| Provocative Therapy and Antisymmetric Mirroring |
|
|
|
|
First ‘Case Study’: At the Palace of Louis XIV One day a Marquis entering his room found his wife in the arms of a bishop. He went to the window calmly and started to bless the people down in the street. Scared his wife asked: “What are you doing?” – “Monsignore is executing my duties, so I execute his duties”, answered the Marquis. (Reported by Hargittai István und Magdolna in their book Symmetrie, Reinbek bei Hamburg, Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag 1998) Antisymmetric Mirroring – What is that? Mirroring is a concept of natural science and geometry, which has a lot to do with symmetry and therefore with aesthetics too. Since decades it has also been used in a simplified manner by social science to describe certain aspects of relationships between two or more individuals. Once somebody knows the concept he also can use it to improve relationships. Mirroring posture and gestures is a well known nonverbal technique. Carl Rogers’s technique of verbalization is a way of mirroring with words the inner process – especially feelings – of another person. Because we believed that mirroring was just mirroring, we have overseen the differentiation of symmetric and antisymmetric mirroring and therefore identified all the time mirroring only with one of its possibilities: with symmetric mirroring… …except Frank Farrelly of course! Having observed him over years at work I had some ideas about his method, but there still remained a number of answers he gave, which I never was able to put in its proper place, when I was looking for a system. Long time for those statements there seemed to be no system at all. I gathered many, many examples of such miraculous sentences, till one day I discovered the principle of antisymmtric mirroring. Suddenly I knew: That’s what Frank does, when I don’t understand anything more! Visualization of the Two Principles of Mirroring Symmetric mirroring Antisymmetric mirroring In Words In both forms of mirroring the form is kept up, in symmetric mirroring also all other qualities like colour, patterns etc. In antisymmetric mirroring at least one quality is reversed into its opposite; in our example white turns into black. Second Case Study: Mobbing or How to Deal with a difficult Boss. If you have a boss persistently devaluing you, nagging at you everyday and criticizing little details of your behavior whenever possible, the most common reaction is to protect and defend yourself. But this still leads to a larger disaster. Confronted with someone, who wants you to feel like a stupid little child, this person will do everything to let you know, that you are wrong, whatever you do. So by defending yourself you have a good chance to lose again and to finally end up in feelings of helplessness. Imagine using symmetric mirroring: If your boss criticizes you, when you don’t deserve it... ...now you are going to criticize him also, when he doesn’t deserve it! Uups! Well if you want to ruin your career, go for it. That will certainly work. Of course there are other possibilities of symmetric mirroring, finer ones as many psychologists taught us, where you carefully seek for the right words to say it… I wouldn’t recommend them either. They may work in the idealistic atmosphere of a psychological seminar, but in real life? Now imagine using antisymmetric mirroring. How to do that? – Wait patiently until your boss does obviously a big mistake that nobody can oversee – all of us do such faults, bosses also! That will give you a nice chance to give him a compliment in public, which he really doesn’t deserve. The formula: If your boss criticizes you, when you don’t deserve it... ...now you are going to praise him, when he doesn’t deserve it! One of my clients exploded in laughter already by imagining the reactions of his narrow-minded and mean boss, when he would excuse him for having distributed money to several people in the wrong moment. With a warm smile on his face my client would interpret this fault as a sign of great generosity. The nice thing of this way of answering is that you remain polite and friendly and your behaviour can always set an example to others. At the same time such an answer is so crazy and distorted, that our restricted brain simply must start to look for new possibilities of understanding and reacting. Antisymmetric mirroring therefore is recommended in highly difficult relationships – not only in therapy! That means, when you have to deal with or even are victim of another person making excessive abuse of projection, denying and devaluation. Frank Farrely's artful way to transform presuppositions of clients statements into the opposite When the client complains about suffering from the worst evil possible expecting relief from the therapist… ...the therapist explains the suffering as the best possibility of the client warning him in a friendly tone that he could only hope the disaster would not get worse! Examples: “Some people wouldn’t have any luck at all if they would not at least have bad luck.” “Your future? – At fifty years of age, you’re future is all behind you, my Irish daddy used to say.” ”Without this symptom you could get disoriented.“ ”You would like to overcome your phobia of deep water and you would like to swim there? You must be crazy. At least you have already thought of the dangers in the deep water. But there is more to it than that. Have you ever considered that even in the pool for non-swimmers you could slip and drown? And this is only one of many, many possible hazards.” Are you getting curious about this phenomenon and want to know more? Then read my book Zauber-Spiegel Spiegel-Zauber. Spiegeln in der Kommunikation: symmetrisch und antisymmetrisch. Paderborn: Junfermann Verlag 2006. In English the title means: “Magic mirror – the Magic of Mirroring. About symmetric and antisymmetic Mirroring in Communication.” Unfortunately only available in German. Translation pending… Frank Wartenweiler, Zurich |
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|