ON METAMORPHOSIS: EXPERIENCING AND EMBODIMENT. SOME REMARKS ON PROCESS-ORIENTATION IN COUNSELLING, COACHING AND PSYCHOTHERAPY
Keywords:
Humanistic Psychology, Epistemology, Meta-Communication, Mind and Body, Experiencing/Focusing, Philosophy of the ImplicitAbstract
This paper explores the interplay of interaction, change, and stability in personal and organizational contexts, emphasizing the importance of relationship and embodiment in facilitating change from the vantage point of humanistic psychology. Individual transformation labelled as metamorphosis is transposing the state of being as second-order change in comparison to alter states as first-order change. A focus on epistemology in psychology is needed how we come to knowledge regarding human behaviour, mental and experiential processes. Thus it embrace the foundations of psychology as a science, paying attention to what constitutes valid evidence beyond common sense rationalism in order to investigate a new understanding of human behaviour. Here the contribution of Gregory Bateson (1904-1980) is delivering an access path towards the unfamiliar realms for someone trying to understand the complexity of human behaviour. The groundbreaking work of Paul Watzlawick et al (2011) in their book ‘Pragmatics of human Behaviour’ can be viewed a substantial ‘game changer’ related to a creative thinking in theoretic and applied psychology. A long-standing collaboration between Carl Rogers and Eugene Gendlin at the University of Chicago paved the way for the foundation of the Person-centred and experiential-oriented approach in the the field of counselling, coaching and psychotherapy. The core issues and observations here are focusing on two crucial processes in relating to an alter ego: ‘I-you' (Rogers 1959) and ’I-me’ (1962) regarding personal development and therapeutic change. This is widely known as ‘First-person approach’, which encompass a systemic-oriented and experiential-oriented personal inquiry into one’s own consciously accessible experience in private and professional life. A further crucial point in that undertaking might be as well a thoughtful study of Eugene Gendlin’s ‘Process Model’ (1997) and ’Philosophy of the Implicit’ (2017).
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