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VALUES BASED® COUNSELING
with Kelly Patrick Gerling, Ph.D. Serving the Seattle Area |
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CONCEPTUAL BLENDING |
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One of the great breakthroughs in cognitive science is conceptual blending theory. Along with a slightly older theory of cognitive metaphor, this new theory brings forth a whole new picture of human thinking. It combines the more traditional psychological functions such as memory, perception, language syntax, learning, emotion, personality, intelligence with patterns of metaphor and mental imagery. The best way I can summarize the integrating, unifying effect of conceptual blending theory is this: our early, ordinary, common, everyday experiences as toddlers and children create the basisthrough metaphorfor more abstract adult thinking. Our thoughts then form images that we subsequently blend and re-blend as we come to form a complex, interwoven, adult, worldview. This worldview includes the way we conceive of our self and how we conceive of others; the way we imagine space and time; they way we harness our past, or are limited by it; they way.
Such a worldview can become rigid and fail to adapt to new situations, causing problems that seem unsolvable. Or it can be a growing, learning, exciting, expanding way of looking at, hearing, and seeing the world and our place in it. How? By understanding the processes by which our own worldview came to exist, how it formed early in life, and how it is now constructed, we can gain insights into how we can embrace, extend and enrich our worldviewour day-to-day thinking-so as to solve our problems, create new dreams and ideals, and pursue them vigorously. The best book I have studied that summarizes the idea of conceptual blending is The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind's Hidden Complexities by Mark Turner and Gilles Fauconnier. The great insight that conceptual blending theory offers is that our thinking is based on concepts that we can change. Our problems cannot be solved by the concepts that created themimproved concepts are required for solving our problems. By knowing how your worldview arose, and its basic patterns, you can choose to enhance it in particular ways to serve you goals. With this idea, your own thoughts can be turned back on themselves to form a self-learning operation to enhance thinking. Like putting a new program into a computer, you can put new concepts into your mind. My job is to help you answer questions like: What concepts serve you well? What concepts get in your way or form obstacles to your own quest for fulfilling your life's destiny? How do you choose new concepts? How do you develop them as replacements for old concepts that you want to modify or even abandon? |
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METHODS
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TYPES OF SERVICE
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GETTING STARTED
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RESOURCES
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