The “skin” is the message – 8 (power is colourful)
Well clothing is the second skin so to say. The German chancellor Angela Merkel is chosen as most powerful woman in the world (Forbes). Long time befor she became chancellor she was already famous for her colourful clothing. In those days we called her the living …………..
Read MoreSeeing clients in China
While in China, where I was from, I saw clients at the Shanghai Mental Health Center in both the outpatient and inpatient units. Most of the patients are walk-in patients without scheduled appointments. I did not know who to expect to see before they came in the door. Patients were usually accompanied by their family members who sat with the patients during the visit to provide collateral information. As most patients had severe psychopathologies, besides observation of the patients, I relied heavily on the information on symptoms and medication provided by family members. While on the inpatient ward including a locked unit, I was assigned a few patients with diagnoses ranging…………………
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MAMA-situation
Well language is always also body language. I talked about this already. Remembering Wittgensteins sentence, the German philosopher, language is sounding movement or the sound of movement. And movement is feeling. You know that feeling in English also means emotion.
A lot is written in psychology and psychoanalysis about this. One main concept is the following. I put it into simple sentences, I hope you forgive me for that. 😉
When a child is born it feels ………………….
Read MoreFaces….. 2
well I was asked to say something more about the meaning of these faces. To make it short, I start on the left side, the top row:
Body approach in China and Japan
Dear Ulrich,
I read your report on Psyche and Körper in Ost und West with great interest.
The differences between China and the west seem much greater than between Japan and the west.
I never worked in China, but went many times to Japan.
In Japan at first every client in a group expected to behave like others in the group.
There was a lot of social mask and group conformity.
When I was able, through somatic interventions, to get below this “tertiary layer” of personality, and could reach
the primary layer, I found a lot of emotional health, vitality and spontaneity coming from the early pre school years.
The secondary layer of anger, fear of sadness could only be contacted when trust from this primary layer had been established.
Wishing you all the best in your intercultural research
Warm greetings
David (Boadella)
The skín is the message 5 – The wish to be seen as resistance to the feeling of shame
Maybe you remember my experience in the underground of Berlin some dweeks ago. I had seen a couple having tattoos. When trying to look at the tattoos, because I got interested in the symbols which I could see even from the distance, the man addressed me in quite an aggressive way. He did not want to be seen, though having his tattoos uncovered so that everybody in the underground could see them.
So that everybody had to see them.
This experience again made me be aware of a paradox in our media society: There is a broad interest in to be seen, a deep longing for to be seen and a lot of activities to be seen. BUT on the one hand often the moment when someone is seen on TV or is so short that it is soon forgotten again. And on the other hand people react quite strange when they are seen, when someone really is interested in what they see.
This reminds me also of the feedback when people ……………..
Read MoreBeing a Manager in China 1
Most of the companies prepare their managers for the visit to or the job in China. Popular is an intercultural workshop where you can get information about the country, the culture, the people, the climate andsoon. Often participants of those workshops try to get familiar a bit with these habits and rules of behavior or communication by roleplay.
Yet this is only: learning the vocabulary and grammatics. This is not ( yet ) real life. Of course you would say this resembles to learn swimming or driving a car. And of course you will argue: it takes quite a long time to drive your car correctly, safely and joyfully.
Being confronted with a new culture, with very different people with odd and strange habits produces quite a big stress and strain for ………………
Read MoreThe first impression 1
Mc-body-reading
At least in Germany body-language is a very popular issue. People often think that you can analyse someone very quickly in order to know what to do and how to behave. Or in order to be prepared about the others acting and behaving.
But there is a big misunderstanding about body-language and body-reading. Far too often body-language is regarded to be useful under the photographic perspective.
This means:
If you look at someone, see his actual gesture that this gesture always has the same meaning and when you can identify this gesture and the meaning that you know what it’s all about.
But this can be true but it does not have to be true. This photographic kind of body reading seems to be popular because it misleads to a, I will call it, instant body-reading.
Body-language has to be of course regarded, and I hope you will agree to this, under various perspectives. At least it is always as I told you about some weeks ago, expression of the other and my own impression as observer. And of course result of the specific culture.
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