This is an introduction to seminars designed for self-study. Each session or
envelope contains a story or direction for an exercise with the material of
the story. You, the participant in this seminar, encounter the story or do the
exercise, and then respond to one or more question(s) on this web site. The
response can be in writing or any other form of expression, and can be telephoned
or sent by e-mail or post to: response@storiesandquestions.com.
Rudy will then send you the next session (e-mail) or envelope (paper) of the
self-study seminar. The method is adapted for self-study from group workshops
using different stories and questions.
If you were using this material at a group workshop or seminar, you would
be sitting in a circle. Each person in the circle would hear from a facilitator
what is on the web site as Session I, or what is in envelope I in the paper
version - a short story, and then a question to which each member of the circle
responds. It is not a discussion group, and there is not a consensus to be reached.
Rather, each response is respected as that person's truth at that particular
time and place. In such a workshop, there would be a long break after the discussion
of the material in Session I. That break might even take the form of lunch,
a nap, a walk in the woods, and/or a swim. More thoughts about the story, and
additional responses to the questions occur, and those might be written in a
journal or one's workshop notes.
In a group seminar using this material, the facilitator would have warned
participants NOT to identify with any of the characters in the story. That is
important and it applies as well to the self-study.
The seminar participant encounters the story as if the participant were seeing
it on a stage. The participant is not on the stage with the story characters.
The participant is in the audience watching the actions of all the characters,
being privy to the knowledge, habits, and actions of all the characters at that
point in the story.
In the language of psychology, the participant brings one's ego to the story,
one's own awareness, rather than identifying with, taking the part of, one or
the other character in the story. The more cross-cultural the story is - for
example, all cultures are likely to have creation stories, and stories about
the origin of science - the more universally valid or typical do those characters
seem, and the easier it is for the hearer of the story to say, "Hey, that
character IS me,and that is MY story." Try NOT to do that.
The comparison of story with stage is quite apt because as action on stage involves
feelings and emotions of onlookers, so encounter with story can activate an
individual participant's inner knowledge and experience analogous to the story
character(s)' knowledge and experience. That can happen whether or not the participant
had previously been aware of any feeling or actions corresponding to those of
one or more characters in the story. A shorthand phrase for such activation
is that one or another of those story characters is constellated in a participant
by the participant's work with story and questions.
Another way of saying this is that no one character in the story is or describes
the whole of me, but it often describes a part of me. I may not have been aware
of that part of me prior to my work with that story.
If you encountered this material in a group workshop, the facilitator would
ask one or more questions after each story. Responses to the question are addressed
not to the facilitator, and not to other members of the group but to the center
of the circle. The story is "myth," a technical term that has been
defined by Joseph Campbell as something that happened and continues to happen
to many people at many times and places, in
contrast to history which happened at one time and place to one person or a
group of persons (and, a scientist would add, in contrast to science which is
something that happens and is replicable under specified conditions). As a myth,
the story is considered to bubble out of the center of the group circle rather
than from the facilitator. Similarly, the question asked is considered to be
coming from the center of the circle, and therefore responses are addressed
to the center of the circle rather than to a person at the perimeter of the
circle or to the facilitator. That should minimize any onus on, or defensiveness
by, a respondent about one's response. Similarly, others in the circle are expected
to respect any response since it is addressed to the center and not to them.
Responses are not to be discussed or argued with, particularly not by the facilitator.
A discussion circle consists of center and perimeter. Without participation
from the perimeter, in the form of responses to questions, the circle and therefore
the seminar would not exist. It is important for each participant to hear oneself
verbalize a response, even if that
response sounds similar to one that has already been given.
The questions are designed to evoke choice and feelings rather than to test
knowledge or recall. Reasons for, or explanations of, choices may be asked for.
Respondents will be asked to stick to the subject matter of a question because
one of the easiest ways of escaping a choice or a feeling is to talk about something
else. Similarly, the question asked at a session is about the story told in
that particular session, not about the end of the story or about another story.
Each question is a universe of discourse, embedded in the universe of discourse
of the story of that particular session. (By definition, a universe of discourse
is a separate world surrounded by an impermeable barrier.) A participant is
free to state different choices, feelings, and opinions at any time Such changes
are seen as fresh insights rather than as error or shame for earlier choice.
Of course you have heard that story before. It is part of our cultural heritage.
It is a myth. It is universal truth. You and I have that story in our bones.
But in the group workshop I am not listening to, and in the self-study I am
not reading, that story to find out how it ends, "who done it," or
what the facts are. I am called on to take a stand vis-a-vis that story at this
particular moment. I am listening to it, or reading it, to see whether I still
have the same answers to questions evoked by the story or to see whether the
story evokes new questions.
Bruno Bettelheim has noted that a fairy tale asked for most frequently by a
child most likely describes what that child feels to be its most vital problem
at that stage of its life. (For example, the Grimm Brothers' fairy tale that
gripped my emotions for many decades was "The Goose Girl." Like that
protagonist, I also lost home, country, and native tongue as a pre-pubescent.)
Ritual has been described as a process of activating a myth. In that sense repeated
exposure to a story - by rereading it, by noting whether responses to story
and questions change, and by asking new questions about it - can reconstellate
powerful, often numinous, characters within myself.
You are not at a group workshop now, so you have an opportunity to create your
own pace and place. Find a private space and time for 45 minutes, turn off the
telephone, put out the cat, and open one of the stories. Read the story, consider
it, and respond to the question(s) in writing or other art form. Send your response
to: response@storiesandquestions.com.
Stay with the story for a day or more--preferably a week. Look at the story,
questions, and your responses occasionally, and write down any additional thoughts.
Note any additional insights.
Your response will be acknowledged and the next Session will be sent to you.
Repeat the process with the next Session. Continue in that manner until the
final Session.
Because this kind of work is an ongoing process and new insights keep popping
up, it is well to keep the Session materials, your responses, and the facilitator's
comments in a notebook. You will find that collection a growing resource as
new insights arise. You will also find that it becomes a valued friend and adviser
in dark times
Ten stories are available as Sequenced Self-Studies at this time. They are:
Cracked Pot
Moses Mendelssohn's Dream
Chuang Tsu
Rainmaker
Becket
Daedalus-Icarus
Helius-Phaeton
Faust-Mephisto
Prometheus-Zeus
Metis-Zeus
Any of those Sequenced Self-Studies is worth doing in its own right in the same
way that one goes to a movie or takes a trip for adventure, enjoyment, or enrichment.
Just as movies or trips also may be taken with specific purposes in mind, such
as information or education, these stories can be used for specific purposes
as well as in their own right. For example, Cracked
Pot, Chuang Tsu, and Moses
Mendelssohn's Dream have been used for working with self-worth problems.
My experience is that many ethics violations originate from, or are exacerbated
by, lack of self-worth. The more secure and realistic people are in their own
sense of self-worth, the less need they will have to cut corners to get self-worth
from outside themselves. Rainmaker has been useful
for conflict resolution in highly polarized situations. Becket
is a good practicum for finding moral advisers in hierarchically structured
organizations. Both Rainmaker and Becket
are excellent self-studies for ethics applications.
Daedalus-Icarus, Helius-Phaeton,
Faust-Mephisto, Prometheus-Zeus,
and Metis-Zeus are self standing; together they
form a sequence of the development of individuals from youth to maturity, from
puer or puella to androgeny. The stories are taken from Greek mythology with
one exception; all five deal with the foundations of Western civilization. Because
Western civilization now is science- and technology-based, this sequence also
shows five stages of ethical development of science and scientists in that civilization.
On the following pages you will find the first Session of each of the available
selfstudies. Choose one, follow the instructions, and send your response to:
response@storiesandquestions.com.
Rudy will then comment on your response and activate the next session of your
self-study.
Seminars have been approved by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences as home study courses for continuing education in scientific ethics. For continuing education credit, please click here to pay via pay pal (credit card) or send a check for $85 and you will receive a certificate for 8 CEU (California MFT and LCSW) after a seminar is completed. Provider #: PCE 2494.