Active mind

The agentive mind is not only active in nature, but it seeks out dialogue and discourse with other active minds. And it is through this dialogic, discursive process that we come to know the Other and his points of view, his stories. We learn an enormous amount not only about the world but about ourselves by discourse with Others.  Jerome Bruner

This week’s conversation is about our active minds and the above quote really struck me that we all only learn about life and other peoples point of views through reading or discussion with others.  It is here that we learn about other perspectives or ideas that we could not think of or would even know.

This happened to me the other month, when speaking to a supervisor about a particular therapy that I work in.  When she suggested an idea to me, it made perfect sense and really assisted my work with my clients.  Of course, no client was identified – it was a conversation of refining my work and being able to bring more to future sessions.  We are all blind at times and need a little help or assistance to work things through.

The same is true for any discussion, it brings alternative thoughts that have us all querying our own point of view and perhaps even changes it, however slightly or large.  That is dependent on our own sense of how we see the world on this particular topic.

This leads me to discussing Sand Tray Therapy, in which we look at a person’s sand world from all the different sides of the sand tray.  Each brings a different perspective of their tray, noting that it may look or feel different from a different direction.  We all have blinkers on at times and are often stuck in that particular view of the world, even if it is different to what others see or feel.  Wouldn’t it be great if we could look at life from different perspectives or angles?

I recall many years ago, attending the funeral of a neighbour and then having a discussion with his neighbour from the other side.  Both of us learnt so much about this gentleman at his funeral, things we never knew, we only knew him from living next door – to us, he was Mr ….., we didn’t know how much he contributed to the region.  We saw him in his golden years and didn’t have his whole history.  His eulogy highlighted what we didn’t know that day.  We were both blown away.

I guess that assumption is true for us all – we only see people as they appear in our life – we don’t get the whole view, their upbringing and history along the way.  We often judge, without knowing all the information. 

Food for thought!