Focusing Roundtable - Focusing on Politics, Part 3: Changing the Influence of Society’s Political Codes

Focusing Roundtable - Focusing on Politics, Part 3: Changing the Influence of Society’s Political Codes  - Hosted by Dave Young and Gisela Uhl

Thursday, April 15, 2021 from 1:00-3:00 pm EDT (New York - US)

Times worldwide: convert to your time zone

Thank you for participating in the Focusing Roundtables entitled “Focusing on Politics Part 1: Focusing Needs a Structural Political Consciousness” and “Focusing on Politics Part 2: Focusing & Structural Oppression”. We invite you to continue your explorations of this important and timely topic by attending Part 3 of this Roundtable series which will focus on “Changing the Influence of Society’s Political Codes”.

Much of our out-of-awareness thinking and acting is shaped by society’s widespread “political codes” such as, “It’s OK for men to interrupt women when speaking” and “men shouldn’t feel, just act”. These codes are usually taught and maintained by example. And to challenge these political codes is to invite ridicule, as if something is wrong with you, individually. They are internalized controls which function to keep oppression in place.

Gene was concerned about the difficulties and dangers of ignoring these Political Codes. He wrote:

[L]et us bring home to ourselves the real problem of unconscious programming. Let us grant how deeply programmed our bodies really are. However concerned we are with social change, we might create conformity if we are not aware of being programmed. Gendlin, “Philosophical Critique of the Concept of Narcissism”, 1987, p. 5.

And Gene painfully realized that Focusing alone won’t always safeguard us from these effects of political codes. After giving several examples from therapy, he wrote:

We have seen that process-steps can sometimes exceed internalized control.... But focusing steps do not always exceed all internalized controls.... That leads us to formulate the following question: When do these process-steps change the internalized  controls, rather than being dictated by the controls? This question takes us to the heart of the political problem…. Gendlin, “Philosophical Critique of the Concept of Narcissism”, 1987, pp. 36-37

In this Roundtable, we will explore:

• What factors determine the direction of change?
• Does social programming change Focusing results, or do Focusing results change social programming?
• Who benefits when we understand these political codes as merely our own inner psychology?
• What happens when we move from the ‘merely inner’ psychology of self to a self-understanding within the larger system”. (By the larger system here, Gene means the socioeconomic political system. )