Guiding Process Comprehension
Comprehension is one of the eight guiding processes of psychodynamics. The guiding distinction lies in the question: “What do I (don’t I) understand?”.
Each person continuously organises his life, through the creation of connections, causalities, calculations of means and purpose, desires and goals. One cannot avoid the ‘meaning’, rather, one continuously constructs it anew. Thus, one can choose if one makes something plausible, or whether one leaves it as implausible. Where one’s own behaviour or that of another person cannot be deduced plausibly, even though one would wish for this, one reduces one’s ability to find a fitting response to the situation. The desire and the necessity to understand oneself and to plausibly understand one’s own self, occurs in many psychological theories. Everyday language also demonstrates this. “That (or he or she) is simply crazy!” is the usual response when one doesn’t understand or cannot explain another person’s behaviour. Therefore, one of the core tasks of every counsellor is to enable or advance understanding, or to interrupt and replace dysfunctional understanding: – “I am simply not capable of anything”, or: – “I always tell myself, as my father used to say, that I am capable of nothing, and I still believe this, just as I believed my father then”.