I really like this distinction. Thank you for writing this up.
A few related thoughts/claims:
There’s a reason “clinging” seems like a fitting metaphor. I’m guessing it’s related to something very primal — e.g., you’re hungry and holding a piece of food, but something or someone is trying to snatch it away from you.
This inner clinging is an attempt to hold onto a way of being in defiance of reality. It’s an embodied distrust of truth.
Ergo it makes sense to do only when the being in question believes that letting in truth (i.e., generalized updating) is dangerous. This shows up for kids who are…
(a) …dealing with others (adults) who are doing this inner clinging and yet…
(b) …themselves lacking a more skillful alternative to navigating others’ violence-backed demands.
Because lies are contagious in the mind, this tends to encourage the inner spread of use of clinging. Eventually the child learns to live in a hypo-psychotic delusion that’s compatible with the adults’.
Hence transgenerational trauma.
From a mind design point of view, I think it makes tremendous sense to relinquish all clinging in tandem with learning skillful non-clinging-based ways of navigating others’ violence-backed demands. My guess is, the primal psyche (very loosely speaking, “System 1”) will actively fight relinquishing clinging unless and until it feels the novel safety of doing so.
I think it’s reasonable to view the Sequences as having been an attempt to offer a cognitive alternative to clinging. Hence e.g. the Litany of Gendlin.
I really like this distinction. Thank you for writing this up.
A few related thoughts/claims:
There’s a reason “clinging” seems like a fitting metaphor. I’m guessing it’s related to something very primal — e.g., you’re hungry and holding a piece of food, but something or someone is trying to snatch it away from you.
This inner clinging is an attempt to hold onto a way of being in defiance of reality. It’s an embodied distrust of truth.
Ergo it makes sense to do only when the being in question believes that letting in truth (i.e., generalized updating) is dangerous. This shows up for kids who are…
(a) …dealing with others (adults) who are doing this inner clinging and yet…
(b) …themselves lacking a more skillful alternative to navigating others’ violence-backed demands.
Because lies are contagious in the mind, this tends to encourage the inner spread of use of clinging. Eventually the child learns to live in a hypo-psychotic delusion that’s compatible with the adults’.
Hence transgenerational trauma.
From a mind design point of view, I think it makes tremendous sense to relinquish all clinging in tandem with learning skillful non-clinging-based ways of navigating others’ violence-backed demands. My guess is, the primal psyche (very loosely speaking, “System 1”) will actively fight relinquishing clinging unless and until it feels the novel safety of doing so.
I think it’s reasonable to view the Sequences as having been an attempt to offer a cognitive alternative to clinging. Hence e.g. the Litany of Gendlin.
This was my experience, particularly with the vision of emotions and logic working together to form something stronger than either.