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I havebeen trying to recall a word I used to use in latter stages of role training. I remembered the word today that was eluding me. It’s “chunking”. From NLP I think and behavioural therapy in the seventies may be. I used it to have groups of men to “Harness Anger and Stop Violence”. In role training coaching as they took up the new role (or drew on an old role in a new context) “chunking” was the word that I used to name the irritating process of pausing them and describing in detail how they had enacted that chunk. They were quickly willing to have each chunk, a success story. Going a small piece at a time as the role is being integrated/developed I suppose assisted the role to be well formed and mindfully appreciated. It is a point in the development of role where role taking freedom is moving up to the next level of freedom (spontaneity) to begin to be role played. This level being about easy flow it is strange to break the flow into bits (chunks) which logically interrupts the flow. How it works doesn’t matter. It certainly does. I first witnessed this in Max Clayton’s work he didn’t comment on what or why he did it. The effect was obvious. He didn’t call it chunking. Leaning theorists might say each successful element is being reinforced. Paradoxical therapists could say that the interruptions are resistances that have the CNS work harder to bind the parts into a whole that is seamless maybe.

A prose-poem Not Rehearsal

In 1985 the five day Training Workshop ends. The trainer’s saying that “psychodrama is rehearsal for life” clashed with the vitality and immediacy of my experience. I went home and wrote a prose poem. I knew what it was for me. It was not rehearsal. Knowing what it is not for ourselves can begin our knowing of our own truth – a truth to a “self chosen path”.

I found this in my old notes. Gave it back to Walter who put it on his blog, and gave me a copy of the digital version.

Here it is:

Mirroring and Cybernetics

Here is a more recent one:

Engaging the Muse