In the last NEWS I announced a tool for a Greek dictionary.  This dictionary was constructed on the basis of my reading notes when going through texts of Foucault, Derrida, Hediegger, etc.  These terms are almost always English transliterations.  That is, these texts use the English alphabet for Greek words.  This makes them almost impossible for non-Greek speaking readers to look them up in most Greek-English dictionaries.

So, I have made the practice of collecting definitions whenever I could.  Often I took my definition from the text itself, hoping that the next time I ran across a Greek term it would be in my personal dictionary.

I put this dictionary online because I know others who have similar troubles with Greek words, not because I felt my definitions were authoritative.  It was a kind of "it's better than nothing" sort of position about them.

Now, we are fortunate enough to have someone who actually knows a little Greek to go through the dictionary and offer suggestions.  This is online collaboration at its best.  Perhaps others with knowledge in this area will add to our list of Greek terms we may run across.  Vincent W. Hevern (who provides us with our narrative website in the Postmodern Sites toolbox) is the one who provided this valuable assistance. Thank you Vinny.

But, remember, the purpose of this dictionary is not to help us learn Greek but to help us read English texts that contain Greek words.

The Greek dictionary is the last tool today in the Search Toolbox .
 
 
 
 

Bit by bit I would like to tell you more about my recent experience at the New York East Side Institute for Short Term Psychotherapy with Fred Newman and Lois Holzman.

I had met Lois Holzman before when I attended the Newman play with PMTH subscriber Helen Shoemaker, but I did not talk with Holzman very long at that time.  This time, in person, I found her warm and friendly very reasonable, very likeable, and also very industrious.  She now feels like a friend.

I must say, however, that the conference and training program put Fred Newman at center stage, so much so that I can now see why critics such as Ian Parker would see him as a guru -- because everyone, myself included, seemed to be eager to hear his next word.

But please understand,  this man is not guru-like in his presentation.  He is softwpoken, and at times almost shy.  He presents himself both humbly and very credibly.  He invites people to talk and listens to what they say.  And when he does speak, he seems to say very reasonable things.

Other people who listen often thought so, too.  For example, Newman has a weekly radio show and one day during the training we listened to broadcast.  People called in and asked questions.  The most notable thing about Newman's responses was that they were never pat.  That is, they were always distinctively responsive to the caller's framework.  I am sure every caller felt heard and appreciated.  All the callers were positive in their response to him.

For example, one caller remarked something like, "Why is it that you sound so reasonable when all around seems to be going off the deep end?"

Nevertheless, and this is what was most remarkable about Fred Newman, he does Wittgensteinian deconstructions as part of his therapy. Can you imagine?  And he seems to do this regularly.  Moreover, I think he did it with great artistry and he taught me a thing or two as to how to go about it.
 
 
 

So, today I bring you his first posted message.  It's an announcement of a conference planned for the Taos Institute, in Taos New Mexico, April 8-10.

I first heard of the Taos Institute on PMTH and I believe it was from PMTH subscriber, Tom Strong.  If I recall, he was explaining the notion of "appreciative inquiry," a concept associated with this institute.  Maybe Strong would be kind enough to tell us a little more about appreciative inquiry and help us evaluate the happening that we might attend.  Wouldn't it be fun if some of us could meet there?

At any rate, click here to learn more about the conference.
 
 
 
 

Last week I announced a conference being put on on Appreciative Inquiry by the Taos Institute that Kenneth Gergen and Shiela McNamee are associated with. (Click here for that article.).  The question is, of course: What is appreciative inquiry?

We have help in answering that question from our own Tom Strong who contributes, this week, another article to PMTH NEWS.  It is a helpful article and if you are wondering what appreciative inquiry is, I recommend you read it.

The concerns of appreciative inquiry remind me of Solution Focused Therapy (SFT).  Both frameworks seem to be noticing that psychotherapy enhances problems if it stays within the language-game of problems.  But what do we focus on if we do not focus on problems?  Perhaps appreciative inquiry and SFT have different answers.  Let's try to find out.

Regarding the appreciative inquiry folk, I have learned that by contacting Dawn Dole you can be put on the appreciative inquiry snail mail newletter mailing list so that you can learn about additional events that will acquaint you  with what these people have to say.  I have received my first newsletter, and I assure you, they have quite a lot to say.  There are many publications, and although the term "appreciative inquiry" is not always in the title, the folks who are invested in "appreciative inquiry," who present at the conferences, publish a lot.  Moreover, you will recognize many of their names:   Aside from Kenneth Gergen and Shiela McNamee, there is, for example,  Harlene Anderson of Collaborative Language Systems.

Sounds interesting, doesn't it?
 

Well, I'm back folks, after spending a week in New York learning more about the stuff that Fred Newman and Lois Holzman do.

I have a much better picture of it all now, and over the next few weeks I will try to give you a picture of it through my eyes.

First, let me take you inside their New York offices.  If you would have gone with me, you would have walked into a large foyer that has a homey feel.  Right in front of you would have been a large reception desk with several friendly "receptionists" behind it, talking, doing things among themselves and with patrons and staff who were going this way and that.  One of them would have turned your way and welcomed you with a smile.  Likely the smiling face would have been an actor in one of the Newman plays or perhaps a psychiatrist that volunteers time one day a week to the organization.

Off to your left would have been a box office where you could buy tickets to the latest Newman play.  To your right you would find a stand that sells a large and  varied stack of Newman/Holzman books.  Behind you, would be the theatre (of quite respectable small theatre size), and behind that a large volunteer office where perhaps 25 people could work.

Still standing in the foyer, however, and looking straight ahead, as you might having just stepped out of the elevator, you would look into the East Side Institute for Short Term Therapy.  Following your nose into this center, you would find work stations scattered between large comfortable therapy offices. People would nod and smile as you walked through.  Most of these people, I understand, are enthusiastic volunteers.

What happens in these offices?  Too much to tell all at once, and besides, there is so much happening that even with all the time I spent, I'm not sure I yet have a full picture of it all.  But through the next few weeks I will give you bits and snatches until you, too, can begin to glimpse the goings-on.  Let me remind you in the meantime , that PMTH subscribers Joyce Dattner and Murray Dabbey (whom I met in New York) are busy setting up parallel centers in their respective cities.

I am awed, folks, by the sheer size and energy of this postmodern group but more delighted by their philosophy and the creative way they weave it through their work. You should certainly know more about this group. If you're in New York, and you want to call them (they offer training), here's a phone number: 212-941-8906.

At the conference they hosted on Thursday, there must have been 500 people in the audience.  It was held in a huge ballroom of a fancy hotel.  On the stage, in addition to Fred Newman, were a series of panels of impressive people talking about, largely,  their own contributions, and their own ideas, especially as they related to the Newman/Holzman organization.  At one point, Kenneth Gergen, whom you have heard a lot about on this list, stood on the stage with a microphone, mesmerizing the audience with a talk about the growth of his own postmodern thinking.

There's lots to tell folks, and I will tell more.  I will sprinkle articles in this newsletter from time to time.  As enthusiastic as I am, I do not want to drown out other voices.  As large as this faction of the postmodern spirit is, there are other important voices in our midst, and you, of course, are one of those.

It was a great trip, but, as always, it feels good to be back home and back online with all of you.
 
 

To keep things clearer, I am going to give the follow-up articles on a topic the same name but precede that name with a number that tells you the number of the article in the series.  There is an example of this new practice in today's newsletter.
 

There is an important name in postmodern writing today that PMTH posters have not mentioned lately.  I refer to the writing of George Lakoff and his frequent co-author Mark Johnson.

Lakoff teaches us about the way in which our ordinary language contains implicit metaphors that guide our thinking. For example, in that last sentence I have portrayed language as containing metaphor.  Objectively, it would be just as correct to talk of metaphor infecting language.  Neither word (containing or infecting) are entailed by the reality of language.  Either will work.  Yet one is much more positive than the other so it could make a difference to us which metaphor came to mind.

Lakoff's idea is that metaphor like this is implicit in all our language, and that it often captures our imaginations and causes us to think of the world within the poetic analogy that our language happens to contain.  Captives that we are, we tend to be oblivious, so Lakoff argues, to very real alternative ways of thinking.

A key point Lakoff and Johnson make that you ought to consider is that philosophical argument in our culture is thought of on the model of war.  Think about it.  In talking about philosophical argument we talk about "winning" and "losing" the "battle"  or of "defeating" certain ideas.

Now, most of you know that I am very inspired by Lyotard, but I have one huge criticism of his philosophy, at least as it would apply to therapy.  Lyotard thinks of paralogy as war.  What we need, he tells us,  in this postmodern era,  is a
 

I have argued in two papers (1998b)
(1998c) that paralogy not only can flourish in a non-agonistic atmosphere, but that therapy (or postmodern analysis) requires us to discover non-agonistic ways to promote it -- if we want the process to be paralogical.

I will write more about this later.  There are a several relevant authors on this topic that I would like to tell you about.

But, you tell me how it strikes you?  Can paralogy flourish in a therapy session that is not agonistic?  That is, can we hope that meaning can change in the therapy conversation for both therapist and client, as Goolishian and Anderson suggest?  Is such paralogy possible without agonistic debate?
 

For the last few days we have had a lively conversation on PMTH about pros and cons of postmodern education, that is education that is not based in face to face meeting between students and teachers but, instead, takes place online.

There are two themes to this conversation.  Postmodern education represents a threat to the tenure track professor who sees online education much as Noble  sees it.  That is, the new online trend appears to jeopardize the security of tenure track positions.  Here we have a lot of issues to work out.  Not all of us are tenure track professors.  Online teaching opens up new job possibilities in the same breath that it threatens others.  Also, if jobs are threatened, it is because professors would not own their online courses.
But it is still unclear if professors will have no ability to hang onto their online course construction.  If legal precedent for that can be established, then the job security for professors who create such courses may well be enhanced.

The second theme has to do with the quality of such education.  I hope we talk more about this aspect of the issue.  Andy Lock mentioned the advantages of what he called the "asynchronicity" of online communication.  What he means by this is our ability to create a conversation without all being physically in the same spot and time zone.  We can post at our convenience.  I think we need to explore, also,  the advantages of hypertext on the web, that is, the web's ability to create interfaces that lnk to explanatory material and material that elaborates points.  None of us have honed our skills sufficiently in this medium.

To this end, I would like to see PMTH subscribers pool their understanding of writing web pages so as to combine in our efforts to make successful collaborative hypertexts.   We are on the frontier of a new era and we need to experiment a bit before things become ossified.  It is a time in which we can be influential, enhance the chances of a better course product for students,  if together we can develop a better light bulb among ourselves.
 

Our Wittgenstein reading will start a new phase when old times readers join the newer group of readers.  The newer group of readers have spent the last few months catching up with the first group of readers.  From this point on we will read together.

The readers are: Judy Weintraub, Harry Korman, his brother Ulf Korman, David Pocock, Diana Cook, and Nick Drury.  I have listed them more or less in the order in which they joined the reading.  I am leading the reading, in the sense that I post the initial aphorism with my commentary and commit myself to respond to the questions and comments of the other readers.  The readers, however, frequently respond to each other's readings and the conversation with me is not meant to be just my response.  Often there is some back and forth interaction  (To find out more about the Wittgenstein readings, go the relevant philosophers tool box and click on Wittgenstein.)

We will start this new phase when the newer readers finish with aphorism #50 in the Philosophical Investigations.  They are currently reading aphorism #49.
 

I have a few more tools to offer you in the PMTH TOOL BOX bar .  In the Postmodern Perspectives Toolbox, you'll see a new link for John Shotter.  If you follow that link, you'll find a page of links.  If you click on his book link, Conversational Realities, you'll see an annotated excerpt that I have put together.  If you are unfamiliar with Shotter's work, I hope it will give you a glimpse of what is so exciting it.  He should be particularly interesting to those of you studying Wittgenstein.

And, while you're at it, look down at the next tool box in the tool bar.  See the new one on electronic publishing?  I hope to give you more links in this tool box soon.  But, even today, it will take you to articles on how to cite things you read on the web and how to distribute your own articles electronically within the guidelines of the APA, important things to be clear about in our postmodern age.
 

Aside from correcting a few more broken links in our PMTH TOOL boxes, I bring you one more tool today.  If you go the "Postmodern Perspectives" tool box you will see that I have connected up the tool linking to a page on Kenneth Gergen.

If you are not familiar with Gergen's writing, I hope you will review some of the material here.  Gergen is a thoughtful and highly influential social psychologist whose writing is on the forefront of postmodern thinking in psychology.  So, if you don't know his work, please do check it out.  And, if you do know his work, you might refresh your memory about some of his memorable writing by clicking on this tool.
 

Well, I'm just about ready to wrap things up here and fly off to the big apple.  I'll do so tomorrow with a briefcase full of things to read to prepare me for learning about the Holzman/Newman school of therapy.  It promises to be a real adventure.  And when I return, I will tell you all about it.

I will be out of touch with my computer, though,  while I'm away, which will be from February 3rd through February 9th.  During this time I will leave you in the capable hands of the co-list administrator for PMTH, Leonard Bohanon, and he has the backup of the consulting group, Craig Smith, Tom Hicks, Katherine Levine, Peter Rober and Solomon Yusim.  Although some of these people do not post often, whenever there are tricky decisions to make, which turns out to be almost never, these people are ready with prompt and sage advice.

So, please write Bohanon if you have any questions about PMTH, subscribing, unsubscribing, changing your subscription options, and so forth.  He'll likely tell you what you need to knkow.

But, PMTH NEWS will wait until I get back for resumption.  When I do return, however, I will look over all of the notes that have been posted in my absence.
 
 

We postmoderns know that the future of education holds a world of promise.  This promise is made possible not only by our incredulity of metanarratives, of course, but by the revolutionary communication possibilities of the internet.

The educational possibilities include not only the communities that share informative posts, but live lectures with students able to turn video cameras on themselves in order to ask a question.  And then, with a click of a mouse, the teacher might take the class  through cyberspace to show an example of a point being made.  And all of this will be done with the students sitting comfortably in their homes in their respective countries while the great outdoors breathes freer because of the reduction in commuter pollution.

Internet courses of some kind are not just a pipe dream.  They are already happening.  Take a look at what California, for example, is offering by way of the internet in the area of psychology.  And international conferences are abuzz with plans to expand their possibilities.

Ah, but there's a hitch.  What is it?  There is a class of people, and perhaps you're one, that finds the idea of cybereducation ominous. Last summer nearly 900 professors at the University of Washington signed a petition expressing their apprehension about colleges offering courses over the Internet.  Part of the reason for the revolt, apparently, is that these innovations threaten the very jobs of professors in traditional institutions with competition from the commercial sector. Fair enough.  That is enough to make anyone insecure.  Professors have worked hard for their positions.

The threat to professor's jobs is very real, but problems like this are not enough to reverse the fortunes of the virtual university.  Even if professors make their (questionable) cases that cyberspace offers a lesser education, university will have too much pressure on their bugets to ignore the promise.  Online courses are already a key saving big bucks -- and universities must be budget conscious because their budgets are increasingly stretched.

The promise of the new technology will not be stiffled by protesting professors even if there ar losses  .  New commercial associations like Educause will profit from their vision of how to move education into our postmodern era  and innovative wise professors will join to help shape the new vision..

But what will it be?  You and I are part of the culture that will give birth to these new educational dreams and possibilities.  And I hope that one of the things we do is rethink the notion that education should be
 

And, if  here in our cybernet community we have the resources before us to revision our own evolving education as we teach each other and collaborate to pool our understandings, then we have the resouces to dream about the future of the educational  institution.  The cybernet educational community is a bandwagon, folks, and those who do not jump on will be left behind.

But first, what will it be?  Is this new education happening now in PMTH?  How?  Or why not?  Can we pin it down locally and provisionally in our language?  Can we give an imaginative face to a future that we can glimpse?

What should the future for education be?
 

New poster on PMTH, Don Smith, draws our attention to the dark side of postmodern education by pointing to an article by David Noble.  (You can access this article by clicking here.)

I haven't read this article yet, but let me offer a brief summary of the apparently well written article by giving you an excerpt from the abstract.  Noble says:
 

I'll try to look at this article in the next few days and see what I think.  One thing I will look for is whether Noble notices the promising possibilities, too, or whether he is content to shout alarm.

But, however Noble writes his paper, Smith is right to call it to our attention to it.  Noble gives us is an opportunity to be educated by critique .  I look forward to this.

A nostalgic voice, may have the potential to awaken us from a naive formulation of electronic education, but it is unlikely to turn back the clock.   I believe electronic education is the wave of the future.  Neverthless, there are many ways in which this future can be formulated.  Will Noble help us avoid the more unfortunate ones?
 

I wish you would glance at the new page that tells you about Tom Strong's publications.  A page like this will help me study his work help you know  what he thinks about things, engage him meaningfully in discussion and re-evaluation of the issues at hand.

And, because the APA now says it is okay to send an electronic manuscript to anyone who requests it for scholarly purposes, you can get a full text of any of these articles on request.

I have a few of my own articles annotated much like this in our general reference sheet.  But, I like the way this sheet of an individual's work looks and I think I'll do some of my stuff in this format, too.

Won't you put together a sheet on your own work for me to publish?  Just write it up and send it my way.
 

If you are still thinking DSM is your key for discovering the scientific truth about your client, then take a look at Paula Caplan's book "They Say You're Crazy."  Val Lewis has given you some notes from her reading of this book.  Let it whet your appetite for reading the text itself.

Caplan's book is an expose of the politics hidden behind the the DSM IV.  She writes with a deconstructive pen much like Jeffrey Masson, whom she thanks in her acknowledgements.  That is, she is not an outsider speculating about the inner workings of something she knows nothing about.  Caplan was privy to the very negotiations that shaped the DSM that she now critiques.  Reject her findings if you must, but don't bury your head in the sand and fail to read her.

Let me give you a few words to give  you a flavor of this treatise:
 

I have added a few more tools in the blue stripe tool bar.  One is Dissertation Abstacts, which I urge you to check out.  You will need to set up a profile to use it, but it is apparently free.  And you will have complete access to 1998 dissertations at least.  Today when I did a search I found many instances of disserations,  with the word "postmodern" in the abstract, which stands in contrast to what you will find if you do a search on this term after pressing the APA abstracts tool.   (Click here to find the Dissertation Abstract tool.)

And, I have added two tools to the Relevant Philosophers Icon.  First, there is a tool taking you to information on Bakhtin, about whom I have recently waxed enthusiastically. Then, there is a new tool taking you to information on Vygotsky.  Both of these philosophers are key thinkers for visionary postmoderns who hope to find new ways to make sense of doing therapy in the postmodern world, a world in which we are no longer naive believers in the scientific sounding language of traditional social science.

Thanks to all of you who have contributed articles to these new topics, as well as to others who are preparing articles now.

It goes without saying, I presume, that these topics will be elaborated with more articles and information.  Please submit ideas and articles to me personally if you are interested in having  them included. I prefer that your submissions be in ASCII (text without formatting codes).  ASCII is what is produced by Email that is not set to do fancy graphics.  I am also able to read Word Perfect 5 documents, but as of the present I am not able to read documents in Word.

I prefer your documents to be short, under one thousand words.  Documents are subject to minor editing if I feel that they are not stand-alone articles.  That is, articles cannot use pronouns and other means to reference material not available within the article itself unless you can make that information available through a link.  I, will, however, add links to your document so as to connect references, names, and terms to PMTH databases.