Submitted by Brent Sheridan on Tue, 25 Oct 2011, 6:10pm
In Accelerated Evolution's work, we are constantly having conversations with people about how they make sense of their work, themselves in their workplace, and their lives. One of the things that we are continually discovering is wonderfully described in this video. It sets out a way of understanding how the hardwiring of our brains contributes to these organisational worlds that we have created.
The two hemispheres of the human brain do have specialised functions and capabilities, but not the ones that are generally put forward; not right = emotion vs left = reason, but left = 'attention to the known and expected', and right = 'sensing of evolving, changing, living immediate reality'; left = a perfectly constructed understanding versus right = an emergent and innovative experience.
The premise put forward in this video is that Western thought began with a balanced view, but that over centuries, the dominance of the left hemisphere has become increasingly greater, at great cost to ourselves. There is a paradoxical relationship between the left and right hemispheric versions of existance, a fragmented model that we have constructed versus a holistic experience that we cannot easily describe. However paradoxical the relationship, the integration of both is required if we are to function at anywhere near our full potential, either in our society, or in our organisations.
(Mis)quoting Einstein, "The intuitive mind is a great gift, the rational mind is a faithful servent." We have created a world where we valorise the servent and have imprisoned the gift.
Organisational life is a fecund field for this sort of split thinking. Mostly, it seems that the sensing, pattern-seeking capabilities of our right hemispheres are assumed to be less reliable or valuable than the model creating and assessing capabilities of our left, again at great cost.
Accelerated Evolution's work is often about helping people who have been trained to think with just one half of their brains. We help people to unlearn some of this training, so they can begin to access all of their brain not just half, and thereby move towards their capability.
Comments
McGilchrist and Gestalt
by Malcolm Parlett - 29.10.2011 - 6:51pm
I think this small film is a wonderful brief presentation of McGilchrist's landmark book which runs to about 700 pages if I remember it right. The book (The Master and His Emissary, 2010) is a stunning piece of scholarship by a working neurological psychiatrist who also has taught literature at Oxford University (an astonishing cross-over in itself -- he is also a Fellow of All Souls, [an academic Everest]); and his book is based on a mass of painstaking research: he has combed through literally hundreds of neurological and psychological research studies into brain functioning, which has been an explosive area of inquiry for 40 years.
As a gestalt practitioner and theorist, my huge enthusiasm for McGilchrist's work (and yours too, I imagine, Brent) comes in part from its vindicating core principles of the gestalt approach in ways that confirm that gestalt has been away ahead of its time from its foundation onwards, in resisting the advance of the left hemisphere bias.
Gestalt has been counter-cultural at a deep rather than superficial level by upholding the necessity for intuitive, non-rational, non-verbal, bodily felt "data" to be given high priority -- that they are not minor frills in a person's experience, but deeply informative -- and to be taken seriously, not shunted off as "merely subjective". Gestalt's focus on aesthetics, good form, gestalt qualities, and holistic perception, is to underline the role of the right hemisphere functions, which we need to call upon to understand the world.
Gestalt practitioners are taught to be more embodied, and to use their senses, and not to rely on explanations and models alone, but to take big pictures and "feelings and what the heart says" into account.
In my terms (Parlett 2000) the core human capabilities that gestalt practitioners seek to foster and support (in trainees, therapy clients, managers, teachers, board members, organizations etc.) are all ones that draw upon both hemispheres' specialist activities.
Thus, in INTERRELATING, the content of utterances and interest in the precise use of language has to be supplemented with a sensitivity to the relational field, and an appreciation of the wider context in which the encounter or dialogue is taking place.
In EMBODYING, the exploration of feelings, emotional states, bodily sensations is not a "thinking about" process -- it has to be fully "entered into" as a non-rational expedition into the unknown, although the naming of the felt sense (as Gendlin describes) is critical too, as a means of focusing and integrating the experience.
In SELF-RECOGNIZING, we can learn as much about "what is going on for us (or our organization) " from drawing (with the left hand), or by role-playing, or changing our bodily position or voice, as from thinking out loud or staring at performance data; we need conditions favourable to reflection (like silence and protection from interruptions), to "re-discover" such things as basic purpose, to see the big picture as opposed to just the numerous small items that occupy us at most times.
In RESPONDING TO THE SITUATION, people can learn to become more "whole field sensitive", to appreciate the singularity of every situation and what "each unique situation requires" instead of relying so much on generalized principles, codes, and abstract models, flow diagrams, etc.. They can "take responsibility back" and rely less on fixed procedures and system demands that are applied automatically and easily become fixed introjects.
In EXPERIMENTING, there can be active encouragement of creative, playful, visionary, "outside the box" thinking and imagining, which can be added into the mix of approaches used, and valued alongside the usual modes of analysis and control. Trying things out, and moving into "strange" territory requires an appreciation of support as "that which enables" -- support as creating field conditions that release people and groups to enter into territory in which the usual dynamics of shame reactions (embarrassment, fear of making a fool of oneself) can be suspended or reduced.
In cultivating each ability, there are compensations for the ever-increasing emphases on "hard" evidence, rigid criteria. excessive monitoring, and over- reliance on fixed models and protocols -- all hallmarks of what McGilchrist identifies as the dominant left-hemisphere mode of looking at the world and how it can be managed. In my view, McGilchrist's book is a powerful reinforcement of gestalt's core values and principles. And this short movie is a brilliant summary. Thank you, Brent.
gestalt's prescience and relevance
by brent sheridan - 30.10.2011 - 2:17pm
Malcolm – thank you for your great contribution. You have summarised and expressed so many parts of what I have been feeling, but not anywhere near to articulating. V helpful and your comments will be food for some chewing and hopefully slow and rich digestion!