Re: change
Ana Catina (catina@Psyres-Stuttgart.DE)
Tue, 9 Apr 1996 16:43:02 +0200 (MET DST)
Dear Dwight,
Don't you think that the most fascinating issue in your question is
that change can not be circumscribed by one scholastic, general and yet
narrowing definition?
Why do you feel trapped by your basic philosophy? It
is a matter of knowledge, isn't it? Anyway I should add that "if I knew"
implies not only "knowing how" (mechanism), or "toward what" (goal); it might
also concern "how it would be" (the result of change). In this respect
change can be seen along a new dimesion, of courage perhaps. The courage
emerges not from "if I knew how" (courage to experiment) but from the imposibility to control the
open- end of any change.
I am a clinician and therefore often confronted with the need and
sometimes very strong desire for change of my clients.
However, they obvioulsly avoid change. Wendy Crebbin's assumption is
supported by
clinical studies on change due to therapy: if
clients have no construct about the alternative they consider to change
to, they will resist the idea of change. Do you think that their
reluctance or resistence is due to the lack of will power, or could you
understand their fear? "If I knew" means "if I can predict and control".
Reading my message I had the feeling that I wrote about a sort or extend
of change that you had not in mind. Can it be so?
Ana Catina
Center for Psychotherapy Research
Stuttgart Germany
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