Generalities

Nothing ever happens in general. Everything happens specifically.

One of your jobs as a process facilitator is to get people more into contact with what is really going on. You are helping them step out of the land of delusions and facsimiles and general vagueness, and into the land of perception and direct experience.

No matter what kind of question you give the client you will expect to get something back that relates to experience. Preferably something the client is experiencing right now. Even if we are talking about past or future, you can experience a memory or a visualization here and now.

If the client only gives you a general abstraction we have more work to do. If you ask somebody "How are you doing in life?" and they say "Oh, pretty good", then you haven't really gotten any information. They haven't connected with anything, but just gave you some general words.

It is part of the processing loop that the client looks inside for an answer. And that is not just the words she is looking for. She is accessing something that she can perceive right now. And that is what works about processing. We need to keep the person perceiving more and more.

Words and language sometimes make it tricky to know what is going on, unless you use your own perceptions at the same time. A person might give you what appears to be very precise and specific descriptions and explanations, where they really don't refer to anything. Words are only useful when they refer to actual phenomena.

Most people will walk in and present their problem in vague distorted generalities and nominalizations. Well, that is for a great deal why they are having a problem; they aren't seeing what is really there.

The facilitator will work on making the generalities more specific, bringing all the hidden material to light, establishing what can really be perceived, and so forth. That in itself is a valuable process. But also, we need to know what is there before we can take a decision on what to do with it. Just as often as not, the situation will vanish as soon as we discover what it really is.

C: "My relationship is in jeopardy"
F: "What is going on?"
C: "My husband doesn't trust me"
F: "How do you know that?"
C: "I saw him looking in my handbag"
F: "When was that?"
C: "Yesterday, while I was in the kitchen"
F: "How did you react?"
C: "I got freaked out"
F: "How?"
C: "I thought about leaving him"
F: "You made pictures of leaving your husband?"
C: "Yes"
F: "What do you see?"
etc.

Even if you are asking general questions, it is not general answers we need. If you are asking "From where could you communicate?" you don't want answers like "From all kinds of places", or "From nice places", or "From trust and sincerity". It is ok if the client gives some of those answers, but that is not what she will gain anything from. If she only gives general answers we need to corner her and get her to state what she is really referring to. For many general answers you can simply ask for an example: "Like where?", "Where would that be?", "Where have you done that?".


Exercise

- Two students play facilitator and client. Client speaks in generalities and the job of the facilitator is to get her to get more specific in terms of what is perceived and experienced.



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