A MSc-based Professional Doctorate in Person Centered Care is planned at the European Institute for Person Centered Health and Social Care, the latter installed at the Office of the Vice Chancellor of the University of West London, London, UK. As a member of the professional doctorate planning committee and international advisory panel, and as one of the Vice Presidents of the European Society for Person Centered Healthcare, ESPCH, London, UK, I will provide the above contribution and suggest a corresponding focus within the planned agenda. The proposal has a theoretical basis and an exemplary practical application in form of groups, called Fröhlich Groups to be installed in care and healthcare institutions. The theoretical basis has been developed throughout the years by a multi-professional international team, and extensively published in a series of journals. Here, I will focus on its practical application.
The groups aim to support person-centeredness and a corresponding team building. They train self-awareness in simultaneous awareness of the other in a friendly, relaxed, improvisational and curious atmosphere. They do so by playing, by making jokes, being ironic, allowing for inspired foolery and disciplined frivolity. The play’s plot may be but does not necessarily need to be related to what goes on in the institution. The mere presence and participation of the institution’s members is enough to guarantee that the group’s activity will be and stay being rooted in it. It is also rooted in each individual participant.
Being simultaneously aware of what is going on in oneself on also and firstly a rapid information processing scale, and hypostasizing in what might go on in the other also in terms of feelings, triggered memories and corresponding expectations, allows for developing a controlled, conscious empathy, an improved shaping of momentary relatedness, and this way a well-founded, rooted, authentic being with others in staying what one is.
The Fröhlich Group introduces a genuinely new element in the institution’s agenda, a voluntary, joyful, purpose-free form of being together and of productive cooperation, focused on something completely different from the everyday duties and proceedings. The good goals remain in the background, in enhancing and training self-awareness and awareness of the other just by itself, just by doing strengthening person-centeredness in the present social setting.
So, taking part in the group will not be experienced as a further duty, a prolongation and continuation of daily work, and as adding to the institution’s daily workload, but instead feel like taking part in a gym’s course.
We will provide training in how to gradually grow together and stepwise gain a feeling of freedom and joyful ingenuity. The running title of the Fröhlich Groups hence is “health, happiness and humanity”.
No participant is expected to contribute more than freely chosen; yet, all partners are encouraged to take up and then play roles that differ from their daily professional role, in training a controlled identification with an other’s point of view and an other’s momentary way of experiencing.
The group’s agenda provides introductory steps to slowly get acquainted to what is expected to emerge as the group’s atmosphere; a supportive, confident, relaxed being together, with the guarantee and professional assertion that no one will be forced to disclose personal affairs, or collectively judged by others. It is a far-away topic dealt with, instead, and anyone may take part or not. Those who are shy, as the majority of people are for good and natural reasons is, will be invited to play a shy person, and nothing else. They will see that they are really good in it, quite sure. They eventually may randomly exaggerate the presentation of their shyness, to step by step detach it from the genuine, authentic, original personal shyness. The latter transforms into a general human behavior, familiar to everyone, and not limited to only one single person. This, and corresponding further techniques alleviate each participant’s emotional pressure and facilitates sharing her and his enthusiasm and joy with others.
Each group has a trainer, like in a gym’s course. The trained trainer is provided from the Fröhlich Group Lab, the institution at the basis of the present proposal. We call it lab, a laboratory, because it is a work in progress, that has to be fed with improved knowledge. The latter mostly will come from obstacles, implementation difficulties, initial failure, disinterest, ignorance and further seemingly negative experiences. In contrast to an intuitive validation as negative, this kind of falsification is the best way to gain knowledge, and failure is positive if it happens in a phase where the project proceedings can still be improved.
Our lab consists of professionals from different areas, such like improv theatre, actors, directors, wording specialists, philosophers engaged in anthropology and hermeneutics, and quite sure from care and healthcare professionals as well as of experienced patients.
We provide training of future trainers in form of courses with physical presence at the Heidelberg Helm Stierlin Institute, an institution providing training in systemic counseling and psychotherapy. As well, we offer video courses, followed by an exam, and, in case of success, a certificate allowing the trainer so support Fröhlich Groups in her and his nearby institutions.
The work of the trainers will be paid by the institution. The trainers before will have paid for participating in our courses, to a fair prize.
What do we tell the institution as a potential reason for using our offer? It brings a new element into it, without a guarantee to increase effectivity or profit. In contrary, there must be a genuine interest of the institution to do something with the organizational culture, in an effort not to add further workload on the employees, but to make their cooperation more joyful and creative, that is, to also act on the level of existential meaning, a level usually ignored in everyday routine.
So, it is the institution that must apply for our courses, and we will check if the institution’s aims and needs promise to fit with our offer. If not, this must not be bad or disappointing; it just tells that at the moment and under the conditions just given, the institution’s needs and what we offer do not fit to each other.
The accreditation process of an institution to get included in our program is based on transparent criteria, protecting both partners from dissatisfaction and loss of energy, time and money. We expect a certain degree of braveness, readiness to risk something, and enthusiasm, and will not take hours to convince an intrinsically disinterested management.
If no cooperation can be established, it will be for good reasons for both sides, so no one needs to complain about it.
Financially, we are free, lucky and independent, in being successfully professionally engaged in our main jobs, or, like some few of us, in being retired. So, it is a free offer that can be used to both sides’ pleasure, or not. If it is used, we will be happy to share our longstanding enthusiasm for humanistic care and healthcare with our future partners.
The relationship-centered care issued in the person-centered agenda also and equally refers to the relation of each one to oneself. Noticing one’s immediate responses and feelings without immediate moral attribution and following rational judgement, just as something that happens quite naturally, at first accepts one’s fast information processing as providing preliminary results. These must not be correct on further examination, yet they are present in all of us, and must be accepted as active agents in everyone’s performing. Empathy respects also these feelings in the other, and thus allows to address the own and the other’s existential level, the one from which meaning emerges moment for moment. To adapt and to cope with the issues coming up from this level allows for a more sensitive, a more sophisticated and also a more protective, also self-protective processing and engagement in relating. This, in turn will mutually allow to be seen better, to a higher extent, as a whole person in context, in the present setting. Following from that improved awareness, the existential level, as the level of meaning is allowed to come into play in a more conscious, explicit, and also a better controlled and nicely adapted form. Both partners will profit in the end from this introduction of a level normally ignored for reasons of effectiveness, hurry and lack of professional emotional training.
On the long run, an elevated level of professionalism will be reached from both sides of professional care; in consequence of this both-sided professionalization those, who receive care will get offered a new, unfamiliar, but warmheartedly welcome experience of relatedness, as will those who deliver and provide care. Satisfaction and, as it may be supposed, long-term efficacy and experience of self-efficacy will increase on both sides.
The most reliable way to start a Fröhlich Group is to anchor it in what goes on in the department or institution in the moment. As outlined in the previous chapter, a present description and interpretation consist of enacted memories providing the onset material of attribution, present descriptions and anticipations derived from current description. To facilitate the approach and to allow individualization, these three components should be addressed separately:
The three questions will be answered differently by any individual participant.
To get an oversight, the answers are written of otherwise plotted on cards, in one colour for past, present and future, correspondingly. The cards are fixed on a whiteboard. What will become obvious even before looking at the details is that the presence is different for each individual, that it has a different meaning and different consequences concerning anticipations in form of fears and wishes. So, the multiplicity of what is oversimplified as being one presence identically and homogenously set for everyone becomes obvious. The multifaceted presence corresponds to the multiplicity and individuality of the group members’ present state and past.
The next step will be to imagine how the manifold of present interpretations might be depicted as a play, in playing a sketch. For this, the raw material written on the coloured cards might be grouped to form inherently consistent roles, which may be intentionally exaggerated in their attitudes and behaviour. One role may be the one of an unhappy, dissatisfied, negative, aggressive person, the other of an unhappy, dissatisfied, negative, submissive, defensive person, the third one of a naïve, optimistic, simple-minded, unrealistic person, the fourth of a powerful, attractive, convincing, enthusiastic and intriguing person, triggering an enhanced commitment in herself and himself, and the others.
These four prototypes may then take part in a very short sketch, such as reacting in their characteristic way on an unexpected challenge within the institution, like a black out, or a suddenly intensified workload.
Afterwards, the group will interpret the performed roles, converging to an individual overall decision how the sketch in its totality felt. It is clear that anyone will react differently.
From the collection of individual impressions, interpretations and expectations an alteration of the sketch will be suggested, first in terms of alteration of individual roles played in it, second in terms of how the actors as a group should act. That is, the roles and the resulting plot are adapted.
This, in turn may follow several directions of exaggeration, again, like in the initial shaping of individual roles. There may be a boring solution, a disaster and chaos solution, a too confident, illusionary solution, and a best possible balanced solution, with a slight touch in favour of improvement.
It may not be interesting to perform all of these different solutions, because their end is obvious right from start, which makes it boring to look at. Yet, at least the disaster version might be played, because it is fun, even if the end is clear.
The group process is open end; that means, the aim to cooperate as a group is settle an additional observational individual and collective perspective on what is momentarily going on, and have fun in dealing with the topic. The distancing is achieved by creating a further, more distanced observational level towards a present, willingly individually differently interpreted setting, and in intentionally exaggerating its characteristics. The second effect added to the one of better distancing is relaxation, an enforced movability, flexibility, freedom to adopt slightly different positions as points of views. The alteration and multiplication of perspectives is supposed to be helpful and to enhance productivity and ingenuity of the active team engaged in the Fröhlich Group.
Assumptions and expectations distort the perception as if they were filters like a curtain, filtering light. Also, words function as a curtain-like filter, as do newspapers and electronically transmitting news providers. In principle, there are two ways to act as a curtain; the curtain may be tight and fully deny admittance, then a undefined blank is caused. Or it may let pass through some light yet alter ii in three ways: enhancement or diminishment of the light with unchanged colour, or the same with also a change of colour.
The biggest problem for the one behind the curtain is caused by the blank, the omits, because no scale is available to be applied and correct the reduction or exaggeration, or the shift in colour, as a shift in meaning. So, if the filter fully rejects what is meant to pass through, the loss is irreversible and cannot be corrected within the present setting and being behind the curtain.
Another fatality caused by non-systematic exclusion is that the holes cannot be combined to any kind of pattern. Such a pattern would give a chance to plug the holes. But, according to a non-entity, and from the point of view of what is missing, the gap, no systematic distortion is detectable. Only if an elaborate process combines all what has been allowed to pass through, an underlaying principle of what has been omitted may become obvious, allowing to hypothetically fill the missing content. To be able to do this, it helps if there has been a system behind selecting what is allowed to pass, and what not.
So, the first check needs to proof completeness of information. The second check will go on gradual changes in terms of scaling and colour of provided content.
In terms of the Fröhlich Group, when collecting the momentary impression, we hence will use a checklist to make sure that we have not forgotten a relevant feature to be taken into account.
Most of our experiences are soaked with simultaneously aroused feelings and cannot be addressed as clearly separated components. The feelings also contain memories and anticipations, as outlined in a previous chapter. In normal daily routine, the existence of these feelings is ignored. Only the factual, explicit component of an utterance is noticed. The other constituents need to be identified and then addressed intentionally; it does not happen just by itself.
Complexity characterises even the simplest individual element of our interactions, hence, and does not come only after composing these elements to an observed interaction. To disentangle the components, a time-consuming, willingly performed retrospective separation is needed. Its main purpose is to become aware of spontaneous, immediately established, implicit and unspoken fragrant interpretations. They usually escape from notice yet form an integral and important part of our experience.
In the Fröhlich Groups, we will train this individual fast processing interpretation, not to simply accept it, but instead to then interact with it from a more detached position. This allows to correct and vary initial impressions and attributions, and to become aware of what we fear, about what we feel ashamed, and what we intrinsically long for.
The individual and the shared presence in Fröhlich Groups is inevitably soaked with both memories and anticipations. The memories are added to the momentary impression, whereas the anticipations are inferred from the combination of momentary impression and added memories.
Also, the memories are not just simple remembered past states, but these states being as well soaked with past memories and formerly construed anticipations.
So, in principle we always have a tripartite composition instead of a simple uniform moment-to-moment mirroring at work. Part one is the present state’s notion, part two is what we infer from it in form of expectations and assumptions concerning future development, and part three is the added past, with the past itself being tripartite: a memorized past state, combined with and embedded in the past, as given then, and the accompanying anticipations we inferred then, such as hopes of fears we once had at the moment gone. So, also the recalled past does not only exist as a newly edited simple state, but as a state embedded in what was memorized and anticipated then.
In empiric terms, the presence in an encounter with a context and its content hence is rich, in being a manifold combined and construed by new moment for moment. Information processing done by us consists of much more than only a simple mapping and mirroring. The processing constitutes an interpretation. And again, the material used in that interpretative process is not just a set of momentary representations, but instead the latter combined with inferred momentary assumptions and recalled former notions, the latter embedded in what has been recalled then, and what has been expected, hoped and feared then. It is an almost instantaneously done constructive work combining different constituents in what is called momentary experience. The latter results as being internally uniform only because its distinct components converged, and not because of being made of only one material, like a crystal. To cope with this empiric multifaceted presence, a delicate and intensified form of individual and collective awareness will be trained in the group, therefore.
In previous articles, we introduced an advanced model of biopsychosocial interaction1-13. It just argues that coherences check and interpret each other. They implement the checked result concerning the other’s features into their own future processing, by either implementing or expelling it. This way, a convergence towards a transiently joined processing occurs, or not. The joined processing may be that of a molecule continuing a coherent bonding of two or more molecules that processed individually and separate before.
Using this concept of one-sided or mutual interpretation, the latter does not come as a new element into only human behavior, but instead is a constituent right on any human’s physical, biochemical and physiological basis. The flexibility in set formation is increased, and the option to form sets and supersets is deployed to a higher extend, for example by separating them via functional borders, and this makes the difference to other forms of internal interaction in living beings. So, it is an only gradual difference within a continuity of potentials given right from start, already on the smallest, the chemical level. The mutual taking into account implies a corresponding focusing, as the generation of a transient center of “awareness”, enacted by the actively observing instance, as the other center engaged. So, we do have a bi- or polycentral structure of generation of a center of awareness, as its present focus, done by another center, the one which observes, and enacts the point of view. The principal structure in an interpretative universe hence is the polycentric one, with one observing, checking and interpreting center engaged in relating to the present center of its awareness. This structure is completely different from the one construed in analogy to the behavior of unrelated, solipsistic atoms of a noble gas, as the basis of physical thermodynamics. In our approach, a relation and a principal interrelatedness are present right from start, whereas in the conventional model relations have to be added and introduced only afterwards, as an arbitrary, accidental, superficial feature of an entity that is modelled as being unrelated and single in principle, hence as a feature that can just be added to it, or left.
You, like any other intrinsic coherence are exposed to your situation in a way in which the situation embraces you. Being immersed in a present moment corresponds to being embraced by it. It is a circular setting, with the situation surrounding you as a ring, like waves surround a coherent item having been thrown into water.
The effort consists of expanding a situational component to a full ring. You see the diamond and imagine that it surrounds you as if it were a ring. You see a person and imagine that it embraces you. You see a chair and imagine that it is an integral spherically formed part of the atmosphere surrounding you.
Objects in conventional terms are not fixed on their empiric place anymore, but dissolve and get fluid like being waves enclosing you. They get vivid this way, they change from fixed and petrified, definitively localized objects into something you are fully embedded in, like a sound, or light, or water.
Once having slowly become familiar with this water, air and sound transform of concrete objects, their empiric spatial fixation is combined with an also empiric situational presence and existence form, better described and addressed as fluid matrix surrounding one in form of an atmosphere, a mood, a vague expectation, a non-located feeling, a move, a sound, a gentle breeze, a horizon.
Existential momentary exposedness is better depicted in waveform, as being immersed in a momentary environment, as its present center. It is a state before having identified the distinct objects in the room, instead these objects are present only as contributing to a vague, non-localized atmosphere. It is their pre-petrified, pre-realized state in which they contribute, their presence as sources and potentials, also as well of further realization and discretization.
Awareness of existential exposedness hence goes to the source and potential aspect of what exists in the present setting, which includes more than its momentary spatial position. It also takes into account what might happen in future, and what the source may share in a confluence of all that contributes to a present setting.
Seen as embracing, as fluid atmospheric component, the other, and the object is seen in its state of being a potential, a source of further activities and as potential partner of future encounters. It is seen as a chance, a possibility, such as a promise or a risk, a dream or a threat, something to be ignored or further checked.
The water, air and sound object transform opens the perspective on time, timing, future and possibilities
What will be achieved by consequent object transform training is a new view on a situation. Like a male or female businessman, a momentary setting is checked according its risks and chances, that is, seen not only as a static present setting, bus also as a potential, a source of future development. So it is kind of a “shake the box and see what happens if its content is brought into movement” approach, vitalizing petrified settings, and making instruments sound, triggering vehicles to move, planes to fly, and meals to be enjoyed.
The Fröhlich Groups will use this water, air and sound object transform to shake the box and check chances of positive alteration.
The existential space is a statement itself, consisting of individualized statements a mere existence, before and beyond any further realization-bound specification. So, the existential space is a fundamental a priori structure concerning the yes or no of a coherence’s at least transient existence, with the “no” simply not being contained inside the existential space, and not being a part of it inner space. The “no” is only the principally distinguishing, non-specific, general, categorical and beyond this generality internally undifferentiated, in so far intrinsically double-empty border surrounding the existential space.
Referring to only the pure fact of existing and existence, only the principal potential contained in this general positiveness of existence is addressed in the existential space. It is the fundamental potential space at the basis of any following realization. So, it is the fundament of all that happens in terms of repeatability as sequential coherence, and parallel-interactive coherence as repeatable and predictable cooperation of two or more coherences’ momentary realizations.
Time is bound to realization and emerges together with realization in form of its timing. This source-bound time is contained in the existential space in form of a principal-existence-based “not yet, but may be sooner or later”, that is as a chance and potential inherent and sleeping in the potential, which’s principal existence is issued.
The same holds true for space in conventional terms, as realization space; it is source-bound contained in the existential space in form of a principal-existence-based “not here yet, not there yet, but may be becoming real and realized here or somewhere else, sooner or later”.
That is, realization time and realization space are contained in the existential space as potentials, as possibilities, to be distinguished from principal non-existence of the corresponding potential.
In becoming aware of the embracing character of a situational outside and its content, the group members automatically also focus on the level of potentiality, and hence become aware of the underpinned principal existence of the existential space. The effect of this additional awareness is to set free an idea of changeability, movability, flexibility, and to initiate and support an activity to change by own will. Taking the existential level into account corresponds to going to the level of resources, to enhance self-efficacy, and via this also joint effectiveness as a group.
The easiest way to explain what makes our approach different is to think of a hand. In the one case, it is flat, in the other bowed in style of a grasp. Being bowed instead of being flat, also future comes into play just by itself. It concerns what the hand is about to grasp but has not grasped yet. As well, selectivity comes into play, and with that, distinctness, as a being-special and different from something else. The being-selected also just automatically comes from the being-bowed and this way, simply by being oriented distinctively creating an inner geometrical center. The two components then co-create an being oriented towards a distinct, selected, selectively qualified something in future, as an oriented anticipation. The anticipated outside not yet grasped distinct entity is marked, and thus and in so far it is not contained in a neutral, logically empty, meaningless, inactive, timeless abstract space anymore; instead, it is focused on, distinctively taken into account, it has become part of a necessarily temporal process in anticipating a future enclosure, by being at least partially, and in terms of meaning fully enclosed in the hand, the hand ready to close its fingers and palm around it. So, the focused presumptive object is made a distinct something in a not neutral, not orthogonal, but in a convex context, bowed around it, centered in it, distinctively related to it. The same way all we long for has become integrated into a focusing context made of a plentitude of foci, as distinct centers.
Now, if in the end we have successfully got the desired entity in our hands, we finally establish a distinguished and more or less relatedness of what we grasped and our hand, and may be of further parts of our body, like our mouth, if it is a fruit that we took. The generating a center of awareness and anticipation has been a pre-form of an eventually realized, established relation that lasts at least for a while. Whatever is able to become part of, or to engage in an enduring relation may be seen in terms of a focused entity, partially and in logical terms fully enclosed by the contacting entity, in its will to enclose it and this way to establish an enduring relation. So, we may generalize, whatever can become part of a lasting relation does so in being a focus centered in a focusing, centering surrounding that is preparing bowed around it. The general pattern of all able to be part of a relation hence is that of centers and foci embedded in a polycentric grid, an embedding matrix that by itself, in being focusing and able to select and to generate distinct anticipatory identity has the form of a convex vessel.
It takes time to get acquainted with this polycentric grid approach. It has been developed and used to understand the implementation and use of common goods by the later Nobel Prize winner Elinor Ostrom14, but since then not been generalized beyond economics of common goods and sustainability topics. In fact, it changes the basic concept of unrelated, isolated, principally at first and genuinely timeless objects radically; instead such monistic objects assembled in a meaningless, not distinguishing neutral space open to anything, we suddenly deal with distinctively focused entities addressed in anticipating a lasting relation to be established by the selective grasp. Nothing able to possibly engage in a lasting relation is timeless and meaningless further on; it is entangled in a periphery context genuinely soaked with intentionality, anticipative deliberate readiness to act, in form of engaging in a distinguished and distinguishing relation and relatedness. Meaning emerges as a genuine part of the anticipated and then established relation, in form of its iteration and directedness, as an at least one-sided allocation concerning an expanded continuation of the own coherent processing. Meaning emerges from the focusing context in reference to the focused entity, and from the focused entity referring to what it will become part of, the partnering relation.
All what we evolve in the future chapters in terms of relations and meaningful relatedness is based on the corresponding polycentric grid concept outlined here. The easiest way to imagine and use the concept is to think of lots of grasping, selecting hands instead of neutral, disinterested walls as present context. Note, that this polycentric multi-hand concept only applies to what is consistent, inherently coherent and able to become of an also consistent, at least transiently stable relation of two or more coherent partners. The ability to engage in stable relations characterizes all except the atoms of rare, inert, noble gases; only these are unable to engage in a consistent relation in form of a lasting chemical bonding. In consequence, our concept cherishes relatedness on whatever level, and does not distinguish lower and higher forms except in terms of degrees of composedness and set size.
To repeat, meaning emerges from a context, it is genuinely context-bound, and more precisely it is co-created by mutual allocation into the own coherence, as soon as two coherent entities start to coherently interact with each other; it comes as a part or aspect of the two-or-more-sided being-coherent in producing a further coherence in form of an at least transiently stable and hence transiently coherent relation. The convergence zone created by becoming a pair, or a “family” of coherently interacting coherences is part of the momentarily generated meaning, which consists of the point of view of each individual interaction partner and the simultaneously present point of view of the resulting combination,, in form of the pair or the “family”. Thus, meaning is always tripartite as being the converging sources’ and the resulting conjunctions’ interpretation and point of view. In so far, meaning is inherently dynamic in not being bound to and fixed in only one point of view, but instead in a synchronicity of three or more of them. It is multifaceted in principle, instead of corresponding to the seemingly monomeric isolated form of a so-called object.
To come back to the polycentric grid model, a piece of furniture able to be used by us is seen as spherically enclosing us just as a person we relate to. The complete surrounding, if able to engage in persistent and repeatable, predictable relations turns into a set of enclosing vessels and grasping hands. This is a strange model, admittedly, but it allows to keep time and timing in mind, as well as specificity, individuality, distinctness, qualified uniqueness, and, in terms of a human being, personality, personhood as such. This is the reason we introduce the concept in our person-centered approach and try hard to make it accessible. We do so by repetition, and by providing examples of its usefulness.
A consequence of our distinctive approach is that we are able to take into account virtually all that coherently matters, independent of it being a rule, an object in conventional terms, such as a tool, or a person. In our life, all these, ex post differentiated components in fact uniformly converge to a present, momentary unit, given in the experience, feeling and thinking enacted in this moment. The categorical distinctions made conventionally do not really matter for what empirically happens in us and with us. They are needed, necessary and helpful without doubt. But if meaning as well as individuality are the topic and meaning-related existential exposedness typical for being a person, the model suggested by us is better.
The following explanatory chapters are arranged not in a linear hierarchical manner, but in a polycentric grid – each surrounding a focused topic and providing a unique perspective, without excluding other perspectives as well applicable and reasonable.
Cooperation consists in a joint effort to get something done. What has been achieved in cooperating then is the shared, common result, having emerged from a convergence and an eventual merger of individual actions. To create such a product needs to adapt the individual processes to all the others. The processes cannot be random, hence, but must exert a plan, a common concept. This way, each process will become part of a joint processing, its initial individuality is suspended in favor of the individuality of the resulting process.
In being consistent and in aiming for achieving a common goal, any of the individual processes is coherent and exerts a meaningful structure. So, it is connected to an implicit program which is realized. One might say, it is rooted in this program.
If we do not look at the producers of the processes but only to their individual contribution as a product, the connection of the contributing process to its underlaying program and root is cut off, and only the final result is addressed. Being disconnected from its producer and the producing process, the individual product has fallen out of the cooperative merger and the corresponding cooperative dynamic, and has become just an isolated, static, fixed, freely transferable product, and nothing more. It is not part of a creative process and a temporal dynamic any more, instead it is temporally naked, with the previous being part of a productive process being forgotten, and with the producer and its individuality having got irrelevant; so, the product has no inherently continued history, it is a fixed moment without intrinsic connection to its past and future. The latter comes from the fact that, as long as it was integrated in the production process, in course of being produced, it was also part of the anticipations and goals of this process, and via the being part of a move to an intended future it has inherent futurity, too.
Stripped off of their environment, naked objects are easier to handle. Not anchored any more, made homeless and deprived of historically founded individuality, they can be applied in whatever context and setting. The gain in applicability corresponds to the loss of individuality, and the loss of individuality to the loss of meaning. The objects are naturally meaningless. They need a potential meaning to be attributed, but then this meaning is superficial, arbitrary, exchangeable, voluntarily fixed on the object, and not implicit as a non-separate part of the object itself, such as blood and flesh being an non-separate part of us, as our bodies.
To make things comparable, they must be put into a category, independent of if this category fits to them or not; being placed into one logical, conceptual vessel, one mental frame makes them being seemingly similar in terms of this category, this also-belonging-to, as the others belong to.
Comparing objects in terms of where they are necessitates to construe a logical vessel in which they all are enclosed, the orthogonal space. To compare durations of processes, these have to be put into a logical vessel called linear time. Being compared in terms of the material they are made of needs to put them in the category materiality. By this being put into one category or the other, the object decomposes into these different categories as separate features which are not genuinely bound to each other by means of emerging from a common source, and an individual history. The previous individual disintegrates into an arbitrary assembly of different categorical aspects, and the unifying compositional core is lost, as is the individuality and individual history. The object has lost its unifying soul, with soul meaning its individually qualifying coherence.
An impulse coming from this everyday application of unifying categories is the extension towards a model of human beings stating they are fully equal. This differs from a concept differentiating individuals and what they are allowed to do. The latter is the concept of equal rights of individuals who stay to be individual, and special, and multiform; the first is the concept of uniform objects, neglecting individuality in favor of unlimited comparability and an exclusive being made of the superficial categorical aspects. Private property, as the genuine bond of goods to the person who has created or bought them is replaced in favor of a dissection of objects from another object, formerly called individual, or person.
Most of the categories refer to an aspect of the object, and in so far cover some of its empiric. But all categories share the disadvantage of being exclusively a view from outside, from the category, to what has been put in it. The view emerging from the entity’s inside is categorically excluded in this approach. It may be arbitrarily added to the object afterwards, but only as a further superficial feature, and not as an entity’s necessity right from start.
The real world is centered in coherences. But to apply the terms real, world and centered, and to enact a view from outside which can be shared with others, we are forced to categorize and then to apply categories. In learning to speak, general categorization becomes embodied more and more, and eventually may replace the lived experience of being coherent (Antonovsky, sense of coherence15), as the experience of individuality, personhood, and meaning.
To resume, the concepts of adding objects and joining individually in factual personal cooperation differ fundamentally. Objects, like things one can buy, or numbers one can add to each other, are seen as purely present, uprooted from their production history, and the context of it. They are split from their history and have no inherent futurity. Being decontextualized, static, timeless and pure, they seem to be easily combined in whatever assembly.
In cooperation lasting more than 30 years, a Heidelberg study group developed a new interaction model. Applying an also mathematical formalization right from start, we intended to go beyond the limits of humanities. It helped that many of us had a scientific background, being engaged in research e. g. in biophysics and physiology. Also, we had members teaching medical informatics and stochastics. The humanity background was that of the institution we met in, the philosophical seminary of Heidelberg University, more precisely the one provided by Hans-Georg Gadamer, who personally supported our reference to the Heidelberg Biologist and philosopher Helmuth Plessner, and who himself has been educated by Martin Heidegger.
Almost 40 years later, when proposing the interaction model that we developed, I met with a British philosopher applying Heidegger’s and Gadamer’s approach, with all criticizing the too far going decontextualization ending in non-empiric isolated and lifeless objects. He also is engaged in person centered healthcare and wrote his thesis about an ontology of person-centered healthcare.
I may cite his thesis, p. 24: “The attempt to make a categorical definition of anything is misguided because this beginning, in which we remove the entity under investigation from the context in which it is set, will precisely defeat our attempt to understand. In the same way that Heidegger sets each individual Dasein in the context of a world in which we find entities like ourselves (Others) so Gadamer recognises the contextuality of all experience.”16
Having done research in chemical reactions, I aimed to extend formal conceptualization of contextuality also on this basic atom level. That has been not an easy walk for a couple of reasons. First, to isolate a focus from its context and then to re-embed it in a carefully controlled way is the successful and inevitable principle of experimental science. You pay to win this benefit, but there is no alternative at hand at first. Second, a pivotal concept of potentiality has been lost in modern science and philosophy and cannot just be re-introduced in a way that leaves the current science model untouched. Third, even the most basic, most general categories implicit or explicit used in science, those of space and time are in fact caged inside the decontextualizing frame. So, and step by step we had to move beyond this frame and open a new horizon. In this, we were lucky to find the answer in the forgotten concept of a hypostasized potentiality and its empiric realization which has been carefully developed in ancient, mainly Aristotelian philosophy. We also were lucky to get support from a philosopher specialized in this field of wisdom, and to co-author our thesis with him.
The difference of the approach re-introduced by our group to current concepts of time and space may be characterized as follows: we look at what an identified process is acting on, so our smallest investigated unit is an interaction of at least two different processes. We understand repeatability and identifiability as momentary proof an internal coherence connecting and binding identifiable steps of a process to its previous ones. We understand repeatability and identifiability of an interaction as being based on the observed stability of two or more processes’ simultaneous form of presence and proceeding. Then, combination of sequential and parallel coherence makes an interaction identifiable. We understand the observation of an interactional sequential and parallel coherence as being preliminary and open to get verified or falsified. It has the form of a “coherence-hypothesis” and does not replace careful observation.
In focusing, as we do in terms of observed distinct processes, we automatically apply a focused, centered concept of space and time. Both are not supposed as being pre-produced from an outside, but as being an implicit part of the observed processes, co-produce in turn of their realization. We also hypostasize a pre-state of later exerted timing and spacing, in terms of a not yet realized, but supposedly distinctively available potential time and space.
Combined, we have a figure of a focused interaction emerging from its hypostasized seed, as source. Each hypostasized source forms a center, and realization of interacting processes is understood an expanding, time and space-generating growth. This growth leads to an extended spacing and timing, in form of a coherence-interaction “volume”. Two or more processes interact via establishing their interaction coherence, as a trans-individual form of coherence, combining the ongoing coherence-generative activity of two or more sources, and merging two or more, previously non-interacting process into one process.
Applying this approach, any participating process is seen as interactive, and hence confronted with at least one interaction partner as its present context. Also, all contributors are seen as bound to their sources, that provide the material quality and the program to produce and reproduce the individual interacting process coherence.
In joining in a common action, two or more processes as centers form a further center, without necessarily losing their own identity. So, we have a multi-centered pattern, as a combination of interaction elements to sets and super-sets, with elements remaining distinct and still identifiable even if they are also engaged in a number of set-forming cooperation.
We also differentiate several phases of emergence from a source. We may hypostasize a nascent phase of an intrinsically coherent process just having emerged from its seed. The next phase is the first touch of the process’ outside in form of further processes theoretically (that is, in terms of conventionally assumed and theoretically presupposed external time and space) present nearby, with “nearby” referring to this conventional time and space, also. Then, in entering the self-produced real time and space emerging from itself and the coherently interacting others, the embedding of the process is achieved.
This happens from moment to moment in genuine, punctual, internally produced time and space, with the self-identical iteration being guaranteed and provided by the change-surviving productive potential, as the time- and space-producing coherence in its potential form. Each interaction serves as the seed of the next one in terms of coherence. This birth-ripening-rebirth cycle has its temporal specific also in terms of number of repetitions. A previously coherent interaction may stop and its process elements may disintegrate and engage in further coherent interactions. The set assembly is dissolved, and new sets are formed.
So, each moment in successful coherent interaction is specific, a gift, something coherently established, and not a neutral, meaningless random assembly, independent of the specific of time and place.
This is our general model of interaction. It refers to all levels of interaction, from the small to the large range. From two-process elements to sets of elements and sets of sets. The sets are made of processes and taking part in one set does not exclude the possibility to simultaneously take part in a further set, subset or set of sets. So, we have a highly flexible and variable concept of mutual interaction which is much better suited to describe and understand the multitude of sequential and parallel non-random interactions going on in nature, and hence going on in ourselves and our society.
Conventional objectification ends in a mentally modeled entity that has been decontextualized so far that it ends in the imagination of on isolated object, seen unchanged and initially inactive, without interaction partner, deprived from its context, and present without past and future, and without any specific of the place and moment in which it is embedded. Coherence-based distinctness and a corresponding individuality as well as an individual past and anticipated future, and the specific of a momentary activity as interaction, and also the specific of the present context the entity is embedded in; all this is added only afterwards after having mentally construed the over-isolated monistic timeless entity.
What is the alternative? We lose contact to reality if we go too far in taking a focused entity out of action, interaction, context and its specific in terms of present moment of time and location. Instead, we should look at an entity in being observed as active at a specific time and place, and as being active not in an imaginary solipsistic, isolated way, but as interacting with at least one other active and contextually embedded entity. As an example, we may just think of two real persons we know and imagine them interacting at a real place and a real moment.
But how to formalize such an approach? Assuming that the persons are not just random, instable and transient compositions of atoms, we instead suppose that they consist of parts that cohere with each other. The persons hence can be addressed as being coherences. These coherences obviously are active and performing an overall joint activity, as the activity of the person. This activity partially also interacts with the context, such as breathing air, grasping something, talking to someone, listening to a sound et cetera. So, the person’s activity is seen as an inside activity within the person, and simultaneously as an interaction of the person with the contextual outside. The latter consists of non-addressable random processing and non-random coherences, present not only in the very moment, but having been present before, and may be also present in future. So, the person, seen as a coherence, or a coherent composition of coherences interacts with coherences in itself and outside itself; we observe a coherence-with-coherence interaction, hence.
In being iterated and thus maintaining its coherence, a coherence’s past is reactivated to become the present coherence, and it may be assumed, in prolonging the iteration into future that also in the very next moment the coherence will pup up to be present, again. We do have a timeline, hence in addressing a coherence observed in a present moment; its past, and its potential future are part of the overall observation.
What does cooperation mean in that context? First, that the interacting partners are intrinsically coherent themselves. Second, that their joint activities create a prolongation, continuation and extension of coherence, added to the individual coherences; this is the produced coherence, resulting from the intrinsically coherent work done. If the product would not be coherent, it would not be identifiable, and could not be attributed to any intrinsically coherent operation; hence, it would not be a cooperation, but simply a random, uncorrelated individual nonsense-activity of coherences that stay unrelated and isolated as before.
We distinguish an underlaying stable source of coherent realization, and this momentary realization. To imagine this distinction, we may understand the source as if it were a matrix, allowing the realized coherent processing to emerge. This matrix, in turn may be imagined as if it were a vessel, like a flowerpot, and the process as the plant growing out of it.
If two plants use each other to become more stable in mutually spiraling around the other, they cooperate to generate an extended form of coherence, consisting of the two plants combined to one single structure, with preservation of the individual partners in cooperation. Because the plants stay rooted in the soil contained in their individual flowerpot, and as long as they stay alive, their matrices, as described before remain active and present in the cooperation. They do not join themselves, but they nevertheless join in form of a coherent interaction of the processes emerging from them.
So, to make the picture full, coherent cooperation of processes also integrates and combines their matrices, not directly, but via the shared principal directedness and finally the eventual, jointly produced result of the cooperation. To use a different picture, if the result is the child, its mother and father are its sources, and continue to live, may be as long as the child becomes a mother or father itself, having given birth to a further child.
In contrast to the decontextualization up to an artificially isolated entity without a dynamic, a past and a significant future, in this picture introduced now we have a co-presence of matrices and interactively co-processing coherences, all enriched by specific of place, time and further context, hence of an individual and a joint history, with a preservation of each process’ individuality, and an additional co-presence of the cooperation’s result as a newborn further established coherence.
To come back to the flowerpot; it is a centered structure with a round or rectangular wall surrounding the pot’s content. We may imagine the form of any matrix alike: as surrounding the growing plant, the latter seen as engaged in its coherent processing. Interactions need a directed selectivity and specific of further coherences, and they integrate also the engaged matrices as lasting sources of the interacting processes.
Now one may compare this picture with the one mentioned initially; instead of a fixed, static, a-dynamic object singled out of its context, neither engaged in an activity, nor in a joint activity with other objects, instead, if at all, only in a purely additive alignment, in our approach we have activity right from start, in lasting connection to the own source that guarantees and maintains the material and processual coherence and the energy driving it, embedded in a context in two aspects simultaneously; the own origin, understood as the contextual matrix, and the cooperation partner’s coherence as providing a further part of the momentary context.
The pivotal formulation of coherent processing comes from the humble physicist and co-author, who only wants to be identified via a pseudonym FF. Bevier. He noticed the basic form of coherent processing, called dynamic information performs what is known as a mathematical group, with a cycling in itself, going through different states coherently connected to each other. This processing points to a specific next state and is semantically directed and specifically intentional oriented, hence. It is source-based, with the source in the mathematical description of our model in German being called “Eigenschaft”, with the term eigen as also used in English as eigenvalue, eigenvector et cetera.
With a source-based process as a change of source-based states being the smallest conceptual unit, the time needed for changing states is conceptually contained in our model right from start. Also, we do in principle focus on more than one state, and never to one single state, such as depicted in a number or word alone. The directedness of the observed process may be characterized in a separate picture, as the process’ semantic axis. Self-identical iteration as the transit form one state to the same state as follower may be depicted, as any iteration, in form of a cycle, and with the forward move contained as a spiraling. Coherent interaction then corresponds to a convergence of two or more process semantic axes, and their momentary merger. It creates a source-bound new cooperative process, which, as the source of its own repetition or a further interaction simultaneously serves as its own future realizations source and potential.
Coherent interaction creates and opens a transient, interaction-based semantic space. Semantic spaces may converge vie convergence of their individual and collective semantic axes. Being process-based, a semantic space is not static and not automatically persistent, instead it may the transient, ephemeral character of a fragrance, and a sound, or a light beam. Instead of being intrinsically stable, it may suddenly disintegrate, like a balloon deflated by a sting of a needle. Nothing may be left, then, except perhaps a memory, or traces in what persists.
Being construed like this, our model allows to understand the inherent instability and vulnerability of all semantic spaces. This in turn makes obvious how much maintenance effort has to be used to keep a coherence in continuation. To start a coherence, another form of work is needed, it consists of the inherent potential energy providing the process’ impulse and endurance, with the energy forming a logically distinguishable part of the underlaying source, together with its providing physical qualities and formative rules.
In enacting a specific, specifying and selective interaction with another transient state, such as the own next one, a state embeds itself in a specified dynamic neighborhood made of at least two transient states, with the neighborhood serving as the transient state’s present context. Within this specific setting, the observed transient state, in always being about to change has its function, direction, intention and past, which all may be combined to the phenomenon of meaning, as meaning something in a specific and co-specifying coherence context. In being embedded and contextualized, the present, momentary dynamic meaning of the observed transient state refers to its dynamic context, and only extends, if also the dynamic context gets larger. Meaning needs another transient state as interaction partner and hence is always emerging from a coherence-iterating and coherence-re-establishing interaction. Meaning is an epiphenomenon of prolonging coherence and specified relatedness. It co-emerges with the processes and their transient states, concerning the individual set of coherently interacting processes, and expanding corresponding to the expansion of the coherent set.
Meaning being co-created from “inside” a context in our approach is not the seeming meaning of one single state or phenomenon emerging from this single state alone, but instead is always contextual and specifying interactional, and hence dynamic. In being dynamic, it has a temporal quality in principle, meaning that it takes up a present emerging from the past and forwards it into an intended and specified future, in a time- and material-directing way.
So, a meaningful moment is rich in terms of past, presences and an intended, tacitly anticipated future. Meaning co-emerges with the process and its time and space. It is contained in the coherent processing right from start, and connects and interacts together with this process’ quality, impulse, time and space. It grows synchronously with the processes in coherent interaction and originates centers from the participating cooperating processes’ sources. It comes from the inside, but not from the inside of an artificially isolated state of a process artificially singled out and decontextualized, but from an interaction of processes that, as texts, themselves address the other as their present con-text alias context.
To repeat, the minimum basis of meaning is a coherent source-based interaction, hence two or more co-emerging transient states of interacting processes. The meaning of an utterance comes from its interaction with the person hearing it, with the sound and the hearing process co-constituting a coherent interaction. At first, the meaning is limited to this interaction, but the utterance may become part of an extended context, and hence co-emerges as part of this extended context’s coherent processing.
In being chemically bound to each other, and otherwise being embedded in a cellular matrix, macromolecules and smaller molecules form cells. Cells combine via physical internal and external forces, creating a coherent structure as well. The living structure may be a tree. Part of this structure persists even if the tree is dead; the wood may be used to construe a chair, held together to form a coherent structure by nails and glue.
In our approach, we embed a present moment into a series of moments. If a present state is to be observed also in the next moment, we say that the previous composition has been iterated in a self-identical fashion. With this analytical technique at hand, we can interpret stable states as a series of states, each one successfully repeating the previous state. It is a view on a uniform trace made by a car, knowing that its seemingly uninterrupted continuity in fact results of an iterated cyclic process, performed by the car wheels. We may dissect the line in process segments, each corresponding to one full turn of the wheel.
In pragmatic terms, an uninterrupted continuation can be interpreted as an iterated process, with one transient state changing to an identical state. This way, objects become “fluid”, and are seen as engaged in permanent self-iteration. A chair would then be understood as engaged in “chairing”, a house in “housing”, an apple in “appling”. Sure, this approach creates unfamiliar and at first not convincing results. But it helps to give time and timing the role it plays in reality, different from the construct issuing an only external time-space somehow containing static states.
Within that procedure, we understand the iteration as emerging from a lasting underlaying source, providing the material and interaction program to coherently enact the corresponding processing. To give another example for interpreting a static entity as engaged in processing, we may think of stars, visible in a fixed position in the sky, as the symbol of eternity, stability and predictability. In fact, they can also be addressed as processing, as suns, engaged in continuous transformation and production.
There is an obvious discrepancy, nevertheless, in comparing a chair with a star, or any other continuously productive source of speedy processes; so, we may just admit that it first of all is a logical trick to re-introduce primordial time and timing in what has been decoupled from space and time in a decontextualization that goes beyond empiric limits. It is the way back to the roots, in humbly conceding that on an existential, fundamental and empiric level time and duration cannot be simply analogized to space and distancing, and that, hence, additional concepts are needed for a better understanding. Surprisingly, these concepts did not need to be invented by new, but were available, yet hidden under the Cartesian distortion of empiric sourced time and space17.
Our approach is source-based, with being an individual as one form of being a source. A source is a provider of simultaneous and sequential coherence. Referring to be an individual source automatically covers individuality in form of personhood, as well. Meaning as one-sided or mutual allocation of what comes from a distinct source consequently is understood as emerging from these two or more sources’ interaction. A single process is seen as only artificially singularized, resulting from a decontextualization that has gone too far. The smallest identifiable unit in our approach is a process and its present interaction partner. Thus, our approach addresses relatedness right from start.
To provide and establish, and also maintain a processing’s parallel and serial coherence, as well as its its non-random interaction is seen as successful iteration of the underlaying coherence-schedule. It is a re-application of the source’s quality and form, such as material and its inherent program.
The ability to provide parallel and sequential coherence and to install a corresponding repetition of the same interactive processing is seen as widespread, qualifying all processes and interactions that can be observed as iterative, and hence as predictable. Our approach hence includes all forms of source-bound coherent processing, be they physical, physical-human, mental-human or group-related.
We consider all sources contributing to a focused processing’s performance. That is, our context is full of all kinds of momentarily relevant elements, instead of being artificially categorized in advance. Seeing the relevant context as provided by all sources engaged in momentary encounter and processing, we do not artificially divide interactions as referring to human and non-human ones. As well, bodily, mental and social processing are seen as going on in one instance, converging in the focused interactions. Also, material components like the color of the tapestry and time schedules, sunshine or rain are seen as logically equivalent constituents to a person’s present processing, for example. In our approach, we hence also note the risks and cherish the benefits of materials and physical tools as contributors to a focused interaction.
Thus, being person-centered in our approach is seen as taking into account all that momentarily matters for a person in present inside-with-outside interaction. It is wholistic in so far as generation of meaning is seen as potentially emerging from whatever kind of interaction, be it with a look from outside to oneself, as self-reflection, be it in interaction with an environment’s coherent processing, and with another person or group of persons.
Also, we are able to consider all types of coherent processing going on in human beings, for example; those which are fast, like immediate, spontaneous, highly automatised responses and attributions, as well as those following the immediate ones, like reasoning.
In general, we see three functionally distinct phases of any process; a first one right after “birth” of the corresponding sequential coherence; a second one establishing a not yet specified contextual contact at all; a third one really interacting with the present context, in shaping itself in an appropriate way to allow for adaptive continuation of being self-identical in simultaneously being meaningful embedded in the context. Sharing a common goal, for example starts with emergence of individuality in principle, which is at first only on its own, not yet observing and contacting a context. The next stage is to become aware of the presence of an contextual outside at all; and the third stage is to cope with the incoming needs of this present context, and to adapt to them, or to reject, exclude and ignore them.
Our source-bound approach is not restricted to human beings as sources only. A funny consequence of our being able to identify with non-human others, like our dog or cat is applied in far more extent in our multi-source and multi-focus program. It is the ability to see a contextual processing also from a chair’s “point of view”, that is, to mentally and bodily identify with a tool, a machine, a physically coherent environment, in checking what is relevant for the focused coherence right at this moment.
The biologist Jakob von Uexküll this way mentally identified with a tick, to get an idea what might matter for it as its individually meaningful environment. This way he was able to construe what is the relevant “world” and the tick’s corresponding “worldview”, being composed of a very limited set of relevant processes. Resulting from this trans-individual perspective, a multi-perspective set of source-bound points of view is produced. This polycentric approach allows for a neutral, fair and careful empiric access to multi-source interactions as a first step in understanding a set of foci in their individual context.
Now comes the tricky part of this multi-focus approach: considering the three distinct phases mentioned above, any participating source is seen as producing an at first isolated, solipsistic phase of processing, followed by a first mentioning of contextuality at all, and a final phase which establishes an extended coherence in form of a one-sided or a mutually adapted processing of two or more interaction partners. This latter dynamic takes the other’s processing into account in at first becoming aware of it at all, then to relate what has been observed to the present individual processing and then to judge about what fits and what might need to be altered, if such an adaptive alteration is acceptable in terms of ongoing coherent individual processing at all. To attribute the power to perceive, measure, check and then implement or reject another source’s processing in a way conforming to the preserved own coherence to all kinds of coherences is a quite unfamiliar method. It allocates a mutually hermeneutical processing also to non-living coherent processes and the corresponding entities, such as chairs and chemicals. In doing so, it extends the concept of individuality to all kinds of coherences emerging from coherence-providing sources.
This way, we can “identify” also with a chemical, or a chemical’s point of view in trying to understand how it succeeds to preserve its procedural coherence also in merging with another chemical, and how it is able to install an extended coherence consisting of adaptive interaction of two or more chemicals. Step by step, the extent of the resulting multi-sourced co-processing grows, implementing according first to the one and only criterion, that of being coherent at all, and then to the second decisive criterion of fitting or not fitting to the own ongoing coherence. Any combination of coherences showing and enacting bundled coherence itself is a prove of the mutual fit, and the success of mutual implementation of the partner’s coherent processing. The chemical process’ decision if to combine with another one in a chemical bonding, and hence to engage in a convergent form of co-processing applies an interpretation about a fit in accordance with the own dynamic, or a non-fit. The interpretation is not anteceding the action as a distinct activity, instead it is simply contained in the exerted choice. To extend this uncommon picture, as well as an interpretation, also anticipations are contained in present processing, if the combinations resulted in a living being, like a plant. As pointed out in one of our previous articles, any bud is a silent, but effective anticipation of a spring to come. In terms of our model, it enacts a meaningful directedness towards a future junction of coherent processes, including the instances providing transport to allow for eventual fertilization, in this example.
The first picture corresponding to this mutual check, adaptation and eventual implementation is that of a mutual inclusion, which is hard to visualize, since we are not used to imagine that the included entity itself includes the including entity. Yet, there is an easy way to mentalize this form of interaction nevertheless, in first looking to both processes, and replacing the picture of inclusion by the picture of stepwise convergence on a shared goal, which finally includes goth processes simultaneously. This way, the processing of the participating individual processes is not seen to end as soon as they are “swallowed” by the other, but instead it is seen as going on in a dynamic thesis-with-antithesis, text-with-context synthesis way, joining contributing processes in a larger coherence, without deleting their individuality, and without excluding their potential participation in further junctions. It is a transient, not necessarily exclusive joining to eventually engage in the same goal.
What does that mean for the proposed Fröhlich Groups? It widens their horizon, both in terms of taking into account also bodily feelings and judgements, and material components to all converge in a present generation of meaning. The discussion then goes on what contributes in a meaningful way to a focused set of processes, with all potential sources taken into account, such as one’s own bodily feelings, the mood arising from a material or social present context, and from rules and schedules imposed on the focused set of processes.
Alterations will become visible in terms of either contributing or hindering generation of joint meaning, the latter also in form of authenticity, pride, dignity, effectiveness, respect, personhood, person-centeredness. We act in applying a wide horizon, not limited to the body, or the soul, or the institution, or the tools at hand, instead considering all these components equally, as far as they contribute to the joint generation of meaning, with us as persons engaged.
Based on a newly developed model of interaction, we propose cooperation in Fröhlich Groups, an analog to Balint groups.
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