Recover
ing
THE
Self
stalled a hatch that you can open to access the engine, you are better off. So a viewer is lucky—and more resilient to begin with—if s/he is in the latter condition. Otherwise, you have a lot more work to do to remedy the situation. It’s not impossible, just more difficult. The ship may be built with flawed materials or materials that are not where they belong, and the person will have to replace them with proper materials or put things in their proper places. Work on the ship will have these goals: 1. A ship that can easily change or be modified to deal with new circumstances. 2. A ship that works better, is more comfortable, and gets you where you want to go (a more workable world-view). Moving away from ships and toward people and their world-views, it is true that some people are dealt a bad hand of cards at the beginning, because of genetics, upbringing, etc. The prototype world-view may start off being either fragile or resilient. The Rightness Section contains several useful tools for constructing a better, more resilient cognitive reality. Using Information Correction, we can search out non-functional ideas that the viewer acquired before s/he was old enough to challenge them. We ask for beliefs that seem not to be working for the client. These ideas are hard to change just because the person does not know where they came from. Unless you know why you have an idea, it’s impossible to change it; it seems completely immutable. From the adult perspective, then, the client views the time s/he acquired the idea and sees why he adopted the idea in the first place. Often it’s just because a parent said it. At any rate, spotting the act of acquiring the false information gives the client the power to accept or reject the idea. The Rightness Section also addresses
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fixed ideas. These are ideas or beliefs the person comes up with in order not to have to deal with something. They are in the service of not confronting, of unawareness; and for that reason, I call them ‘anaesthetic ideas.’ Concept Clearing addresses these fixed ideas and by eliminating the fixation, allows the client’s belief system to be suppler, and hence more resilient. Finally, locating areas of confusion and resolving misunderstood words and phrases can do a great deal to create a reality that is more consistent, clearer, and more stable. Thus, with all the tools at our disposal— TIR and the material on the different Applied Metapsychology Sections, we can address all of the reasons why people are not as resilient as they could be, and when we do, we will get a snowballing effect in which the viewer achieves ever-increasing levels of resilience.
About the Author Frank A. (“Sarge”) Gerbode studied philosophy at Cambridge and psychiatry at Yale. His unique perspective applies rigorous philosophical arguments to the tenets of person-centered psychology grounded in the principles of Karl Rogers and Thomas Szasz. His seminal work, Beyond Psychology: An Introduction to Metapsychology (3rd Ed., 1995) remains the definitive reference on the subject.
Vol. I, No. 1