Mind, Machine, And Metaphor by Alexander E. Silverman

Author:Alexander E. Silverman [Silverman, Alexander E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367158088
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2020-12-07T00:00:00+00:00

Therapy

Psychotherapy is an attempt to bring about a paradigm shift of sorts for the patient. It is a process of letting go of one’s past and preconceptions. In therapy the patient seeks to reconnect with her feelings and memories, both past and present, and may seek explanations, or justifications, for her behavior. She attempts to integrate old experiences and knowledge in a new conceptual framework, a framework more helpful than her previous framework.

One aspect of a psychotherapist’s role is to offer her patient alternative models of self and world. Call them tools, strategies, theories; they enable the patient to reinvent herself. For therapy to be effective, the theory-practice connection must be strong. The therapist’s teachings are not understood except through integration into daily experience. They are applied in context, through situated judgment. They very much fit Grey’s notion of theory: The new strategies are games. The patient cannot know whether or how well they will work unless she allows herself to play with them and see what comes up. As she does so, she changes the games and makes them her own.

Besides offering substantive theories of self and behavior, the therapist offers procedures (strategies, techniques, games) for breaking out of accustomed thought patterns. The therapist may employ visualization, guided imagery, bodywork, or other techniques to help the patient bypass her ordinary patterns of thought. The therapist may encourage the patient to verbalize what is going on inside her. This may be difficult, because the act of reporting verbally on a feeling may cause the patient to “disconnect” from that feeling, bringing her to a state in which she intellectualizes about the feeling rather than being immediately and fully aware of the feeling and its associated body sensations. The patient needs to learn to bridge the gap between the two modalities of thought, to connect verbal theory with emotional practice.30

In AI and law, and perhaps in science as well, a paradigm shift may be seen as a healing conceptual breakthrough, much like a therapeutic breakthrough. However, a discipline must play the role of its own therapist. As a result, theorists may seek help from friends or books, but ultimately they must spend a great deal of time groping about in the dark until something turns up. Moreover, a discipline’s paradigm shift does not come in a single moment and may not be perceptible for years. However, any individual practitioner of the discipline may immediately perceive a breakthrough as a flash of insight or a gestalt flip, just as a patient in therapy might do. The breakthrough may be small or large and may prove to be illusory, but it is nonetheless exciting to experience. Also, like a patient in therapy, the individual practitioner may look to laughter as an indicator of progress. Oftentimes in therapy, laughter marks a moment of self-realization. So, too, in AI or in law, our ability to laugh at ourselves helps to keep us grounded, aware of our own situation and our limits, pragmatic about our theory-games.

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