A Guide to Reflexive Therapy

By Chris Mortimer

The 2nd Edition of this book. Reflexive therapy addresses reflexive need using reflexive narrative developed in reflexive human science. Reflexive need refers to the disposition in the being-processes of human beings to question about existence. And it refers to the need for effective self-relating in the self-regulation of being-processes, in one’s being a being-process. The two are interlinked. Reflexive human science generates reflexive narrative using knowledge of what we experience our being-process to be when we experience ourselves occurring. The guide to reflexive therapy guides the reader through reflexive human science and into its application in therapy.

On the whole, it is about the self organizing itself to ‘be scientifically’, that is, it is about the being-process becoming self-organized in a scientific way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jul 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9781326310615

Book preview

A Guide to Reflexive Therapy

A GUIDE TO REFLEXIVE THERAPY

Chris Mortimer

Copyright © Chris Mortimer 2013

e-book, 2nd edition © Chris Mortimer 2015

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-291-15900-4

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

CHAPTER 1

The idea of reflexive therapy through reflexive human science.

1.1 Reflexive need.

1.2 Addressing reflexive need systematically: reflexive therapy through reflexive human science.

CHAPTER 2

The ‘unitary mechanism’ framework.

2.1 Generics in the being-process of human being: self-integrating through understanding reflexive human science.

2.1.1 Reflexivity.

a) Reflexivity, a perspective in human existence: what is generalizable in ‘what I am and how I work in the process of being what I am’.

b) Step 1 in the reflexivization of the subject: self-experientioning, beginning the process of the subject (of what experientions) with itself for object of inquiry.

c) Step 2 of reflexivization: what a human being is, definition of human being in ‘unitary mechanism’. Clarification, through self-reconstructive self-experientioning, of reflexive foundations in human science.

2.1.2 Relevant terms.

a) Experiention.

b) Meaning.

c) Understanding.

2.1.3 Other issues.

a) Seeing into how unitary mechanism (the ‘freedom-mechanism’) works.

b) Modes of being self-relating: in this case, in formulating the language of a reflexive human science, being sufficient though language-use.

c) Integrative source: reflexivized self relating – coordinating – it’s linguistically arrived at centredness with what it is in, with what it participates in, generally, such as handling ‘the that’ in general.

d) Key issues in any specific being-process, difference (in system-with-a-difference, and in ‘differences in a field of relative difference’), the state of participant-competence.

CHAPTER 3

Practise.

3.1 Reconstruction of a specific being-process, self-application.

3.1.1 That recognition of ‘that I am already being what I am’ (of that pre-therapy what one is anyway is occurring) becomes, through therapy, recognition of ‘that there is what I am (namely, unitary mechanism: see 2.1.1.c) and how it works, and what is involved in how it is occurring and I am being it in my case’. Origins and subsequent development.

3.1.2 That I can reconstruct the way in which I am an instance of this mechanism. That I can apply myself to being this mechanism using knowledge of that it is and how it works and how I am being it. Finding and using the centring there is in awareness of being unitary mechanism. Issue of and relation to conditions of participant-competence, spirit-environment, and systems. Grounds.

3.1.3 Centred and self-applying ‘reflexive-subject-in-grounds’. I coordinate through linguistic-mediation to experiention modes of the being-process of what I am in general, as instances of structure in general; and I encounter them in specific ways relevant in me being me. Interpellating-environment. Participant-competence, participation-conditions. Grounds. Intersubjectivity. Meta-system-(with-a-difference). Survival.

CHAPTER 4

Being a specific being-process become also a therapy-mediated process.

Prologue.

4.1 Necessity and freedom: what happens and our will in relation to it. Resolve.

4.2 Language and thought: emphasis on the linguistically mediated opportunity and tradition/process. Being ‘through the word’. The meaning in grounds. Rationality generally. What is in a reason.

4.3 Reflexive narrative: how I can use this knowledge of what I am and how I work in being me. Techniques of reflexive being and self-development. Objectivity of intersubjectivity, space together, shared world, field of relative value, participation as ground. Being scientifically. It in it.

4.4 ‘It in it’: narrative-themes.⁵

4.5 Grounds generally: including sources, infinity. Examination of the meaning in grounds as value, including in oneself as ground for oneself. Concern. The idea of nothing, working it through. Grounds as sources of causals, modes of being and self-relating. Participant-competence as subsystem-with-a-difference. Systems-A/lifeworld and systems-B/engineered. Reflexive loop. Self-evolution.

4.6 Relation through reflexivization to the meaning of life. Critical standard and collective identities. Survival.

Footnotes

References

Glossary

Index

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Reflexive therapy, as used here, is not a widely used term. Reflexive therapy is about therapeutically utilizing reflexivization; and reflexivization is about becoming scientific in being a being-process. To reflexivize and become scientific in being a being-process, to be-scientifically, is to fulfil reflexive need in relation to the questions of being, which can be done through the practise of reflexive human science.

The source of reflexive need is in the relevance answers to the questions of being can have in how we can be what we are, in how our being it is in what we are what we are in. The questions of being include, for example: ‘what and why am I?’ and ‘how does what I am work?’ and ‘why are we here and where do we come from, and how is where we are going, our future, dependent on us? So: reflexive therapy coordinates the resolving of reflexive need by recognizing and taking up the findings of reflexive human science in relation to the questions of being, by utilizing that and how reflexivization scientifically answers the questions of being and coordinates being-scientifically. 

Reflexive therapy, then, utilizes the being-process becoming self-organized, organizing itself, in a scientific way, reflexivizing, through the practise of reflexive human science. That is: reflexive therapy therapeutically utilizes the process of the self organizing itself to be scientifically; and this means that reflexive therapy coordinates reflexivization with the understanding and analysis of what happens in the process generally of the existence of a self. Reflexive therapy is the therapeutic use, in being a being-process, of what is possible in the practise of reflexive human science, in reflexive knowledge and reflexivized practise-of-being. In reflexive therapy reflexivization is coordinated with issues in self-organizing being-process, and being-process, including intersubjective interaction, generally: issues include, for example, understanding what is going on in understanding and meaning, preference, freedom, repression, frustration and anger, happiness and sorrow, ‘the that’.

There is it, what a being-process is in general terms, and there is how it is being one, how it is to be a being-process, what happens, the necessary and the contingent, in individuals, groups and societies who are being-processes. Reflexive therapy coordinates reflexivization with issues generally of what goes on in being-process during being-process, in it during it generally.

Reflexive need, the need in us to answer the questions of being scientifically, and to use this knowledge in being us, then, is linked to what we are and how it works, is linked to what it is for in what it is what it is in: we have reflexive need because it is in the nature and essence of our being-process, it is in the way our being-process is; and in turn this is the case for us because of the difference our becoming a scientific being-process makes in how we can be what we are in the life-process we are what we are in, and what this means for the life-process we are in.

Reflexive need is in the way our being-process is because what we are needs to know sufficiently about how it needs to be and how it can find and make what can be for it, if it is to be what it is and do what it is for in the conditions, at least, of the survival of what it is what it is in. And this self-knowing (or a dimension of it) it does in us, in our (and so its) reflexivization. By doing reflexive reconstructive human science and developing therapy from it, we become aware of concomitantly becoming the difference our doing this makes in aspects of how the life-process we are what we are in works: we see in ways like: ‘if I do this it helps my life’ and ‘it confers advantage’.

Intrinsically, then, the reflexive challenge emergent in us, in ‘how we are conscious’, is to have scientific answers to the questions of being; and to reflexivize is to answer the questions of being scientifically and so to become in a position to use this knowledge in being a being-process. One becomes scientific in being a being-process by doing and applying reflexive human science. So, reflexive therapy is based on reflexive human science. And so, here, in reflexive therapy, in a way of ‘becoming conscious’ based on reflexive human science, we become aware of being unitary mechanism, of being reflexive-subject-in-grounds; and so, through our reflexivization, including knowledge of what grounds make what difference, what we are, what is us, develops a capacity for self-application and to self-organize in a scientific way.

Reflexive need, then, is about us knowing scientifically about our being, and coordinating our existence and self-relation and intersubjectivity with this knowledge. Reflexive need is about us knowing that and what we are and how we work, in a scientific way; and it is about our need to use what we learn about us during reflexivization in being us, about our being able to be us scientifically, including in deploying knowledge about how grounds make a difference and we can control them: for example the knowledge that taking a pain killer can alleviate pain, or that diet can vary due to nutritional need and poor diet can result in ill health, or that despite knowledge of nutritional need poor diet can be preferred due to taste and therapeutic techniques emerge to help with it, or that we can get scientific about survival, or that intrinsic life-energies are to be found in interactions with others and can be sublimated and utilized and re-directed by us, or that, in integrated contexts, in relations with others we need a sufficient level of shared understanding, involving an issue of what this understanding is, or that emphasis, in and through us being us, on particular traits, rationalities, and dynamics, and directions for the whole, is linked to the organizational structures we are us in, or that in developing reflexive human science we learn that it’s us doing this and that so we encounter issues of how to organize ourselves with it.

Usually, when the issue in science is the science of man, one hears of statistical research or human social research or humanities or behavioural and social science or neuroscience or psychodynamic psychology, etc. There is a need for integration; and reflexive human science is sufficiently integrative. The reflexive foundation for human science is an integrative blend of ‘understanding’-oriented thinking of the kind to be found in Locke, Dilthey, Heidegger, Winch and Habermas, and including semiotics, with thinking oriented to causal explanation involving mechanisms and structures, systems and laws of nature and culture. Ontopsychology is perhaps the nearest neighbour to reflexive human science: the in-itself that, for itself, is itself, the experientioning subjectivity with an issue of responsibility and freedom, and suppression and repression, and self-causation and being caused in, and the rest, is a common ground.

There is no doubt, then, of that, in any day, we more or less continuously encounter the self-causative issue of the need in us to cross the Rubicon of the need to be, the need in us to be us: we encounter the need in what we are for us to be us; and we find that this need is structured, caused, in how what we are works. We find that variables, like feeling energized or tired or ponderous, make