From the “Pretty True Texas Stories Series”
The Preface to
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Thought Models
When teaching helping professionals how to use our trauma management model, which focuses upon trauma’s individual and systemic etiologies (to be found located in human ontological aspects of brain functioning) in lieu of its individual/systemic symptoms (behaviors), I had to learn something new, and develop the same: another language. The professionals and licensing paraphernalia of the time (1970s-1990s) were quickly becoming Nosotropically attentive if not outright declarative, as through Behaviorally influenced political power they were mandated as so. That means that facility licensure procedures directed remedies to focus on observable behaviors and to directly address them as the presenting problems. Because our approach was the opposite of that focus, we had much explaining to do. We had to provide a new schema for perceiving how the human consciousness affected by trauma worked. That was a challenge. And, the lessons learned were incorporated into educational programs for professionals desiring to adopt our approach to clinical treatment and management.
A class of professionals (as students learning or entertaining transition to our Etiotropically-directed clinical/management model) would come from myriad educational, theological, psychological, and to include personal belief backgrounds. It would not be uncommon in a class of fifty individuals to have thirty differing views of the human consciousness and its capacities presented during the discussions. The same was true of training the professional personnel hired to facilitate our multi-tiered model in clinical settings.
Subsequently, I spent much of my early clinical management life learning the details of those differing views so that our model’s trainers and literature could interact more efficaciously with those professionals, our students. To that end, I learned about “thought constructs” or “thought models” (for want of having other modifiers), each consisting often of a distinct epistemology, evolving philosophy, logic and methods that governed how the individual saw both themselves and other people, and thus also how to best help them. Because perceiving life in “thought models” is not an ordinary conceptionalization of it, and which the mainstream reader peruses even at least sometimes — studying the subject can be akin to trying to evaluate a big plate of spaghetti, with sauce — I’ve added into this preface overview its origin (of thought model conceptualizations) for me and why I consider it important enough to include in this conclusion to the “Part III The Good Rebel in Most of Us.”
It was most common for these challenges to present on a continuum. A Freudian psychiatrist trained in psychoanalytic theory might hold down one end of it, with a protestant fundamentalist or charismatic pastor presenting at the other end. In between might and usually did present Behaviorists; Cognitive Behaviorists (Behaviorism’s reformation); Person Centered Therapists specializing in Group Therapy facilitations; Catholic and other denominational priest with masters or doctorates in Divinity; Alcoholism and Drug Abuse counselors steeped in the Twelve Step programs; Licensed Professional Counselors and Social Workers as advocates of Reality and Rational Emotive Therapies, and some with family systems specialties; and numerous psychotherapists also having personal recovery experiences in the co-dependency models attending such self-help programs as Al Anon, Adult Children of Alcoholics, and other conventions related to the address of more direct, say, eating and sexual disorders, in both instances doing too much of it. Clinical Psychologists of most varieties and persuasions participated frequently, and then less so a couple of Muslim counselors; a Buddhist every once in a while; lots of psychiatric nurses and some Rabbis; and some lawyers, judges and crisis managers, to include members of military styled managements. In their own merits, all were extremely intelligent and very well educated people, and etc. All retained an expertise in the symptom- or also called Nosotropically-focused perspective of PTSD and were licensed from within their respective disciplines to practice within the culture. Their helping activities included models of thought and belief regarding the constitutions of people who had existed and inspired relief for decades, centuries and then even over thousands of years, and for millions of followers.
My job required interpreting these various so called thought constructs and bringing them through the training in our model in a homogeneous manner; meaning so that they could all get along (where doable), not to mention tolerate what I had to say. Importantly for achieving that task, if I knew that a particular construct or system of thought logic was not going to workout with the approach I was teaching, I could explain the why of that so that a student would not have to waste his or her time going in our direction. They could exit early on and avoid the known conflict and the challenge, if they so desired. Out of a whole of twenty-five hundred class attendees, none did.
Doing this for over thirty and going on forty years, I developed a language and knowledge base which identified thought construct collisions or conflicts before they occurred. Hence, I also learned how to, where possible, head off such crashes. To me, the inability to stave off conflicts that led to major catastrophes as has occurred throughout history has resulted in no small part from these, again, so called in this essay thought models/constructs or differing ways of seeing and addressing people.
I’ve written both the “Pretty True Texas Stories” and “SHOMbook” series from that background and perspective. In particular, I’ve applied that epistemology to the various sections within those series using some of the referenced language.
Please forgive me for bringing, should it be the case, something to you that you may not understand, and I may not be able to explain as I would prefer, given prospectively, my shortfall in talking to your particular background and experience that I may yet to have studied.“