KIDS DON'T MISBEHAVE

1. It is always positive.
2. It is always gentle.
3. It is always kind and firm.
4. It is always affirming.
5. It is always solution oriented.
6. It is always directed toward learning a new lesson.
7. It is always discovery oriented.
8. It is always expressed in low, slow, soft, and easy communication style. Positive discipline is always positive.

It is a replacement for after-the-fact punishment.
(40 pages, references)

We are the walking wounded. All the disappointments, hurts, and losses throughout our lives that went ungrieved and unacknowledged are wounds. Each unhealed wound keeps us from ourselves, keeps us from feeling our emotions folly, and pushes us farther down the road to emptiness, aloneness, and addictive behaviors (Steven Farmer).

The trauma of premature separation from mother's all-loving cocoon of safety becomes a "Paradise Lost" for boys.... It becomes a shame-based hardening process.... through which boys are shamed into suppressing their empathic and vulnerable sides. It begins as early as the first months of a little boy's life as a narrowing of emotional expressiveness and then continues [throughout the boy's life] right through manhood. It is a lifelong process (William Pollack).

The "father wound" is deep and lasting. [Blockage] of the desperate drive for contact and closeness with the father results in a bottomless fury that manifests destructively in work and family life (Ronald Levant).

350 page book with 400 references)

(click image to order book)

Empathy has been defined as the: “ability share in another’s emotions, thoughts, or feelings.” Empathy has been equated with emotional intelligence and may be more important than IQ. Carl Rogers popularized the concept in his non-directive therapy and stated that empathy was an ability to: “perceive the internal frame of reference of another with accuracy and with the emotional components and meaning which pertain thereto as an ability if one were the person.” Carl Rogers launched the original interest in empathic therapy that was prominent during the 1960s and early 1970s. During this time there was a great deal of research activity regarding Carl Rogers' hypothesis that three therapeutic conditions—unconditional positive regard, empathy, and genuineness—were necessary and sufficient causes for therapeutic change. A manual of 15 pages.

POSSIBILITIES OF HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS

From every quarter there is the competing and antithetical posturing of ideas and therefore the competing and antithetical posturing of the people who hold those ideas. Is there no template, paradigm, or formula that will enable competitors to spend more energy seeking a ground of commonality?

This study is an attempt to draw a sampling from the writers who have sought to find the bridges for the seeming antithetical ideas, stances, and positions. Analytical thinking can always find a hair to split and another hair (split or not) to place in bold juxtaposition or opposition. The legitimate aims of science serve the analytical process well. However, when every hair has been split all the splits still exist and find their relevance within the unified field. It is the field that gives each part it's meaning. The need for solutions to human problems requires a greater effort in finding synthesis among ideas and positions that will more fruitfully lead to a unifying consensus.
 (71 pages)

AFFECT THERAPY THEORY “Despite our view of ourselves as thinking beings, cognition is but a frail craft floating on a sea of emotion.” Donald Nathanson. “The problem in therapy is always how to move from an ineffectual intellectual appreciation of a truth about oneself to some emotional experience if it. It is only when therapy enlists deep emotions that it becomes a powerful force for change.” Yalom, I. “The aim of every moment in every session is to put the patient in touch with as much of his true feelings as he can bear.” Malan, D. “Therapy” is derived from the Greek therapia. It carries the idea of healing, wholeness, or health. Healing what? Affect Therapy Theory presumes that humans are organismically or physiologically based. Whatever is going on with a person is rooted in the physiology in the body, in the emotions of the person. In the development of individuals numerous transitional phases or hurdles must be traversed. Most did not negotiate those stages artfully, and the result is developmental stage specific wounds. Healing life’s wounds is the potential and promise of all relationships.
15 pages