How do I fantasize my relationships to be?

"What would you be if I were not? What would I be if you were not?- J. L. Moreno

Many times you may feel that you have no choice over the family you were born in, the work you are in, or the mate you are with, or the way your life is going.

Contrary to what most people believe, there is considerable support for the belief that, "I choose my whole life and I always have. I choose my behavior, my feelings, my thoughts, my illness, my body, and my reactions, my spontaneity, my death.[1]

The noted physicist, Dr .Fred Alan Wolf, in an interview with Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove, in the "Thinking Allowed" television series, stated that he believed "what we interpret" is "what we create" when he said, "I'm talking about that interpretation is equivalent to creation -- that there really is no fixed, solid past, and that when you go back and look at the past, what you're doing is making an interpretation which will best rationalize the present position you're now holding." [2]

Whereas many people may think "reality" is some fixed solid fact, quantum physics seems to be telling us that the "objective world" out there is inseparable from the "inner world" of our machinations.

I allude to the paradoxical cube analogy, for example, as depicted by Fred Wolf, in his book titled, Taking the Quantum Leap, to illustrate that the universe seems to consist of facts and their set of opposites simultaneously. As with the paradoxical laws of quantum physics, so too follow the laws of the universe and the laws of the human mind.

8000.jpg (5415 bytes) Look at the cube. What are the facts? Is the cube a fixed set of eight points and twelve connecting lines, or is it an ambiguous abstraction visualized as a cube? Can you see both the finite connecting lines and the cube as an abstraction simultaneously? Is it now clear that when we have been accustomed to thinking that everything has a solid fixed surface, that even this abstraction seems like a solid cube?

As a practicing psychotherapist and college professor, I often assist clients, and students, to sort out the paradoxical solid "cubes" that exist in their interpersonal relationships. Gay and Kathleen Hendricks have stated it so succinctly in their book titled, Centering and the Art of Intimacy ," when they wrote that "Projection begins the moment we forget we are in charge of creating the experience we are having."[3] The social atom is a projection technique ,i.e., a set of procedures that provide ambiguous stimuli to which we respond with our own interpretations, which may assist in increasing our awareness of the blind, and unknown areas represented by the of the Johari Window.

Many times you may feel that you have no choice over the family you were born in, the work you are in, or the mate you are with, or the way your life is going. You may want to recreate the perfect family the past or a perfect relationship, etc. For example, imagine a family you would have liked to have had. Select the age when it would have been important to you. List the family members below .

Draw your fantasized social atom. Draw it so that you think it is perfect. Use circles as female figures, triangles as male figures, and use a square to indicate objects, things or ideas. See my example as illustrated in My Original Social Atom.

Comment on the following:" What would you be if I were not? What would I be if you were not?"-Moreno, J.L., What you have learned? Is it possible that everything is perfect? You may be surprised to find out the most common definition of the word "perfect".

1.Will Schutz, Profound Simplicity, Will Schutz Associates, Inc.,1982, p.25 2.
http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~sai/wolf.html, Thinking Allowed Productions, 2560 ninth Street Suite 123, Berkley, CA.94710
3..Gay Hendricks, and Kathlyn Hendricks, Centering and the Art of Intimacy, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1985, p 61