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Visser, C.F. & Schlundt Bodien, G. (2009). Supporting Clients’ Solution Building Process by Subtly Eliciting Positive Behaviour Descriptions and Expectations of Beneficial Change. InterAction I (2), 9-25 SF co-developer Steve de Shazer wrote, in his classic publications Keys to Solution in Brief Therapy (1985) and Clues: Investigating Solutions in Brief Therapy (1988), that SF practitioners should help their clients create an expectation of beneficial change by getting a description of what they would do differently once the problem was solved. Also, he claimed subtle and implicit interventions by the SF practitioner would work best. At the time, de Shazer did not support these claims with empirical evidence. This article provides evidence for each of the assertions made by de Shazer. Only part of the evidence presented here was already available at the time of de Shazer’s writing. Evidence is discussed from diverse lines of research like Rosenthal’s Pygmalion studies, Dweck’s ...

By Coert Visser Dr. Keith Stanovich, Professor of Human Development and Applied Psychology of the University of Toronto, is a leading expert on the psychology of reading and on rationality. His latest book, What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational Thought , shows that IQ tests are very incomplete measures of cognitive functioning. These tests fail to assess rational thinking styles and skills which are nevertheless crucial to real-world behavior. In this interview with Keith Stanovich he explains the difference between IQ and rationality and why rationality is so important. Also he shares his views on how rationality can be enhanced. In your book, you say that IQ tests are incomplete measures of cognitive functioning. Could you explain that? I start out my book by noting the irony that in 2002, cognitive scientist Daniel Kahneman of Princeton University won the Nobel Prize in Economics for work on how humans make choices and assess probabilities—in short, for work...

By Coert Visser Eve Lipchik was one of the original core members of the Brief Family Therapy Center in Milwaukee, which created solution-focused therapy in the beginning of the l980's. She worked at the BFTC until l988, when she cofounded ICF Consultants. She is the author of the book Beyond Techniques in Solution-Focused Therapy: Working with Emotions and the Therapeutic Relationship  and numerous chapters and articles. In this interview she looks back on the time the solution-focused approach was developed and she shares her memories of the process of developing the approach and of the people involved. She tells about the essential shift the team made from gathering information about the problem to focusing on constructing solutions with clients. Also, she reflects on recent developments and she explains the importance of describing the approach as encompassing both philosophy and techniques. Finally, she tells about some of her current interests and activities. Continue reading

Keith Stanovich has written an interesting book titled What Intelligence Tests Miss . The book is about the fact that IQ tests are incomplete measures of cognitive functioning. There is, as studies have show, in fact only a low to medium correlation between rational thinking skills and IQ test performance. And because rational thinking skills and IQ are largely independent it is not surprising that intelligent people can easily behave irrationally and hold false and unsupported beliefs. Several things are really interesting about this book. One is the authors insight that we do not need to stretch to non-cognitive domains (to notions as emotional intelligence or social intelligence) to see the lacunae in IQ tests. Another is the very specific and research based analysis of the topic matter. The tripartite framework of cognitive functioning The author presents an elegant and rather comprehensive model of cognitive functioning in which three types of major thinking processes and thei...

After I wrote my previous article, ‘Holy indifference’ and the love to be self-attentive , a series of interesting comments have been posted on it discussing the use of japa (repetition) as an aid to the practice of self-attentiveness. In the most recent comment in this series Hans wrote: ... To me it is important to understand the connection between japa which is an object and “I am”. As I do experience, the “me” practicing japa vanishes and some silent apperception of being appears which I am unable to describe. I suppose this is still another subtle object, however I can’t proceed any further. May be Michael will clear up this state of affairs. ... Other than our pure and absolutely non-dual self-consciousness ‘I am’, everything that we experience is ‘still another subtle object’, as Hans rightly calls it. That is, so long as we experience ourself as an individual (a mind or separate consciousness) who is practising self-attentiveness (trying to know ‘who am I?’), we have not ye...

In reply to a friend who wrote to me asking for some advice concerning the psychological effects of some health problems that he was experiencing, I wrote as follows: Whatever we experience in our outward life as a body-bound mind or ego, we are destined to experience for a purpose, and the ultimate purpose behind all that we experience is for us to learn the essential lesson of detachment. Nothing that we experience — other than ‘I am’ — is real or lasting. It is all just a fleeting appearance, as are the body and mind that we mistake to be ourself. But so long as we attend to these fleeting appearances — that is, so long as we allow them to encroach in our consciousness — their seeming reality will be sustained and nourished. Therefore, if we wish to rest peacefully in and as our essential being, ‘I am’, we must learn to ignore all appearances, and we can ignore them only by being completely indifferent to them (‘holy indifference’, as the Christian mystics call it). That is, only wh...

Richard Dawkins' book The Greatest Show on Earth is currently high on bestseller lists in many countries. The book removes what was the missing link in Dawkins' oeuvre because in all his others books he started from the assumption that evolution was true. In this one he presents evidence. Let's walk through the book in some big steps. In Chapter 1, Dawkins introduces the word THEORUM as a replacement of the word 'theory' which in everyday use often just means hypothesis. The word 'theorum' (inspired by the word 'theorem' from mathematics) would do justice to the fact that evolution is massively supported by evidence and therefore by no means just a hypothesis. Chapter 2 describes how we can sculpt gene pools through artificial selection (for instance dog breeding), a practice which has been known to men, of course long, before Darwin to the scene. Chapter 3 explains differences between artificial, sexual, and natural selection. Chapter 4 shows we kn...

The following is a reply that I recently wrote to a friend: Regarding your final sentence, ‘We are only given the thoughts that we are allowed to have, and we can only act from the thoughts we are given’, who gives us the thoughts that we are allowed to have? Nothing really comes from outside ourself, so whatever we are ‘given’ to think must come from within. The truth is that all thinking is done only by our mind, the spurious form of consciousness that experiences itself as ‘I am this body, a person called so-and-so’, but there are two forces that impel our mind to think whatever it thinks. One of these two forces is our destiny or prarabdha , which is the ‘fruit’ or consequences of our past actions that God has selected and ordained for us to experience in this lifetime, because in order to experience our prarabdha it is necessary for us to think certain thoughts and do certain actions. For example, if we are destined to do a certain job, our prarabdha will impel us to think all t...

A friend recently wrote to me suggesting: ... Indeed Nan Yar? contains everything we need to know and I would be very grateful if you would do translation for mumukshu , giving roman transliteration of every word according to the dictionary (minimum two words which fit in this context) and indicate why you use such and such a word when we could use other (I mean non-trivial words). I don’t know Tamil, that’s why I say such translation is very good for mumukshu . I like your translation but it’s still arbitrary. Giving transliteration you enable all people with different vasanas to create their own translation. In the same e-mail he wrote about a ‘really great and powerful master who doesn’t speak much but is teaching through experience’, saying that this master ‘advises atma-cintana and if someone can’t he tells to do svarupa-dhyana or mantra japa etc.’ He also wrote that ‘There’s no difference of experience if we use atma-vicara , pranayama or other techniques’, and that ‘I fou...

A friend recently wrote to me asking: I am stuck at a point where I feel I need help ... While reading Sri Ramana Maharshi’s work and Talks , there is this constant mention of tracing the ego back to the source. When I try to do it there is an arresting of thoughts and a feeling near my chest and I am not able to proceed further. I will be very grateful if you could suggest something in this regard. In reply to this I wrote as follows: What exactly does ‘tracing the ego back to the source’ mean? To answer this question we must first understand how the ego left its source, because as Sri Ramana sometimes used to say, we must ‘go back the way we came’, and before we can do that, we must understand what ‘the way we came’ actually is. In verse 25 of Ulladu Narpadu Sri Ramana explains how the ego rises from its source (our real self), how it remains away from its source, and how it will eventually subside back into its source: Grasping form [that is, attaching itself to a body] it comes in...