Thursday, December 17, 2009

REFRAMING A CONCEPT

One of the tools of psychotherapy is to reframe your patient's opinion, impression, or assumption. In a sense it is helping the patient think outside the box in which they have been trapped by their thinking. George Monbiot writes a column published in The Guardian. Here is a quote which I think is a lovely example of reframing. "Humanity is no longer split between conservatives and liberals, reactionaries and progressives, though both sides are informed by the older politics. Today the battlelines are drawn between expanders and restrainers; those who believe that there should be no impediments, and those who believe that we must live within limits." For the complete article, click here.The article is titled This Is About Us. It appeared on 12/14/09.

As with 'The One Whose Name We Dare Not Speak" from Harry Potter, many do not speak of or equate uninhibited Economic Growth with the desecration of our natural resources. We all laughed at Jack Benny who, confronted by a burglar with a gun said, "Your money or your life!", took a long time to answer and prodded by the burglar said, "I'm thinking, I'm thinking!" The realtors, manufacturers, developers, careless polluters and all others who threaten our planet are thinking how they can survive with riches, without caring about their descendants. Jack Benny may have been funny...they are not!

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