but I'll save that for another post.

Trust, or don’t?
Everyone must walk a balance between trust and distrust, between openness and defense.

When we use trust, we are capable of the greatest feats, but we are also at our most vulnerability - Vulnerability towards disappointment and deceit.

If trust and sense of security is the basic currency of life, you can certainly invest it. You can invest trust in other people, and you can invest energy and belief in your dreams. If you have invested wisely, then the results are glorious. You realize your dreams, or grow close to someone you've opened up to. If you invest in something that fails, it’s our most terrible moments of disapointment or betrayal.

So we certainly need a certain amount of distrust and skepticism, but I also believe that since no-one has to fend for their survival in our modern and peaceful nations, we are pre-wired for more distrust than we need to be. Prisoners dilemma. It pays to be distrusting because other people are distrusting/cold/protective of their own interests. At the same time, by tradition, we put way too much trust in an unsustainable lifestyle, the one big threat against humanity today.

(2/4) Norms and identity

Second part in a series. First part here: Accepting and justifying traditions.

So humans have a tendency not to question established norms and tradition, not to become overloaded through them. In this post I will discuss when this becomes a problem. Accepting normativity can lead to opression or foreclosed identity. First, let's look at opression.

Norms and opression

First of all, structures can confer power to some people, and we then might consider this power natural and not something to question. Patriarchalism and gender roles for instance; There are heavy expectations on gender roles, especially the female role. These gender roles disempower women, but we consider this role something naturally feminine, and thus it needs not change.

Secondly, people may be refused their way of life if it deviates from the norm. People become very, very provoced when other people prove to them that another way of doing things is possible, and thus cognitive dissonance prompts them to stop the deviants. Same sex marriage and adoption for instance - What if you don't need a man and a woman to make a family? Then what is our traditions and norms good for? What if they are pointless?

Humans must have clear borders to live within, our the anxiety over what to do will become too much. Some people will fear these borders and measures of how to live will shake and crumble when we challenge them. Even the opressed people may promote these norms to avoid the cognitive dissonance of realizing they're accepting abuse from other people.

Identity and mental health
Finding your own answers and forming your own identity is preferable to accepting normativity.

Again, let's go back to my model of mental health. In this model, I have put health above normality. (As did Lucien A. Buck) I stated that it is better to find your own answers to who you are, what is moral and how to do things than to uncritically accept these from society, parents or other authorities. The process of "finding oneself" is described by James Marcia (epigon of Erik H. Erikson), who outlines four states of identity. Once again, I'm quoting Wikipedia.

A) Identity Diffusion, is the status of individuals who have not yet experienced a crisis or made any commitments. Not only are they undecided about occupational and ideological choices, they are also likely to show little interest in such matters.

B) Identity Foreclosure, is the status of individuals who have made a commitment but not experienced a crisis. This occurs most often when parents hand down commitments to their adolescents, usually in an authoritarian way, before adolescents have had a chance to explore different approaches, ideologies, and vocations on their own.

C) Identity Moratorium, is the status of individuals who are in the midst of a crisis but whose commitments are either absent or are only vaguely defined.

D) Identity Achievement, is the status of individuals who have undergone a crisis and made a commitment.

So, what is the problem with foreclosure? Well, the first is that by not challenging and scrutinizing societies' norms and answers, you might allow yourself or others to be oppressed, as outlined above. Secondly, withouth properly thinking through who you are and how you wish to live, experimenting and searching during a moratorium, your sense of self won't be as stable. I'll elaborate:

When searching yourself for answers, you get to know yourself. You feel more at ease with yourself. By working your answers through, you reach a deeper understanding of them than the hollow granted-at-surface of foreclosure - You can present rationals for the choices you've made, rather than justifications.

Furthermore, as you walk the metaphorical landscape of your inner world to find your place, you learn your way around these landscape. You know them, and thus you can change your position if need be. You can adapt. These are the reasons I've put Health at a greater sense of security than Normality.

In contrast, if you have just decided on a position and stuck with it, rather than exploring it, your understanding of it is more shallow. You cannot backtrack and adapt so to speak, so instead you must defend this position. 

A note on normality

Normality and normativity is something powerful. We fear and condemn the abnormal. To be called unnormal is to be denied you humanity and fellowship with other humans, and it stirs up powerful emotions. The "abnormal" and isolated people, such as schizophreniacs and autists who are unable or unwilling to participate in human society, reject their labels and diagnosises. But do they reject them to maintain their sense of belonging with other people, or do they (in the case of severe symtoms) reject them simply because they've do not care what other people think of them, and thus the concept of insanity holds no meaning to them?

Next part here: Follow the rules or follow your conscience?

(1/4) Accepting and justifying traditions

Hello internets! My full-time practical training is over and vacation is here. Let's write!

I've got a series of posts lined up for you about norms, authority and traditions.

In this first post I'll discuss why we are unwilling to challenge the traditions we follow, and in the following posts I'll go into when this becomes a problem with norms, ethics and even game design.

People have a tendency to accept the norms, traditions and power structures around us as natural. Rather than asking ourselves "Why do we do it this way?" or "What does these traditions we follow lead to in practice?" we instead say "It's always been this way" or "It's just the natural way to it" to find justification for our way of life.

There is nothing strange about this. As you might remember from my model of mental health, we need some parts of our lives to be automatized, we need some rules that doesn't change. We just don't have the cognitive capacity to consider every action and decision in full. As a matter of fact, we want to avoid scrutinizing our assumptions and traditions... Because, what if we discover that we've been wrong all the time?

Cognitive dissonance

The sense that what we are doing is counter to our ideals, or that we act on different principles in different situations is nigh on unbearable to us, and we go to some lenghts to reduce this feeling. In social psychology, this feeling is called cognitive dissonance. Wikipedia has an excellent article on it, check it out! I quote Wikipedia:

The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors, or by justifying or rationalizing them.

So let's say I beat up my kids every day to foster them into obeying my moral rules.

- One day a person comes along and tells me that moral humans are raised with a sense of trust, not with punishment.

- Holy shit! So I've been hurting my children with no good reason all this time? But I love my children! And loving and hurting someone does not match up!

- To avoid this sense of cognitive dissonance, I animatedly describe what an idiot this person is and how totally wrong sie is. By rejecting this idea and declaring it false, I can maintain my moral consistensy.

In fact, people spend a lot of time justifying their own behaviour. We like to believe that we always make decisions based on reason and ideals, and then execute these in action. In actuality, more often than you'd think we act first and afterwards justify what we just did with explanations, rationalizing our actions or feelings.

Instinct first, then reasoning

I bet all of you have been in a discussion when someone brings forward an argument for a cause, and when proven that this person is wrong in hir argument, sie changes the argument. Take a look at this, for instance:

Person A: "We need a death penalty as a deterrant for crimes like homicide"

Person B: "Actually, countries with a death penalty has a higher frequency of homicide than states without."

Person A: "Well, it's insane to spend money to bunch murderers up together in prison, they'll be out again soon, and worse than they were before!"

See what happened there? If person B is right, and person A truely believe that we should lower the amount of homicides, sie should rationally change hir position on death penalty, not change hir argument.

Rather than reaching his position through rational consideration of for and against arguments, Person A first of all feel strongly that murderers should be put to death, and then justifies hir feelings with intellectual arguments.

This is not necessarily wrong, we need our feelings to guide us and inform us of a situation. The most skilled practicioners leave room for intuition and gut feeling in a decision making process.

Generalizing and building ideologies

Also, by turning what we experience personally into something general, or law of nature, we can justify our feelings. "You ALWAYS leave your dirty socks on the floor! Can't you pick them up after yourself like a normal person?" justifies my frustration more than "I don't like it when you leave your dirty socks out". Feelings turn into arguments.

And this goes for ideologies as well! Let's compare conservatives and liberals:

On a neural level, conservatives react stronger and faster to scary stimulus. The ideology of conservatism is basically a body of intellectual arguments justifying why we should remove these scary stimulus. In the same way, the ideology of liberalism can be understood as a way to justify curiosity, sensation-seeking and egocentrism. Personally, I experienced a sense of not always being taken seriously as a child, and my own ideology can be understood as a justification of my longing for acceptance and approval.

This can be disheartening, but I feel there is something beautiful in how humans can create meaning. In the end, we live in a cold and objective world of chemistry and physics, but we have the ability to turn a meaningless nature into meaningful ideology, art and society, to build a rich world of the mind atop the world of materia.

Brain damage

People who have lost the part connecting the two brain hemispheres together, have in effect two brains working independently. During these conditions, the process of justification becomes extremely clear.

Show the message "Take out your red coat" to the persons left eye, and the right brain hemisphere will register and process this message, and have the persons left arm reach for the coat.

Then, ask the person why sie reached for the coat. Language is located in the left hemisphere, but the left hemisphere doesn't know about the written message, and the person will reply "Oh, I felt like taking a walk" or something to that extent, that is make up a reason on the fly for the action just taken!

First part in series. Next part: Accepting normativity.

A model of mental health

During these last few weeks I've been working on a model for understanding mental health and therapy. It is a way for me to make sense of, to make a map of what I'm learning in classes and what I'm exploring in my own therapy. This is my personal understanding of mental health, but I'm hopeful that it will be helpful in understanding and helping others, and curious of which clients and which diagnosises it models well.

I - Life issues
As we grow up, struggle through life, we must all find our own answers to the big questions – Things like....

Who am I?
Is the world a safe, good place?
How do I protect my self from those who would do me harm?
Do I deserve love?
How will I convey my own love?
What sources do I draw from to strengthen my self-esteem, what makes me feel good about myself?
How will I handle a neurological handicap I was born with or a brain injury I sustained mid-life?

Life demands answers to these questions. Our answers become models for handling everyday life, they shape who we are, what we think, what we feel. Without these models, life would be impossibly extorting.

There are some patterns that keep re-emerging as answers to these questions, for instance:

- People neglected by their parents as children become insecure of their self-worth, typically beccoming withdrawn or clingy and love-hungry.
- People denied their individuality and integrity and self-worth (and with the right biological sensitivity) can protect themself by displacing their guilt and shame into an accusing voice or delusions of other people controling them, becoming schizophrenic.
- People who are wrought by difficult loss (by a parent, for instance) and lack of love in their early years may come to the conclusion that it is actually they who doesn't deserve love. This is to retain the feeling they are in control of their life and protect themselves from the very frightening insight that they have to rely on people that deep down doesn't give a shit either way.

Questions resolved in a healthy fashion doesn't follow common patterns of development in the same way, perhaps because mental health is characterised by self-realisation, individuality, to become your own person – That is, to defy patterns and go your own way.
Or maybe just because there is far more research on mental illness than mental health.

Whereas some life questions are resolved in a way that leave the person vulnerable and frail in that domain, others are resolved successfully, and will be a source of strength and confidence for the person, following hir through life. Though typical models keep reappering in the care of mental health, each person, both ”normal” or ”abnormal” must be understood as made up of a unique disposition of life models.

You can understand these "life issues" as a mix of existentialism (It's up to everyone to find answers in life) and cognitive-behaviour therapy. (People live by automatic models, programs so to speak, of behaviour.)


II - Normality
Let us revisit Lucien A Buck's model of normality, placing different answers and strategies to life issues on his continuum of mental health.



Buck describes the abnormal position as a defensive one, protecting oneself from regressing, losing what one has. The schizophrenic person fears sie might disintegrated any moment, and keeps a paranoid wall against all other people. The bipolar (or manic-depressive) person goes into manic states to defend hirself from the soulcrushing darkness of depression. It's all or nothing, either you surrender to unbearable anxiety or you wall yourself off to survive. Abnormality is characterized by this all-or-nothing stance, it is rigid and without flexibility.

To have achieved normality in a life issue is to have accepted the answers provided by society as good. There is safety in this, community and efficiency, but normality is not without it's own problems: There is still a stiffness in letting a norm define you, not daring to explore your own answers. There is stress and ulcers in societies' norms, and it is difficult to change when you are dependent on other people's ready-made answers. And we all change with age, thus the age crisis.

Whereas abnormality and normality is defined by rigidity and stiffness, health is characterised by a form of softness – When you trust yourself this much, you can allow yourself to change according to situation, without losing track of who you essentially are. You can be playful, adaptive, open-minded. You can also be thoughtful and genuine - You know yourself well enough for that. You have explored yourself and found the right answers for your questions, whether they are part of norm or not.

Buck encourage us to take caution when exercising mental care, not to squish a person into a normality that sie doesn't fit into, and would feel alienated by. We should rather give security to abnormal issues and take care of and develop the healthy ones.

The model is actually a continuum and should be drawn as a line, but I like the thought of someone standing in the circle of normality/health/abnormality at a given moment.


III - Security
The difference between these positions can be explained with the words "sense of security".

At the greatest level of abnormality, security is none. Your life issue is at constant threat of regressing, desintegrating, collapsing, so you protect yourself against others fiercely.

Going from abnormality to normality is characterised by establishing outer control: Limits, borders, structure in your life that provides predictability and manageability, even protection from yourself.

At normality, the borders and norms have been internalised - They are a part of you now. Your self is secure enough to let other people near without exaggerated fear of being hurt. There is still a sense of insecurity though – There are still parts of you unknown to you, since you have just accepted the answer rather than exploring the question fully.

Going from normality to health is characterised by process depth: Exploring, understanding and taking control of your inner processes.

At health, security is greatest. Imagine you have built a very sturdy house – You then have the safety to leave it, to explore. You also feel safe going into your dark places, the parts of yourself you don't normally think of, confident you can handle any anxiety it wakes up. The house will hold together.

There are parallells to different psychological theories on security here:

Attachement theory describes how the children with a well founded sense of security are the bravest in their exploring. Safe in the knowledge that you can always return to your parents and they will provide safety, they will go explore the world, not needing to conform to other people for validation and approval. They already have an internal approval firmly placed in their hearts.

Humanist Abraham Maslow has an interesting idea of how humanity have a series of human needs (physical safety, social, self-realization etc), and just like the child can establish a sense of security in their parents, people can establish a sense of security in these different needs. For instance, if I have a sense of security in my social needs, I do not need constant confirmation from my friends that they still like me.

Maslow has also written on the subject of the self-actualizing person, the healthy person so to speak, who seeks to explore and express hirself, actualize hir inner potential, to grow. Just like in Buck's model, Maslow characterizes this person as someone who is genuine, who follows hir own way, not in a forced way but in a curious and open-minded way. Self-actualization is not a goal that can be reached, but rather a process, to be in movement, to be open-minded and fluid.

I associate this model to learning theories as well, but that's for another post.


IV - Therapy
All therapy must somehow first establish a sense of security. This is called therapeutic alliance, a sense of trust and hope between the client and the therapist. When the client feels safe in the therapeutic room, sie can let hir models of thought out into the light and examine them. Sie can, not necessarily consciously, test the therapist with them - If I expose you to what I was exposed to, will you react like I did, or is there another way you can show me? In this way, people's model are changed.


                                               Acceptance, empathy, genuinity ->   
                                                                     New mental models ->

Now, the big question is, does security lead to healthy models, or does healthy models lead to a sense of security? Like so often in psychology, you can work in either direction:

Humanistic therapy creates an atmosphere of acceptance, empathy and genuinity, building on the sense of security. Provide the sense of security and carefully prod the client towards processing depth, and sie will spontaneously explore hirself. Having written it down, I can see that this model implies that in humans there is a natural movement towards health, growing and development as long as safety, security and acceptance is supplied, and this is a foundation of humanistic psychology.

Cognitive-behaviour therapy works the other way around, first you assess the clients mental models and provide more healthy alternatives, and with this competence the client will gain a sense of security.


V - Soft-Hard
"Defensive" is a word which has made it's way into everyday english, but it is originally from psychodynamic theory. According to psychodynamic theory, defenses are something we must have to protect ourselves from anxiety, but when defenses are too strong, too primitive or too inflexible they may become a problem.

This points to how different people will handle issues differently: In a way I inhereted my fathers sense of guilt when he raised me, but whereas he keeps this guilt away by intellectualization, I have instead become sensitive and vulnerable to other people's disapproval and sensible to their own insecurities.

Strong defenses also illustrates the rigidity of abnormality: In the hard circle of abnormality, you can either let the problems and anxieties of life issue manifest themselves freely, or you handle it with strong defenses - throw it away completely, deny it, unable to confront it. All or nothing.

The softness and adaptivity of the healthy individual remind me of the ideals of taoism: Do not force yourself onto nature. Be fluid, like water, and you cannot hurt yourself. Be accepting, humble, genuine and happy in the way of the ever-curious and innocent child.

Coincidentally, it also reminds me of impro theatre.

One of my difficult life issues has been romantic love. I've never actually achieved a romantic relationship, which has been the source of great stress - I felt that I had to have it, I had to reach normality, and through reaching this normality I would reach a sense of self-worth. I've had problems with expectations building up - Love encounters became confrontations with the only possible outcomes a) high expectations fulfilled or b) nothing at all. As you can tell, there was a great deal of stiffness involved.

With a greater sense of security, with the safety to explore these feelings, process them deeper and understand them better, with a chance to experiment without the have-to's, love can become something playful and lustful. Something healthy. I can stay in the moment, fluid, enjoying the present rather than building up to some wishful future state.

I don't actually have to have a single relationship if it doesn't feel right - The one important thing is that I find my way to that bright and gentle circle of health.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3phAqQeMMcc&feature=related

I'm introducing: Psychology

Whenever I feel like I need to provide some background before moving forward, I'll do one of these posts. See it as "getting the building blocks" before doing the actual building. Oh, and I use the word "client" rather than "patient", "sie" for "he or she" and "hir" instead of "his or her".


Psychology. It is the science of mind and behaviour, so you can tell the field is potentially vast. When I say this is a blog on "psychology", just what the heck do I mean? In this post, I will construct a crude map to orient yourself around the domains of psychology we're concerned with on this blog. 

Psychology can basically answer two questions.
1) How does people work?
2) What is your story?

How does people work?
Psychology can be the charting of common human traits and mechanisms: How does perception and thought process work? How does workgroups develop? Why do people get stressed out when stepping up on stage? We're looking for answers to generalise.

What is your story?
Rather than understanding people, I'm working to understand you. Rather than trying to find out the true answers, I'm trying to see how you understand the world, your story. We're looking for an understanding.

Now, imagine we draw a line between these two points, like so.

Now we can place different kind of psychological research and therapies (the application of research) on this continuum, based on how much focus they place on answering these two questions:

Let's go through the labels.

Quantitative research
Research with numbers, basically. If I tell people to administer electric chocks to hapless victims when they answer my questions incorrectly, how many people will obey? And to what extent? (Best experiment ever) The questions are already decided upon, and the research is about finding answers.

Qualitative research
Descriptive resarch, working towards an understanding, basically. "The qualitative method investigates the why and how of decision making, not just what, where, when. Hence, smaller but focused samples are more often needed, rather than large samples." (Quote wikipedia)


Cognitive-behaviour therapy
Therapy addressing the patterns of thought and behaviour according to which we operate. Maladaptive patterns (Such as "If I let other people close to me, they will hurt me, I must reject them before they got too close") are transformed into more adequate patterns. Often, these patterns and thoughts are automatic and not conscious.

Psychodynamic therapy
Rather than changing the patterns of thought and behaviour, the therapist and the client are working to expose the underlying causes to these patterns. Big emphasis on your past life, your relationship to your parents which you recreate in relation to other people, how you cope with/defend against anxiety...

Humanistic therapy
Rather than interpreting the client's story according to psychodynamic therapy, the therapist is encouraging the client to process hir own story deeper and more fully, and find hir own answers. Instead of using psychodynamic theory, the terapist tries to find the client's own concepts of what is meaningful and important in hir story.

(I'd like to point out right now that there is a very strong connection between the words "meaning" and "story".)

As I said, this is a rather crude map. Psychological theory doesn't really divide between Facts and Story in the way I've shown here, but it's a convinient way to present psychology in it's entirety on a blog that is concerned with stories, such as this one. I have left out a whole bunch of different therapies and research domains, but this will do just fine for now.