Invited Address Delivered at the 101st Convention of the American Psychological Association
Toronto, August 20, 1993
This morning I would like to talk with you about the evolution of a psychotherapeutic paradigm—by that I mean a way of looking at human behavior and the human mind that makes it possible to work therapeutically with people. It is a paradigm that is very familiar to us because it is behind the psychotherapy used by a very large segment of practitioners. According to this paradigm, our minds are divided. In one part, we figure things out and make decisions with awareness and reflection, and we can account for what we think and decide. In another part, we carry on mental activity that does not breach our consciousness. As a result, we experience feelings and impulses that baffle us because we remain unaware of the thinking behind them. According to the paradigm I am describing, we are more than the consciousness we know and experience every day. We have another, hidden consciousness, different from a normal one. I call this way of looking at things the alternate-consciousness paradigm…