Change

(Change)°

All practitioners must have a Theory of Change. That Theory of Change must be identifiable, parsimonious, transparent, open to critique, and must include a Theory of Problem and Symptom Formation and Resolution. [See Watzlawick P, Weakland J, and Fisch R, 1974, Change: Principles of Problem Formation and Problem Resolution, W.W. Norton, New York]. 

bower(method) and bower(note)

The Theory of Change implicit in the bower(method) and bower(note) is – 

• Change is naturally occurring, universally and individually. The Earth turns, the seasons come and go, the sun rises and sets, the horizon line curves, the minutes and hours and days and weeks and years pass; people are born, get old and die; illnesses and accidents happen; people recover, people don’t; families form and disintegrate. Nothing is required of any human for change to happen, change happens to people and to problems and symptoms without anyone needing to do anything. The question is, how and why do some symptoms and problems get stuck and others naturally resolve? 

• A problem or symptom is an event like any other: Life is full of all kinds of events, ascribed meaning by humans; good, bad, positive, negative, wanted, unwanted. Some events at one point in time have one meaning only to have a different meaning at another point in time. A woman being round and slightly overweight was valued and represented fertility and prosperity when Ruben’s painted in 1600, now it is a different story, now it is a symptom of something or a problem to be solved. Now we have an entire industry devoted to body shape and weight as a problem, we have entire units in hospital devoted to dealing with men and women who starve themselves, self-starvation becomes a symptom of ‘something’. An intellectual disability has different meaning now to when I was a child raised on the market gardens outside Perth, Western Australia.  I worked as a child and adolescent alongside Joe, ten years older than me, with motor skills that made him an expert at picking a particular crop, smalls, spring onions, parsley, mint, and similar. He made a small fortune for his family. Joe was different but it wasn’t until I was seventeen that I worked out that Joe was challenged intellectually, prior to that I weas told that Joe was just a bit slow and that is why he didn’t talk all that much. This is not an argument for the good old days, this is an argument for taking care with the naturally occurring differentials between people and the meaning we apply to these differentials. Labelling something a problem or symptom must be done carefully and in a way that we do not compromise the flexibility required to solve this problem or symptom. In the 1960’s R. D. Laing, Thomas Szasz and many others had a lot to say about mental illness is this regard, people labelled as a problem or with a symptom that society ascribed meaning to and chose to lock up. Remember, there was a time when we labelled being gay as a problem, and people like Martin Seligman (Learned Helplessness and Positive Psychology) were engaged to research treatment processes to change the sexuality of a person.  

• Problems and symptoms are naturally occurring in all humans: In consequence of the way humans are organized into living systems, each living system is social, necessary, and idiosyncratic to that group of humans, idiosyncratic, because the constraints implied by this piece of social organization, this living system, are peculiar to this living system. All living systems have in common the fact that they are constrained, problems and symptoms are a direct human response to this and necessary because without constraint there are no problems and symptoms, because there are no living systems, and as such no humans. All human problems and symptoms are a direct result of the constraints that apply to each individual human in the human (living) system they are consigned to. 

• Problems and symptoms are naturally occurring in all human systems (families etc.):  Humans are born not fully developed and requiring a human living system, a family, to survive and complete that development.  All forms of social organization (i.e., human living systems) are constrained.  Each human (living) system is constrained in its own idiosyncratic way to privilege, and reinforce, this form of idiosyncratic social organization over all other possible forms of social organization. 

• Problems and symptoms require no other reason to exist – they carry no intrinsic value or meaning: A human problem or symptom requires no other reason to exist, it carries no intrinsic value or meaning except that applied to it by that human living system. The first line of explanation for any problem or symptom is the fact that humans exist in living systems and are subject to systemic constraints that privilege some differences over others and convert some functional differences into inflexible inequalities that advantage some people and disadvantage others. Any meaning applied to a human problem or symptom is wholly human, ordinarily social, and wholly analogical. 

• Most problems and symptoms naturally resolve in most human living systems (families etc.):  There are naturally occurring fluctuations within any human-living system, because of irreversible internal alterations (e.g., childbirth, aging), and external alterations in interaction with other systems (e.g., a child attending school) which produce sufficient novel difference to allow that system to deal with and resolve most problems and symptoms that appear in that human and that human-living system. 

• Difference is naturally occurring between people in all human systems (families etc.): Each human is different, bearing different physical, emotional, cognitive, biochemical, and neurobiological characteristics. Each human system (family etc.) is socially organized to manage these differential characteristics into the functional best interests of the social group. If the social group agrees, these differences are translated into functional points of inequality between people. Inequality is not naturally occurring between people. Living systems are inclined to ossify such differences as inflexible inequality, privileged, advantaged over others, often to the disadvantage and exclusion of those others.  Inequality, disadvantage, inclusion and exclusion, and problems and symptoms, are all linked.  

• Problems and symptoms are directly connected to inequality and disadvantage: Problems and symptoms experienced by a person are the direct result of way their human system (family etc.) transforms differences into inequality, exclusion and disadvantage. Living human systems produce symptoms and problems by transforming naturally occurring difference into inequality, inclusion and exclusion, and disadvantage; this is how constraint works. This is the everyday practice of morality, being, the way reciprocity and compassion are distributed through and by any human living system (family etc.). 

• Problems and symptoms are naturally managed or resolved in flexible human systems (families etc.): A human living system not ossified by inflexible inequality and disadvantage between people, will act to address and resolve the problems and symptoms produced in and by its members. The differentials of one member would not be privileged over the differentials of another, unless there was some time-limited compelling reason to do so. 

• Problems and symptoms are always temporal: Problems and symptoms evaporate time-future, privilege time-present, and call-up time-past. When time-future evaporates, time-present and time-past are privileged, and problems and symptoms appear. All time is not equal. The recursive, reflexive, nature of time is compromised or lost. This is at the heart of punctuating events like trauma.  

• Problems and symptoms are always defined and located in space: Problems and symptoms privilege inside-space over outside-space, OR outside-space over inside-space where the Inside = neurobiological and the Outside = social-relational. The recursive, reflexive, nature of inside-outside space is compromised or lost. In consequence a problem or symptom becomes more defined as inside or outside, and in doing so space becomes inflexibly arranged, standing in the way of naturally occurring problem resolution.  

• Problems and symptoms are always defined and located in the relationship between space and time 

• Problems and symptoms are always developmental: Human systems (families) are living systems, and this shapes and privileges certain individual ways of being over other ways of being, privileges a particular individual developmental process over others, shapes all aspects of identity formation and transformation, determines the rules of inclusion and exclusion,  establishes how this living system  connect to  and relates to other living systems, the way naturally occurring difference is transformed into inequality, the politics of authority and responsibility and the way these are distributed, and in particular the  collective conceptualization of space and time. 

• Human systems naturally resolve problems and symptoms: The key question in any presentation of a problem is why this particular human system has not resolved this particular problem or symptom. The answer is in the degree to which the internal social organization of that human system is flexible or inflexible. 

• Inequality, etc. is inflexible, limiting the natural problem and symptom solving characteristics of a human living system (family): Inequality, exclusion, and disadvantage, produce systemic inflexibility and it is this inflexibility that makes it difficult for a human living system to manage or resolve a symptom or problem. 

• Problems and symptoms require something different to occur, in order to change: Difference is the driver of change.  If the naturally occurring difference in the life of a person, or in the life of a human living system (family etc.) does not have an impact on the event labelled as a problem or symptom, then another difference will need to be generated by that living human system, in order to produce the desired change in that problem or symptom. 

• For change to happen, a difference must be noticed, remembered, and processed: Humans and the living human system of which they are part, notice and apprehend some information, and do not notice or recognize other information. This is perfectly normal. If humans and their living systems did not do this, they would be flooded with information way beyond that which the system and person could cope. Information is filtered. What is this information?  It is information about similarity and difference, information that confirms that human and that human system as it is, in its status quo, or it is information that is different, information that may alter the status quo of that human and that human system. Once information about similarity and difference is recognized as such, as something similar or different, that information, that similarity or difference must be remembered by that human and that human system. Similarity and difference are the great, generalized, analogies for us humans, this is how we as humans think, individually and collectively. We, as humans, ransack the world and ourselves in search of similarity and difference. To remember this similarity or difference, that human and that human system will code that information and that coding is memory, just as speaking, language, writing, drawing, and acting, are all ways of coding information so we can remember that information. What we remember is not the difference, we remember the code, and the code takes us back to the difference. This is memory, it is not the unconscious, remembering backwards through the code is not always accurate or even reliable, confusions occur, the inside and the outside merge and blur, individual and collective cognition are not well bounded.  Information about similarity and difference is coded into a form that can be processed. Processing is interaction or interaction is processing, it is most likely circular and recursive. Interaction is neurobiological, located in the great communication system inside the human body, in the neural pathways in our nervous system and brain and it is in our socio-relational interactions with people in the world around us, especially those people in that world of attachment that is or has been us, and its analogies. Information is coded and subject to inside neurobiological interaction and external socio-relational interaction and the inside and outside are recursively looped into each other. This is the relationship between individual cognition and collective cognition, this is how similarity and difference are processed and some similarities will prove to be different and some differences will prove to be somewhat similar. Some similarities and differences will change the internal structure of interaction in that system and others will not 

• For change to happen, information must be amplified: Beyond the noticing, remembering, and processing of similarity and difference comes amplification, the way in which this information alters the system that has noticed, remembered, and processed it. This is the human and the human system altering itself, the most remarkable of processes, and precisely how we as human’s are designed to be, designing ourselves in the image of ourselves. The therapeutic process is about the creation of information, difference and coding that information, so it is remembered, enabling that information to be processed, and in that processing, enabling some information to confirm that status and structure of that human and human system as it is, unchanged by this experience, and enabling some information to be processed and amplified to a point where it changes the system that has noticed, remembered, and processed it. Neural and social interaction are a recursively arranged lens that not only polishes itself but alters itself.  Humans are the Dutch lens makers who think they are Galileo, Galileo’s genius was in making manifest Copernicus, that the earth turns, and the Dutch lens makers enabled Galileo to see the truth of what he knew to be true; similarity can be difference.  

• The therapeutic system must notice, code, process, and amplify difference and change: Bower(note) is a specific therapeutic protocol for noticing, coding, processing and amplifying change. From the very first moment of interaction between practitioner and client(s) information is clustered and represented in the therapeutic system in clusters. Humans are particularly partial to clusters and the clustering of information; this is how we hypothesize. Therapeutic interaction is the lens, not the practitioner. The lens is focused through the request, and at that point the coding of information begins through the radical note-taking process. Most clients are psychometrically challenged, meaning they have difficulty apprehending, remembering, and processing information. What this means is that the processes of amplification required to produce lasting, structure and system altering change cannot occur unless we remediate those characteristics, or we create a process through which this can more reliably occur. Practitioners cannot see what they cannot see, and this analogy blinds the practitioner. Multiple interacting lens are required, the visual and verbal, in language, physically and in diagram, recursively from the outset of this linear agenda, producing repeated clusters of intensity and information. 

 

A Template for Considering Change

Notes for Practitioners

These notes focus the practitioner’s attention on constraints to change in any case using the meta–frames of the Bower Place Method as a guide. 

Considering all the information you have in this case, set out your ideas about change as comprehensively as possible. 

• What thoughts do you have about this matter? How can the situation for this client change? What is your theory or hypothesis of change for these people and how is it possible for the situation to continue unchanged?  
• Does the ‘contract’ for service delivery in this matter leave the practitioner and agency with sufficient leverage/influence to meet the request and deal with the problem? 

• In what way does the composition of the ‘social field’ or the interaction in the ‘social field’ need to change so that the practitioner and agency can meet the request and deal with the problem? 
• In what way is ‘development and identity’ an issue in this matter, how does this enhance or inhibit change, and how does this assist or hinder the practitioner and agency from meeting the request and dealing with this problem? 
• In what way is ‘biology’ an issue in this matter, how does this enhance or inhibit change, and how does this assist or hinder the practitioner and agency from meeting the request and dealing with this problem? 
• In what way is socio-economics’ an issue in this matter, how does this enhance or inhibit change, and how does this assist or hinder the practitioner and agency from meeting the request and dealing with this problem? 
• What is the ‘pattern of interaction, fracture and alliance’ at the heart of this matter that needs to change, how does this constrain change, and how could this change?  
• What are the ‘turning points’ at the heart of this matter and how do these need to be considered in addressing change and problem solving this matter?  
• What are the key dimensions to problem solving in this matter that needs to be taken into account and how should they be considered?