Heresy: A Letter Never Sent
Dear Harvey and Present Time staff,
I have had a really fabulous problem that demands the most elegant of solutions. There are child abuse situations among my loved ones that current professional response systems cannot change, because most of the involved community is clinging to their teamwork denial.
After ten years of discharging and pondering and writing about the possibilities, I have finally come up with something. What I have developed appears to me to be something that is not just useful for families who are in extreme situations.
My planned solution to the problem among my loved ones appears to be something that can break up any chronic pattern within family relationships. It could be an enhancement tool for any marriage or parent-child bond, and a general liberation tool for all the individuals in the family.
I'd very much like to discuss these ideas with anybody who is interested in discharging chronics. Actually I'd like to experiment with the residency project described.
What I've got appears to be a way of interrupting and contradicting patterns that is not dependent upon the strength and ingenuity of the counselor. It involves creating a setting that is a total contradiction to inhuman patterns in itself: applied human rights.
Thank you,
Kay Williams
I'll give a brief outline right now of what I have in mind. Because I have developed the ideas in reference to child abuse patterns, I will go ahead and use that terminology to share my ideas. But bear in mind that anytime I say "abuse," what I speak of can be generalized into meaning any rigid pattern of behavior, many of which are not recognized by society as abusive at all.
We can notice that spouse and child abuse and neglect are integrated into the entire structure of society. The mainstream norms of general oppression are what keep the private and specific patterns intact. We especially see that this is so, when we try to lift one member of a family out of an abusive dynamic. The rest of the family greatly resists. The family tends to work together to defend the pattern, rather than defend the human beings.
So the conditions surrounding the pattern are holding it in place. I see three basic ways that conditions can be changed away from our mainstream situation, such that things are conducive to the health of people rather than the health of patterns.
First, the mental model of what child abuse is, needs to change. The mainstream model is that child abuse is a crime and should be dealt with by shaming and giving punishment. This idea is part of what keeps child abuse thriving, because it creates a valid self-defense need for persons to keep the denial intact.
The new model is that child abuse patterns are a contagious disease, like any pattern is. Patterns are installed in others, by people who have the pattern themselves. They are like a virus: a chunk of information that programs anti-life and inhuman behavior.
With this information, we can be objective and compassionate about diagnosing and mapping different kinds of abuse and neglect. Shaming becomes moot. It makes it possible to safely "confess," which is the beginning of recovery.
So RC is now doing the first part of the three part plan in educating about real human nature vs inhuman patterns.
The models I wish to add, to fill out the diagnostic maps in reference to domestic violence are just a refinement or adaptation of what RC already teaches.
The second part of the plan involves a logistic change in the way the family home is laid out, especially in reference to the community. The available model for this second change is the Co-Housing concept. In Co-Housing, there are private nuclear family homes in a cluster (of perhaps 8), along with common spaces in a separate building or buildings for use by all. Usually there is a large common kitchen and dining hall, wherein meals can be shared by the whole group. But there are still small kitchens in the private homes to keep flexibility.
The articles on co-housing that I have read often include as many as 30 to 40 homes, but for this family enhancement model I am choosing eight households because of the data that RC has given me, that eight in a support group is about as big as it can get and still work. So eight households would easily create one peer circle group for the women, and one peer circle group for the men. (if we are working with heterosexual couples in each household)
The third change that this plan calls for is adopting a set of rules for behavior within the home and community. The rules are very simple... they are basically the bill of rights. People who choose to live in the family enhancement co-housing group are choosing the set of rules as well, by contract and by consensus.
With these rules we decide that we shall allow ourselves and each other to speak or express freely, to claim privacy whenever we wish to, to move towards free assembly with our peers at any time we desire, and not impose involuntary servitude on ourselves or others.
The RC models of discharge fit within the category of free speech and expression. We now understand that we all have the human need to discharge, to speak and express freely in order to keep our human-ness alive and well. What we say is a "right" is actually a need.
What I am postulating is that all of the basic human rights are actually basic human needs. We also need free assembly, which is the continuing option to place ourselves in the company of our peers to enhance our learning and general functioning.
And in order to continue to enjoy our companionship, we very much need the continual option to claim privacy at any time that we choose. This allows us to exit any scene or transaction that is burdensome, whenever, without having to give a reason.
While in the space defined by the co-housing community, the experience of being with someone who is having a discharge session would not be an exception. It seems to me that the number of people around, all of whom are curious about and interested in the healing power of discharge, would allow folks to choose to be counselor to someone only when they are energized for it.
The logistics of the co-housing layouts must support options to privacies and peer circle assemblies by having spaces in the common building(s) that are "adult only" "children only" and the like, so that people can claim types of privacy or assembly behind a designated and defended door.
Clearly, with a group of people who are supporting each other in keeping these rules, overt violence to one another will be interrupted and dispelled.
But applied human rights also interrupts the little invisible oppressions and dependencies. This isn't just good for the person who is being subject. When oppressive transactions are interrupted, the person who feels compelled to pass their pattern has a sudden access to their feelings, which will lead to discharge. So, interrupting the subtle oppression by departing when uncomfortable has healing effect for both parties. We redefine what it is to "love somebody", and it isn't enabling their patterns by giving up space to them.
Basic human rights are understood to be a system of immunity to abuses of power by government. But these same basic human rights when applied on a personal scale also form a system of immunity for interpersonal abuses of power. Fascism can exist on very small scales, and wear masks of shining familial virtue, such as "sacrifice = love." The human rights standard cuts through the image of virtue to the truth, in a simple and objective way.
These human right rules with the logistic options of the co-housing complex add up to a very big change from the standard nuclear family household rules and situations.
I think the entire setting of new conditions in itself will offer a continuing and profound contradiction to patterns, which will create wonderful opportunities to discharge. It is my hunch that it will be so powerful to do this change work directly in the context of the home and family, that all a counselor will have to do is stand back and get out of the way when somebody's deep control pattern has been pulled. Or maybe just hold them.
Which takes us to the third paragraph which is on the back of every "Present Time." "Any... person would recover from such distress spontaneously by use of the natural process of emotional discharge..." because ultimately all we would require of ourselves as counselors to each other is to not interfere. For this, we don't need extensive ingenuity and to always maintain an image of shining love. We can be cranky, if we feel like it.
I am very interested in experimenting with this applied human rights concept. My partner and I live on a 20-acre piece that could be used for summer-camp practice. I have somewhat of a dilemma in inviting participants, in that people need basic understanding of the nature of healthy human identity vs the inhuman patterns, and the basic biologically endowed function of discharge for continual healing and health. They need to be versed in Liberation Theory to really benefit from the proposed arrangement.
But since this experiment in co-housing is definitely social in nature, if I understand this all correctly, you who have had RC training cannot respond to my invitation and remain in good standing in RC. That was reiterated very clearly in the last issue of "Present Time". Nonetheless, I present my idea and my conundrum.
I have great respect for the no-socializing rule. I understand its value, in the context of setting the goal to create a network of good counselors and sustain very clean co-counseling relationships. I think the no-socializing rule is especially necessary to protect the most effective counselors, because otherwise people become addicted to their attention and the relationship becomes very one sided and unpleasant.
But it seems to me that when we shift the responsibility for change onto the client and remove it from the counselor, as I believe the applied human rights set up will allow us to do while still getting good results, we enter into a whole new ball game. And new games imply new rules.
It seems to me that this shift of responsibility for the healing process is part of acknowledging that people are finally functional and capable healers of themselves, that our frozen need for that fabulous shoulder will finally be met.
I realize I am speaking something like heresy. Can anybody talk to me about this?
In the long term, I expect to create something that has enough momentum that when anybody was plugged into it, it would create healing change. But I don't think that "just anybody" can make it work at this point. I think that in this developmental stage having intentional and capable participants is essential.
I don't think that great counselors is what we need for this experiment. Actually I would rather not have great counselors. I would much rather have good clients do this experiment with me, people who have had plenty of experience in discharge and who don't have to be convinced that it is a good thing. I am especially interested in inviting people who have already set the goal of cleaning up their own chronic patterns.
Because even if I can educate persons, outside of RC, about basic discharge healing theory, I cannot educate a person to have a goal to go all the way with it within themselves... either they have the personal goal, or they don't.
My larger goal is to create a form that is effective yet not personality dependent, and thus can be duplicated more easily. So we wouldn't be just doing this as a personal living experience, we would be looking towards setting the next step in a way of global change.
Please give this article space in Present Time. Please allow a dissenting voice to be heard, I need to learn from many voices, and I cannot learn by being excluded because I have a different idea. We might all benefit from my new idea, even though it is exact opposite from what we have all accepted to be true.
Sincerely,
(me)
written but not sent, 12-13-94
I have had a really fabulous problem that demands the most elegant of solutions. There are child abuse situations among my loved ones that current professional response systems cannot change, because most of the involved community is clinging to their teamwork denial.
After ten years of discharging and pondering and writing about the possibilities, I have finally come up with something. What I have developed appears to me to be something that is not just useful for families who are in extreme situations.
My planned solution to the problem among my loved ones appears to be something that can break up any chronic pattern within family relationships. It could be an enhancement tool for any marriage or parent-child bond, and a general liberation tool for all the individuals in the family.
I'd very much like to discuss these ideas with anybody who is interested in discharging chronics. Actually I'd like to experiment with the residency project described.
What I've got appears to be a way of interrupting and contradicting patterns that is not dependent upon the strength and ingenuity of the counselor. It involves creating a setting that is a total contradiction to inhuman patterns in itself: applied human rights.
Thank you,
Kay Williams
I'll give a brief outline right now of what I have in mind. Because I have developed the ideas in reference to child abuse patterns, I will go ahead and use that terminology to share my ideas. But bear in mind that anytime I say "abuse," what I speak of can be generalized into meaning any rigid pattern of behavior, many of which are not recognized by society as abusive at all.
We can notice that spouse and child abuse and neglect are integrated into the entire structure of society. The mainstream norms of general oppression are what keep the private and specific patterns intact. We especially see that this is so, when we try to lift one member of a family out of an abusive dynamic. The rest of the family greatly resists. The family tends to work together to defend the pattern, rather than defend the human beings.
So the conditions surrounding the pattern are holding it in place. I see three basic ways that conditions can be changed away from our mainstream situation, such that things are conducive to the health of people rather than the health of patterns.
First, the mental model of what child abuse is, needs to change. The mainstream model is that child abuse is a crime and should be dealt with by shaming and giving punishment. This idea is part of what keeps child abuse thriving, because it creates a valid self-defense need for persons to keep the denial intact.
The new model is that child abuse patterns are a contagious disease, like any pattern is. Patterns are installed in others, by people who have the pattern themselves. They are like a virus: a chunk of information that programs anti-life and inhuman behavior.
With this information, we can be objective and compassionate about diagnosing and mapping different kinds of abuse and neglect. Shaming becomes moot. It makes it possible to safely "confess," which is the beginning of recovery.
So RC is now doing the first part of the three part plan in educating about real human nature vs inhuman patterns.
The models I wish to add, to fill out the diagnostic maps in reference to domestic violence are just a refinement or adaptation of what RC already teaches.
The second part of the plan involves a logistic change in the way the family home is laid out, especially in reference to the community. The available model for this second change is the Co-Housing concept. In Co-Housing, there are private nuclear family homes in a cluster (of perhaps 8), along with common spaces in a separate building or buildings for use by all. Usually there is a large common kitchen and dining hall, wherein meals can be shared by the whole group. But there are still small kitchens in the private homes to keep flexibility.
The articles on co-housing that I have read often include as many as 30 to 40 homes, but for this family enhancement model I am choosing eight households because of the data that RC has given me, that eight in a support group is about as big as it can get and still work. So eight households would easily create one peer circle group for the women, and one peer circle group for the men. (if we are working with heterosexual couples in each household)
The third change that this plan calls for is adopting a set of rules for behavior within the home and community. The rules are very simple... they are basically the bill of rights. People who choose to live in the family enhancement co-housing group are choosing the set of rules as well, by contract and by consensus.
With these rules we decide that we shall allow ourselves and each other to speak or express freely, to claim privacy whenever we wish to, to move towards free assembly with our peers at any time we desire, and not impose involuntary servitude on ourselves or others.
The RC models of discharge fit within the category of free speech and expression. We now understand that we all have the human need to discharge, to speak and express freely in order to keep our human-ness alive and well. What we say is a "right" is actually a need.
What I am postulating is that all of the basic human rights are actually basic human needs. We also need free assembly, which is the continuing option to place ourselves in the company of our peers to enhance our learning and general functioning.
And in order to continue to enjoy our companionship, we very much need the continual option to claim privacy at any time that we choose. This allows us to exit any scene or transaction that is burdensome, whenever, without having to give a reason.
While in the space defined by the co-housing community, the experience of being with someone who is having a discharge session would not be an exception. It seems to me that the number of people around, all of whom are curious about and interested in the healing power of discharge, would allow folks to choose to be counselor to someone only when they are energized for it.
The logistics of the co-housing layouts must support options to privacies and peer circle assemblies by having spaces in the common building(s) that are "adult only" "children only" and the like, so that people can claim types of privacy or assembly behind a designated and defended door.
Clearly, with a group of people who are supporting each other in keeping these rules, overt violence to one another will be interrupted and dispelled.
But applied human rights also interrupts the little invisible oppressions and dependencies. This isn't just good for the person who is being subject. When oppressive transactions are interrupted, the person who feels compelled to pass their pattern has a sudden access to their feelings, which will lead to discharge. So, interrupting the subtle oppression by departing when uncomfortable has healing effect for both parties. We redefine what it is to "love somebody", and it isn't enabling their patterns by giving up space to them.
Basic human rights are understood to be a system of immunity to abuses of power by government. But these same basic human rights when applied on a personal scale also form a system of immunity for interpersonal abuses of power. Fascism can exist on very small scales, and wear masks of shining familial virtue, such as "sacrifice = love." The human rights standard cuts through the image of virtue to the truth, in a simple and objective way.
These human right rules with the logistic options of the co-housing complex add up to a very big change from the standard nuclear family household rules and situations.
I think the entire setting of new conditions in itself will offer a continuing and profound contradiction to patterns, which will create wonderful opportunities to discharge. It is my hunch that it will be so powerful to do this change work directly in the context of the home and family, that all a counselor will have to do is stand back and get out of the way when somebody's deep control pattern has been pulled. Or maybe just hold them.
Which takes us to the third paragraph which is on the back of every "Present Time." "Any... person would recover from such distress spontaneously by use of the natural process of emotional discharge..." because ultimately all we would require of ourselves as counselors to each other is to not interfere. For this, we don't need extensive ingenuity and to always maintain an image of shining love. We can be cranky, if we feel like it.
I am very interested in experimenting with this applied human rights concept. My partner and I live on a 20-acre piece that could be used for summer-camp practice. I have somewhat of a dilemma in inviting participants, in that people need basic understanding of the nature of healthy human identity vs the inhuman patterns, and the basic biologically endowed function of discharge for continual healing and health. They need to be versed in Liberation Theory to really benefit from the proposed arrangement.
But since this experiment in co-housing is definitely social in nature, if I understand this all correctly, you who have had RC training cannot respond to my invitation and remain in good standing in RC. That was reiterated very clearly in the last issue of "Present Time". Nonetheless, I present my idea and my conundrum.
I have great respect for the no-socializing rule. I understand its value, in the context of setting the goal to create a network of good counselors and sustain very clean co-counseling relationships. I think the no-socializing rule is especially necessary to protect the most effective counselors, because otherwise people become addicted to their attention and the relationship becomes very one sided and unpleasant.
But it seems to me that when we shift the responsibility for change onto the client and remove it from the counselor, as I believe the applied human rights set up will allow us to do while still getting good results, we enter into a whole new ball game. And new games imply new rules.
It seems to me that this shift of responsibility for the healing process is part of acknowledging that people are finally functional and capable healers of themselves, that our frozen need for that fabulous shoulder will finally be met.
I realize I am speaking something like heresy. Can anybody talk to me about this?
In the long term, I expect to create something that has enough momentum that when anybody was plugged into it, it would create healing change. But I don't think that "just anybody" can make it work at this point. I think that in this developmental stage having intentional and capable participants is essential.
I don't think that great counselors is what we need for this experiment. Actually I would rather not have great counselors. I would much rather have good clients do this experiment with me, people who have had plenty of experience in discharge and who don't have to be convinced that it is a good thing. I am especially interested in inviting people who have already set the goal of cleaning up their own chronic patterns.
Because even if I can educate persons, outside of RC, about basic discharge healing theory, I cannot educate a person to have a goal to go all the way with it within themselves... either they have the personal goal, or they don't.
My larger goal is to create a form that is effective yet not personality dependent, and thus can be duplicated more easily. So we wouldn't be just doing this as a personal living experience, we would be looking towards setting the next step in a way of global change.
Please give this article space in Present Time. Please allow a dissenting voice to be heard, I need to learn from many voices, and I cannot learn by being excluded because I have a different idea. We might all benefit from my new idea, even though it is exact opposite from what we have all accepted to be true.
Sincerely,
(me)
written but not sent, 12-13-94
