Interesting; thanks. I have the same sort of initial reaction to this as before: I don’t know how I would go about “passing the voicebox” to my usually-voiceless internal monkeys, and suspect that in fact there is no connection between them and the voicebox (which is why they are usually voiceless), and more to the point it’s not clear to me how to relay what either monkey has to say to the other monkey. Still, if the technique has been found to work then presumably either my initial reaction is wrong (a shocking concept, to be sure) or else there’s some other way for the dialogue to be helpful (e.g., maybe it turns out that the rider / King Louie is more important than the usual metaphors suggest, and negotiating between different bits/aspects of that is useful sometimes).
If that’s the sort of thing Unreal had in mind, then I think I misunderstood the metaphor; to me focusing (as I understand it) isn’t a thing I’d call “passing the voicebox”, but something more like “inferring what they would want to say if there were a way to give them the voicebox”. And, as I said, while I have no trouble with the idea that it’s possible to infer a fair bit about what the monkeys / elephant / System 1 pieces want (note: I am not trying to imply that all of those are equivalent descriptions; just acknowledging that reality probably doesn’t exactly match any of our metaphors), from what I’ve heard so far I’m not seeing how the actual monkeys / elephant / sys1 bits, as opposed to models of them, get involved directly in the dialogue; the technique sounds a bit like holding a mock debate between people trying to represent Israel and Palestine and expecting it to reduce tensions in the Middle East.
(Unreal’s own suggestion of improv comedy seems more likely to give monkeys the voicebox, in the sense of finding ways for their wants, preferences, beliefs, etc., to find a path to influencing what one does. But how you incorporate that into anything that could be called a dialogue and allow for relatively sophisticated logical reasoning like double-cruxing, I still have no inkling.)
To be clear, I’m not saying “this technique probably doesn’t really work”. I’m saying that nothing I’ve heard about it so far enables me to understand how it could, which I suspect means that nothing I’ve heard about it so far is giving me enough description of what it actually is to make sense of it.
I’m confused by your understanding of Focusing. How familiar are you with it in practice?
Or I’m confused about what you’re calling a ‘model of a monkey’.
I can check with the monkey whether my felt sense label is correct. That’s the whole deal of Focusing. The more correct my label is, the more I get a feeling of ‘ahh yes that’ vs ‘ehhh’.
And when I get better at it, I can reach the point where my monkey offers its own labels. Which feels different from when my rider offers labels.
AND, furthermore, I can actually pass my monkey the voicebox. It’s called ‘blending’ in IFS and is actually a common occurrence in humans. When you’re really, really mad, you are blended with a monkey and are speaking from it.
Or when I’m really, really scared, my body will start shaking, and I’ll start repeating the same phrase over and over, “I don’t want to die.” This is also an example of the monkey having the voicebox.
The improv thing is another version, but you’re not necessarily blended with an emotional part.
Double cruxing is hardly sophisticated logical reasoning. It can be more like, “What are you afraid of?” “No rest.” “OK, and what are you afraid of?” “Future pain.” “What is the other one missing?” [sends a felt sense that is what ‘no rest’ feels like accompanied by an inner simulation] The image depicts a specific scenario. Other side [passes a different image that contains a potential alternative] Etc. Etc.
I am not familiar with focusing in practice, and it would be extremely unsurprising if my understanding of it were wrong, and extremely surprising if my understanding of it were not incomplete.
When I called double-cruxing “relatively sophisticated”, the word “relatively” was there precisely because of course it isn’t sophisticated by comparison with, say, proving difficult mathematical theorems—but it seems like it does involve explicit reasoning of the sort that Elephants are not generally supposed to be good at. What you describe seems (though of course this may just be misunderstanding on my part) to be missing something that’s an essential part of double cruxing as distinguished from other forms of dialogue, namely the search for something that if wrong would change your position on the original issue. Are your monkeys sophisticated enough to identify what things have that property?
So does IDC depend on having achieved a certain degree of skill in focusing and IFS? Or does it have its own way of giving voice to (and passing information to) the relevant internal subsystems?
Anyway, let’s return to the original elephant/rider problem we were discussing, which when it happens to me presents to me in these terms: “I” (meaning, so far as is immediately apparent to me, all the bits of me that are consciously present and capable of language; that is, roughly, my Rider) want to go to bed and get some damn sleep for a change, but despite my (apparently, superficially) forming the intention to stand up, turn off the computer, and go to bed, this fails to happen because some other bits of me (roughly, so it would seem, my Elephant) have other preferences. That seems to match well with how you described it.
The IFS model seems to be somewhat different from the rider/elephant model, with a bunch of different subselves that are (in some contexts at least) capable of speech and reasoning and so forth, which seems to make them non-Elephantine. But maybe I’m misunderstanding, and the idea is that they are parts of the Elephant that can, in the right circumstances, steer the rider around and influence its speech and reasoning and whatnot?
A description of what you actually do in the situation you describe where “you” want to go to bed but it Just Doesn’t Happen would, I think, be both interesting and illuminating.
Inferring what the monkeys would want to say is not Focusing. The step of Focusing where you check for fit is directly checking with a monkey. I agree that it’s not at all clear how to explain how to do this to somebody who doesn’t know how.
Interesting; thanks. I have the same sort of initial reaction to this as before: I don’t know how I would go about “passing the voicebox” to my usually-voiceless internal monkeys, and suspect that in fact there is no connection between them and the voicebox (which is why they are usually voiceless), and more to the point it’s not clear to me how to relay what either monkey has to say to the other monkey. Still, if the technique has been found to work then presumably either my initial reaction is wrong (a shocking concept, to be sure) or else there’s some other way for the dialogue to be helpful (e.g., maybe it turns out that the rider / King Louie is more important than the usual metaphors suggest, and negotiating between different bits/aspects of that is useful sometimes).
Improv comedy often tries to give monkeys the voicebox more directly. If you’ve tried that ever.
This is what Focusing is for.
If that’s the sort of thing Unreal had in mind, then I think I misunderstood the metaphor; to me focusing (as I understand it) isn’t a thing I’d call “passing the voicebox”, but something more like “inferring what they would want to say if there were a way to give them the voicebox”. And, as I said, while I have no trouble with the idea that it’s possible to infer a fair bit about what the monkeys / elephant / System 1 pieces want (note: I am not trying to imply that all of those are equivalent descriptions; just acknowledging that reality probably doesn’t exactly match any of our metaphors), from what I’ve heard so far I’m not seeing how the actual monkeys / elephant / sys1 bits, as opposed to models of them, get involved directly in the dialogue; the technique sounds a bit like holding a mock debate between people trying to represent Israel and Palestine and expecting it to reduce tensions in the Middle East.
(Unreal’s own suggestion of improv comedy seems more likely to give monkeys the voicebox, in the sense of finding ways for their wants, preferences, beliefs, etc., to find a path to influencing what one does. But how you incorporate that into anything that could be called a dialogue and allow for relatively sophisticated logical reasoning like double-cruxing, I still have no inkling.)
To be clear, I’m not saying “this technique probably doesn’t really work”. I’m saying that nothing I’ve heard about it so far enables me to understand how it could, which I suspect means that nothing I’ve heard about it so far is giving me enough description of what it actually is to make sense of it.
I’m confused by your understanding of Focusing. How familiar are you with it in practice?
Or I’m confused about what you’re calling a ‘model of a monkey’.
I can check with the monkey whether my felt sense label is correct. That’s the whole deal of Focusing. The more correct my label is, the more I get a feeling of ‘ahh yes that’ vs ‘ehhh’.
And when I get better at it, I can reach the point where my monkey offers its own labels. Which feels different from when my rider offers labels.
AND, furthermore, I can actually pass my monkey the voicebox. It’s called ‘blending’ in IFS and is actually a common occurrence in humans. When you’re really, really mad, you are blended with a monkey and are speaking from it.
Or when I’m really, really scared, my body will start shaking, and I’ll start repeating the same phrase over and over, “I don’t want to die.” This is also an example of the monkey having the voicebox.
The improv thing is another version, but you’re not necessarily blended with an emotional part.
Double cruxing is hardly sophisticated logical reasoning. It can be more like, “What are you afraid of?” “No rest.” “OK, and what are you afraid of?” “Future pain.” “What is the other one missing?” [sends a felt sense that is what ‘no rest’ feels like accompanied by an inner simulation] The image depicts a specific scenario. Other side [passes a different image that contains a potential alternative] Etc. Etc.
I am not familiar with focusing in practice, and it would be extremely unsurprising if my understanding of it were wrong, and extremely surprising if my understanding of it were not incomplete.
When I called double-cruxing “relatively sophisticated”, the word “relatively” was there precisely because of course it isn’t sophisticated by comparison with, say, proving difficult mathematical theorems—but it seems like it does involve explicit reasoning of the sort that Elephants are not generally supposed to be good at. What you describe seems (though of course this may just be misunderstanding on my part) to be missing something that’s an essential part of double cruxing as distinguished from other forms of dialogue, namely the search for something that if wrong would change your position on the original issue. Are your monkeys sophisticated enough to identify what things have that property?
So does IDC depend on having achieved a certain degree of skill in focusing and IFS? Or does it have its own way of giving voice to (and passing information to) the relevant internal subsystems?
Anyway, let’s return to the original elephant/rider problem we were discussing, which when it happens to me presents to me in these terms: “I” (meaning, so far as is immediately apparent to me, all the bits of me that are consciously present and capable of language; that is, roughly, my Rider) want to go to bed and get some damn sleep for a change, but despite my (apparently, superficially) forming the intention to stand up, turn off the computer, and go to bed, this fails to happen because some other bits of me (roughly, so it would seem, my Elephant) have other preferences. That seems to match well with how you described it.
The IFS model seems to be somewhat different from the rider/elephant model, with a bunch of different subselves that are (in some contexts at least) capable of speech and reasoning and so forth, which seems to make them non-Elephantine. But maybe I’m misunderstanding, and the idea is that they are parts of the Elephant that can, in the right circumstances, steer the rider around and influence its speech and reasoning and whatnot?
A description of what you actually do in the situation you describe where “you” want to go to bed but it Just Doesn’t Happen would, I think, be both interesting and illuminating.
Inferring what the monkeys would want to say is not Focusing. The step of Focusing where you check for fit is directly checking with a monkey. I agree that it’s not at all clear how to explain how to do this to somebody who doesn’t know how.