The Process of Viewing

In JOM Article 6, "How to Help a Being", we stated that one could help a being in three fundamental ways:

Viewing
Training
Externship

In future articles, we will be discussing training and externship, but since viewing has the more complex set of rules and procedures, we will be spending more time on the topic of viewing.

The basic action of viewing is that of getting the viewer to examine his world in such a way as to undo repression. So:

Viewing is the action of a being systematically examining his world in such a way as to gain insight and ability by undoing repression.

The focus of viewing is on gaining, or regaining, an ability to be aware, i.e. a receptive ability, or "receptivity" (i.e. an ability to receive data and to know) that was lost or prevented because of repression. Because of the close relationship between receptivities and activities (abilities to act, to cause effects), having a new receptivity often enables one or more new activities for the being. If, for instance, a person obtains genuine insight into the nature and origin of his fear of communicating, this fear disappears, and he is then able to communicate. So the net effect of viewing is a general gaining, or regaining, of awareness and ability.

The basic viewing process is as follows:

The facilitator gives a command or question to the viewer.
The viewer carries out the command or answers the question.
The facilitator acknowledges the execution of the command or the answer to the question.

For instance, in a "recall" procedure, the facilitator may give the command, "Recall a time when you were happy." The viewer does so, then informs the facilitator, "OK. I was happy on my twelfth birthday," or just "OK". Obviously, if compliance to the command (as in a command to do something subjectively) is not visible to the facilitator, the viewer will have to inform the facilitator that it is done. The facilitator then acknowledges the execution of the command. That completes one viewing process. The facilitator then gives the next command, and the session proceeds in that manner until the the viewer has obtained a favorable result from the procedure. For instance, the viewer may be happier, may have some insight or other, or may feel more able. The phenomena that appear at the completion point of a procedure together make up the "end point" of the procedure, defined as follows:

The end point (EP) of a process is the point at which a process is complete, as evidenced by the appearance of a distinctive set of phenomena.

So the EP of baking a cake is when you stick a fork or a knife into the cake and it comes out dry, or when the cake is a nice brown color. The EP of fixing a car is the car operating normally. The EP of eating is a full stomach or the disappearance of hunger. The EP of any process manifests those phenomena that indicate it is time to stop doing that procedure and start doing something else.

The concept of an "EP" is not commonly found in religious or psychotherapeutic literature, but it is a very useful and sensible one. The basic idea is that everything you do is a process and, as such, has a proper beginning point, continuation period, and end point. It is just as useful to know when to end a procedure or action as to know when to begin one or to continue one; failing to end something at the appropriate time usually has unwanted consequences. For instance, if a person doesn't know when he has had enough to drink, he can become quite incapacitated or (if driving) can wreak havoc. If you exceed the attention span of someone to whom you are talking, you can waste your time. If you do not know when to stop spending money, you can become impoverished. The same is true in a helping procedure. Continuing past the EP results in almost immediate protest on the part of the viewer, in an acute feeling of boredom, and often in a shift of attention to an entirely different area of the viewer's world that usually has little to do with the procedure you are running. Such an incorrect continuation is called an "overrun":

An overrun is the continuation of a process past its proper end point.

So, in order to avoid such untoward effects, it is very important to recognize an EP when you see one.

For this reason, the "Fifty-Minute Hour" generally used in psychotherapeutic sessions is not workable as a time-frame for a viewing session. The EP of a viewing procedure or set of procedures may be obtained in 10 or 20 minutes, or it may take two or three hours to obtain. So session times must be flexible. If one has not obtained a full EP for a procedure, one may, if time is limited or if the viewer is getting tired, be able to find a relatively decent ending point (say, when the viewer hasn't yet attained the EP but is feeling comfortable) and then complete the action fully in the next session. This approach is workable but less desirable than completing an entire procedure or set of procedures in one session, because the viewer, even if he feels comfortable at end of session, may find his attention somewhat fixed on the area being handled until the full EP is reached.

The EP of a procedure at least includes a relatively happy or content viewer. You can be pretty certain that when the viewer is heavily embroiled in some misemotion (negative emotion) or other heavy uncomfortable feelings, it is not a good time to end the procedure you are doing. The nature of the EP varies from one type of procedure to another. As mentioned in JOM Article 8, when handling disturbances (problems or upsets on which the viewer has his attention fixed), the aim is only to unfixate the viewer's attention from these upsets, problems, secrets, etc., so that the attention can go elsewhere. Therefore the EP of handling a disturbance is simply that the person feels better and can take his attention off the area for the time being. In contrast, the EP of a major communication procedure would include a major cognition (or insight), a high level on the emotional scale (enthusiasm or exhilaration), and an ability gained or regained.

Apart from a knowledge of the various metapsychological procedures, a facilitator must have a means of deciding:

Which procedures to use, and in which order.
To what part of the viewer's world these procedures should be applied.

The facilitator must know which tools to use and where to use them. Just as a screwdriver may screw or unscrew any number of different screws, so a metapsychological procedure may be applied to different areas of the viewer's world. Deciding which procedures to use and in which order is the activity known as "case planning". Case planning is done before the session; the facilitator always has a written agenda, based on a plan, when he starts a session, as mentioned in JOM Article 8 "The Viewing Session". More will be said about case planning in later articles, but we offer a definition here:

Case planning is the action of deciding which procedures should be used with a viewer and the order in which they should be done. Case planning is done before starting a session.

Deciding which area of the viewer's world to apply a procedure to is called "assessing":

Assessing is the action of finding areas of the viewer's life to which one or more procedures can fruitfully be applied. It is always done during a viewing session.

Assessing follows the general rule that, in viewing, you are getting the person to do what he is able to do in order to gain an ability to do something he hasn't been able to do (this rule also holds for training). Since viewing deals mainly with receptive abilities -- abilities to perceive and understand -- it consists mainly of getting the viewer to look at something of which he is aware in order to gain an awareness of something of which he hasn't been aware. In other words, the areas of the viewer's world that should be addressed are those of which he is not currently aware, but of which he can become aware using a certain procedure: i.e. areas that are only slightly below his level of awareness -- just below his awareness interface:

A being's awareness interface is the dividing line that separates those facts of which he is readily aware from facts that are repressed. The being can become aware of facts below the awareness interface only by using a special procedure, or not at all.

If the being is completely aware of some area of his world, he will not gain anything new from addressing that area. On the other hand, if the area is so far below his awareness that it will take an enormous amount of effort to get him to become aware of it, that is also not a fruitful area to address.

However, as a person's level of awareness increases, the awareness interface "descends", so that facts that were too far below the interface to be approachable now lie close to it and so can be addressed fruitfully. The ultimate goal of viewing is to lower the awareness interface all the way to the "bottom", so that the being can be fully aware of the entire contents of his world. Though such a state is probably not fully attainable, as a goal, it serves to give a direction to our efforts.

In order to determine what to handle, then, we must determine what lies just below the awareness interface. This determination is called assessing, so another definition of assessing is:

Assessing is the action of finding areas that lie just below the awareness interface.

To assesse is to examine and analyze various phenomena relating to a viewer in order to decide what it would be most fruitful to view at a particular time. Assessments may or may not be intermingled with viewing procedures. Perhaps the most common form of assessment in various forms of psychotherapy is an interview. By asking various questions, a skilled interviewer can reach conclusions concerning what particular issues (facts) a viewer needs to look at. There are also more formal kinds of assessment, such as psychological tests (e.g. Rorschach, TAT, MMPI). These methods have a varying degree of accuracy and are highly dependent on the skill and intuition of the assesser. One interesting form of assessment used in Hacomi therapy, is called "probing". Probing consists of asking the viewer, "What happens for you when I ... ?" and then doing a physical action (such as touching a person) or making a statement. The viewer gives his subjective response to the stimulus. This appears to be quite a sensitive method for finding charged (but accessible) areas.

Various biofeedback devices have been used in assessing, such as \*(a-wave detectors, voice stress analysers, and the polygraph, although the latter is rather too cumbersome for everyday use. The most venerable of these methods (dating from the 19th century) is the psychogalvanometer, a simple device that measures baseline skin resistance and fluctuations therefrom. We make extensive use of the psychogalvanometer, in a somewhat more modern form, for assessing and for other purposes. We will have more to say on this topic in JOM Article 10.

One of the principal signs that viewing an area will result in greater awareness is that the viewer takes an interest in the area. As we have repeatedly stated, the being has a strong attraction to an heuristic situation. He seems to "know", at some level, what will lead to more knowledge. This "knowing" shouldn't be too surprising, when we consider that, in talking about viewing, we are generally talking about areas towards which a being has a directed unawareness. As we saw in JOM Article 5, a being has to be aware of something at some level in order to know where not to look. At a subliminal level, therefore, a being "knows" what he has repressed, so he "knows" that he can become aware of something in that area. Often, then, if a facilitator has a choice of going in several directions, he can ask the viewer which interests him the most, and that will be the correct area to pursue.

Various physical indicators are useful in detecting contact with a charged area that lies close to the awareness interface. Often, the viewer will blush or flush, or smile or laugh, or show or report some other emotional response. Sometimes, the pupils will dilate when a fruitful area is contacted. Experientially, a person's attention becomes attracted to an area, or the person feels warm or slightly relieved when a correct area is contacted. If a person protests getting into an area, that is usually a good indication that the area is not going to be fruitful at this time, and it is not a good idea to forge ahead over a protest. It is never a good idea to try to force a viewer to do anything or look at anything. To try to do so creates an unsafe space, and any future progress will be severely hampered after such an attempt. Viewing must be completely nonviolent and non-forceful. By doing a correct assessment, the facilitator can always find something fruitful that the viewer will be interested in pursuing without being forced to do so.

Frank A Gerbode, M.D.
Director, IRM

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