7 Glossary of Terms

Affect (which is generally pronounced with the emphasis on the ‘a’ at the start of the word) is a term used in psychology to describe how we outwardly display our emotional state, that is, how we are feeling.

Affect is how we communicate non-verbally, (for example our eyes opening wide with surprise). In normal development we learn about affect naturally – we don’t have to be taught it explicitly.

When we are babies we learn very quickly that a frown or some indication of disapproval, from our parent (or another principal carer as we get a little older) indicates a boundary.  A smile, however, or a warm touch, informs us that we are included. We then learn that we can, in turn, influence our environment and those around us with our facial expressions, body posture and movement. (This non-verbal, two-way knowledge flow is vital for our development and is the principal reason why affect is a root foundation).

I read somewhere once that 70% of communication is non-verbal. I’m not sure if that is true, but if it is, most of the communication happens through affect. Of course, communication between children who have not yet learned how to talk is virtually all affect-based as they read each other’s intentions without much (if any) conscious awareness or verbal communication.

Sometimes people who are described in lacking in affect may be diagnosed by medical model practitioners with a psychiatric condition such as psychosis, schizophrenia or autism.

That is, they may not show their feelings (for example, sadness, or happiness) in a situation where, typically, someone considered to be a normal person would.

Apart from observing small children playing, watching old black and white silent films, particularly comedies – there are a lot of them on Youtube – is a good way of observing affect. In the early days of film, everything had to be conveyed to the audience non-verbally, through what actors and actresses were feeling, so they exaggerated their expressions and gesticulations accordingly.

Consciousness is defined simply as being aware of ourselves, what we are doing, why we are doing it, what impact what we choose to do has on ourselves and on others. It also means being aware of our own existence, that we are in relationship, that we won’t live for ever etc. In respect of our emotions, it means that we feel emotions such as shame, embarrassment and guilt. And to the best of our – human – knowledge, non-humans are not conscious-of-self as such, though non-human primates may have some limited self-consciousness.

Pierre Janet the French philosopher who did a lot of work in this field (as well as in the area of dissociation) used the analogy of our field of vision that, unless we are blind, we are all familiar with. When we see something out of the corner of our eye it is unclear and vague until we move our head to focus on it. Similarly with consciousness. We are only dimly aware of something until we focus on it, or are not consciously aware of it at all until we bring to our attention.

So, when we do something unconsciously we do it in a state of lack of conscious awareness. This is because we cannot be aware of all our perceptions, memories, thoughts, feelings, expectations, imaginations etc. at once. So as we go about our day-to-day lives we attend, consciously, on what is important i.e. what, at that time, we need to be aware of.

Consciousness maintains contact with the reality of our experiences.

In saying this, most of what we do in our lives we do unconsciously. Bringing the unconscious into conscious awareness is important in growth, relationships and in making decisions that are beneficial for us.

Because we grow and learn through consciousness, and we couldn’t grow without it, it is a root foundation of growth. As we become conscious of self, so do we grow.

However, being too self-conscious is not good for us either. We might not be congruent, or true to ourselves, because we are thinking too much of what others think of us.

Good enough is a term that I use again and again.

It implies that we do not have to be perfect – indeed, striving to be perfect, and then the disappointment (or anxiety) that we feel when we are not perfect, is harmful to us.

Striving for perfection is associated with the insecure attachment styles of ambivalent and avoidant, where a child’s life is full of shoulds and unreasonable demands in an environment where playfulness and at-ease relationships are looked upon as risky, and are generally avoided.

Most people attribute the term good enough to David Winnicott, the English Child Development practitioner, who used it in respect of parenting – or the Good Enough Mother to be more precise.

I use it in respect of the individual, the parent, the family, the organisation and processes such as growth. I think that good enough marks the difference between being human and being a machine.

A machine has to be perfect or else it will not function – but it is okay for us humans to be good enough!

I use the term high impact – low noticability to depict a situation where change takes place almost unnoticed, but is very real nonetheless.

In terms of our physical experience of the world it is manifest in breathing, or gravity. They are so commonplace that we don’t notice them unless we stop and think about them.

But if they weren’t there (like, if we stopped breathing, or we saw something floating upwards) we’d notice very quickly. In the first case we’d panic because we’d think that we were going to die as we struggle for breath, in the second we’d wonder if there were poltergeists or other ethereal beings around.

The term has important applications in respect of our behaviour.

For example a totalitarian leader’s methods of controlling citizens has high impact – high noticability.

In other words, oppression and top-down control are obvious in laws, heavy-handed police presence, extravagant displays of power, pictures of the leader everywhere, and a kind of forced adulation.

People can see that they are not free and it is very obvious that they will be punished if they step out of line and/or try to change the prevailing order.

However, in our modern Western democracies, it is different. The influence of the corporate world is pervasive from conception to the grave, does enormous damage to our feelings of well-being and our environment, but is barely noticeable, so it can be considered to have high impact – low noticability.

In fact, more often than not, it has to be pointed out to us. It is very subtle and subliminal and works on our unconscious.

Yet, arguably, it is just as effective in getting us to do what we’re told as the totalitarian regime!

In the Chapter on Universal Theories of Change I identified integration as a root foundation. That is, integration is an intrinsic element of human growth.

It interests me so I said that I’d spend some time on it. (And in this post, I ponder on why, in our daily lives, we appear to afford it so little attention).

If I am three, and I have a tantrum (which is a perfectly normal phase of growth) I disconnect. My normal functioning stalls. My muscles become tense and rigid. The frontal lobe of my brain that has been steadily growing since birth becomes temporarily frozen – particularly those parts that are concerned with control and judgement. Such is the level of disconnect that in extreme cases I might stop breathing. (Fragmentation is a term that is sometimes used).

Calming down after a tantrum, returning to my true self, that is, who I really am, in my own time (another root foundation) in an environment of healthy boundaries and parental love is an example of integration. My energy level falls as my heartbeat and blood flow return to normal and my muscles relax.

In normal development, a more general integration is evident from age 4 on, as I realise that there are more advantages for me in delaying gratification than insisting on getting my own way immediately.

(This is written about by Daniel Goleman his book Emotional Intelligence when he describes Walter Mischel’s marshmallow test).

Sometimes when I think of integration I think of a jig-saw. Imagine a jig-saw with all the pieces scattered on a table. It takes a lot of effort and concentration to put them all together in their right places – particularly if there is no picture to help us. But when we put it all together the picture is clear – and clearer if we stand back from it a little and we see the full picture and hardly see the lines at all. Integration involves reconnecting – seeing what fits together well and, indeed, having patience, perseverance and – time.

Getting back to humans, it involves rebuilding relationship with self.

If, in a 3-year-old child, integration is rushed by an impatient parent a false self may be constructed to please the parent. Of course, if I have to do this over and over again and I carry it into adulthood I get so accustomed to the false self that I might forget who I really am – in fact the false self begins to define me. For example, my muscles may stay tense, or my brain remains on high alert, or my stomach is upset long after the need for me to be that way. (This is also linked to the process of believing myths).

Disintegration, or fragmentation can, of course, happen at any stage of our lives – usually when we experience trauma. Our normal functioning freezes and dissociation is not uncommon. (This has found its way into our language – we often hear people say, having been very upset ‘I was in bits‘). Integration, just like in the 3-year-old, is the process of returning to and being in good relationship with self, and being at ease.

In cases of severe trauma ongoing over many years or decades, arising from insecure disorganised attachment in our childhood, integration can be a slow process. In such cases I sometimes I think more of shattered glass than a jig-saw. This is far more difficult to put together and requiring more patience, perseverance, skill and time.

In a few posts I ponder on the development of intelligence in general in humanity. Half way down this post I give a link to a theory which proposes that different people possess different kinds of intelligences.

Here are a few more ideas on the subject that came to me as I was pondering.

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Why is it not okay nowadays to organise competitions where gladiators fight each other to the death for the entertainment of the general public, and it was okay 2,000 years ago?  Why is it not okay now to publicly hang, draw and quarter people who plot against the king and it was okay to do it a few hundred years ago?  And why is it not okay to drown women to check if they are witches, or burn them at the stake, and it was 250 years ago.

Why do women have the right to vote nowadays and they didn’t 120 years ago, or, indeed, the right to work after they get married when they were forced to leave the workforce just 50 years ago! Or how is it that two people of the same sex can be open about their intimate relationship (and even get married) nowadays whereas a mere 25 years ago they’d have been committing a crime.

I could give loads of examples of cruel and inhuman practices and punishments (such as slavery, execution, flogging etc.) that have been outlawed and are now banned by countries that call themselves civilised and/or any way enlightened.  And the regimes of countries where execution is an acceptable punishment are roundly criticised by human rights organisations.

Perhaps as countries become generally wealthier, and populations don’t have to worry about food, hunger, shelter, and other basic needs – in a kind of national version of Maslow’s Triangle – the general public will become more concerned about matters such as justice, the rights of vulnerable people, compassion, democracy and equality.

Over time, a critical mass of the population will think more deeply about humanity, and come to believe that injustice, inequality, discrimination and poverty are causative factors in things like criminality and terrorism.  Such beliefs, combined with deeper thinking, will put pressure on governments to change laws so that a more understanding approach will be adopted towards resolution of human problems that in the past would have been met with a harsh punitive response.

In fact, the punitive response will be seen to be actually harmful to the overall well-being of the population in the long term.

But I don’t believe that general wealth, food abundance, housing etc. is the full story.  After all, in Roman times there was plenty food and reasonably good housing conditions and yet criminals were fed to the lions and crucified, and slavery was acceptable.

Indeed, even a short 250 years ago, things hadn’t changed that much, really!  Great civilisations that were centres of cultures, industry and learning in Europe not only tolerated but promoted an unbelievably cruel form of slavery, and severe and inhuman punishment was commonplace.  Children often lost limbs, or even their lives, in highly dangerous workplaces so that unscrupulous industrialists could make more profit – and only a small minority had a problem with it.

And in the past 100 years tens of millions of people have been killed as technologically advanced countries promoted ideologies of one kind or another, their highly intelligent scientists, engineers, police, military, banking and economists – not to mention millions of ordinary people – rowing in with the regimes of cruel dictators.

And today, while many cruel and inhuman treatments are outlawed in most Western World countries, we still make weapons to sell to countries where cruelty and inhumanity are widespread, and buy items that we know are manufactured in far-away lands, in factories that exploit children, with inadequate health and safety work-practices that we would not tolerate in our own countries.

So – what happened since the early-mid 1800’s (at least in most countries in the world) that changed attitudes to slavery, rights of women, respect for children, other minorities such as gays and lesbians, even ethnic groups who are vulnerable?

I’m pretty sure that the changes, which, generally, are to do with our becoming aware of our own and others’ human rights, are linked to an increase in our emotional intelligence. And when I think of how our emotional intelligence increases the two factors that jump out at me are education and communication. That is, the ability to read and write so that ideas can spread from place to place – and quickly – by new, faster methods of travelling between places. 

Widespread worldwide communication was made possible, initially, by a combination of the invention of the printing press and an increase in the speed of travel. It accelerated greatly with the advent of the telegraph and then the telephone – followed soon afterwards by radio and TV, and now the Internet.

This huge increase in world-wide connections between humans – in what is a very short time – reminds me of how connections between neurons in our brain enhance our abilities in thinking, feeling etc., a phenomenon known as neuroplasticity.

Perhaps our emotional intelligence increases as we make more and faster connections – in a kind of global neuroplasticity. And as we become aware that there might be a better way, our existential given of responsibility kicks in to include our responsibility towards our fellow humans – and particularly those who are less advantaged and/or vulnerable.

Increase in emotional intelligence also alerts us to the fact that if we are generous, compassionate, fair, just and tolerant of difference there is a positive payback for us too!

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Our general opinions about intelligence are interesting.  In this post I discussed how we put linguistic and mechanical intelligence at the top of the intelligence pile. 

It’s a bit like our opinions around sanity.  There are people who believe that by stockpiling nuclear weapons – that have the capacity to incinerate every human being in the world many times over – we will be safer. Not only are such people generally thought to be intelligent and sane, but they often find their way into very influential positions, and even high office, in the biggest, strongest and wealthiest countries in the world.

This links intelligence, to some extent, to values – and the argument as to whether or not science is value-free. In other words, if we use our intelligence to invent something that will kill people, can we wash our hands of responsibility for the result of our invention.

If intelligence is linked to our success in protecting the long-term viability of all our species, rather than the narrow interests of a few of us, surely those that promote reciprocity, cooperation, kindness and compassion (the caring skills) are more intelligent than those who produce devices that kill other humans.

And since those characteristics were more common in hunter-gatherer societies thousands of years ago perhaps an outside observer (our friendly Martian that drops by occasionally) would say that we are less intelligent now than we were then.

We are truly a strange species!

Linear growth or learning can generally be thought to be, kind of, mechanical.

The word linear comes from line, and implies straight line. That is, our growth is like a straight line on a graph – going up all the time.

It is predictable and steady, step-by-step growth. Our mainstream schooling system makes an attempt to be linear, going step-by-step from Junior Infants to Leaving Cert.

Non-linear, on the other hand, is uncertain and largely unpredictable. It can be two-steps-forward and three-steps-back! Or it can be one-step-forward, leading to two, then four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four, and so on; what is known as exponential growth. An example of this type of growth was given in this post.

Anyone who has had the privilege to have parented teenagers will have noticed that while their learning in school, apprenticeships or employment is linear, their emotional growth is generally non-linear.

Just to explain, they appear to regress to a younger age regularly throughout their teenage years – much to the frustration and annoyance of us, their parents.

But this is perfectly normal – in fact it is healthy – they are experimenting around with adult behaviours. This uses up a lot of energy so they regress to the more familiar childish behaviours to, as it were, take a break. They may also, of course, display a sudden – almost exponential – spurt of growth and surprise everyone with their wisdom! (All this, of course, is happening unconsciously).

In humans, non-linear growth depends more on internal motivation, how interested we are, how our interest changes over time, how we are feeling, what we like and want to do, etc. than it does on external influences like forthcoming exams and tests, curricula and suchlike.

It means that learning and growth, in addition to having highs and upswings, has many dips and troughs. While keen observers might see a pattern in the non-linearity, there is considerable unpredictably and uncertainty too.

When supporting very hurt and distressed people, this kind of growth can be very challenging for formally educated practitioners who have been educated in the (generally) linear mainstream education system.

But if we aim for experiential learning, it is worth it in the long run……

I mention objective and subjective a lot in the website. I explore the difference between them in this post in how we perceive the Sun, and this Sub-Chapter describes their relevance in respect of our level of self-awareness.

In resolving a human type problem, having an objective view means that we stand back and detach ourselves emotionally. This helps us in figuring out a way to resolve it. If we can be objective, it means that we won’t be too biased or prejudiced – as we would be if we are emotionally involved – and we might be able to see an alternative view.

The opposite to objective is subjective. Instead of standing back, we are immersed in the problem and, usually, emotionally involved. Being subjective means that we base our decisions on how we perceive something and/or what we feel right now, and we find it difficult to stand back from the feeling that surrounds whatever the issue is.

Of course, like many aspects of our humanity, the optimum in our decision making is when we manage to have a healthy balance between the two. Being totally objective is like being a robot (no ability to be emotional) and being totally subjective would be totally opposite (very limited ability to think a problem through).

It is very important to know the difference between being objective and being subjective when supporting people who are in distress. This is because our subjective experience of something contains far more emotional energy than the objective. The balanced development of the left and right sides of our brain is crucial in our learning to have a healthy mixture of both in our decision making.

In all conflict, if we cannot stand back from an issue and assess its importance in the longer term (what we sometimes call the bigger picture) we will find resolution a lot harder. The purpose of our legal system is to ensure objectivity in settling disputes between people who are emotionally charged and who cannot stand back.

Let us say that someone says something that we disagree with, or that hurts us in some way, and we feel our anger rising. After some time, however, we cool down. While we might still disagree with what the person says – or we might still feel hurt – we choose how we respond so that we will get our point across but will not increase the negative emotional energy. What we call cooling down is an example of our mind/body moving from the subjective to the objective. (Think of Dad’s options again in this post).

Is this website subjective or objective?

Well, I think it is a bit of both. You will probably have noticed that there is a fair amount of subjectivity – in the sense that I am strongly biased towards reality – I feel very strongly that we need to be real when we describe issues that affect us deeply, but in the description itself we need to be objective.

Take, for example, my decision to include a Sub-Chapter on corporate closed-ness. It is because I feel so strongly about its influence in community work that I include it at all and then choose to give it a particular slant. However, in my description of the topic I was aware of the need to steer clear of it becoming a them-and-us kind of rant………

In working towards solutions in this area of work I am biased towards two-way knowledge flow and this, I’d say, also comes through strongly. This is because of my subjective experience, and what I observe when I stand back.

But overall, I hope that I have been reasonably objective in my analysis of how we might design an effective response to difficult problems that beset society.

In systems theory, an open system is a system that can be influenced by an external source. This implies that it, in turn, can influence its environment too. So the influence is two-way.

Because of the existence of the root foundations, humans and organisations (groups of humans) are open. We are influenced by our personality, our curiosity about ourselves and others, our awareness of our physicality, mentality, emotionality and spirituality. We are also influenced by our environment, family, chaotic events, social and educational encounters etc. I referred to these influences when I described upward and downward causation.

To gain a better understanding of openness and open systems – and by way of contrast – it might be good to read the post on totalitarianism, where rulers try to make their countries closed, and compare it to the corporate closed-ness which prevails in open, free democracies.

A paradox is a contradiction that is mostly concerned with the natural world and/or human feelings and behaviour.

For example, it is a paradox that older people have more patience than teenagers.

One would think, because older people have less time left to live that they’d be in a hurry, and that the teenagers would be the ones with the patience.

And staying on the theme of young/old, and learning, I often feel that children/young people, whose brains are sponges when it comes to learning, and who have nothing else to do, are not that interested in formal education as such. As we get older, we seem to have more interest in doing courses, improving ourselves, being involved in formal education, even though we find it really difficult because we have far less time.

Another paradox might be that even though we know prevention is better than cure, (or, as the proverb goes – a stitch in time saves nine) we almost always chose (expensive) cure over (inexpensive) prevention. This is totally illogical if we think of it.

And a paradox that is fundamental to our existence! The very trait that enabled us to evolve from a single celled organism to a human being – competition – has also contributed (and is still contributing) to great harm, through poverty, famine, war, pollution, and now degradation of our natural world.

Beneath these apparent contradictions of logic there are always deeper considerations.

Paradox is a very common feature in our lives. I mention it quite a bit because it is part of the natural world which is central to our existence anyway.