John Schinnerer
1 min readOct 11, 2023

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Good on you for keeping at this. "Therapy" is also an iterative approach - a process, not an end product.

A fascinating-to-me aspect of principles and practices you're identifying is this: when we look at indigenous/aboriginal social structures and processes throughout human history, we find a considerable number of them with essentially similar qualities - generative rather than destructive, reflective rather than projective, collaborative rather than divisive, and so on. As well as plenty with qualities similar to current default culture, of course.

As a species, we've been here before, countless times, and done 'politics' - and 'therapy' - lots of different ways. Which is also a response to comments of type "this is how it's always been" - because clearly it hasn't, even in recent history of majority-vote democracy.

On another note, you could also look at meta-themes. For example I observe a theme among multiple responses of trauma around 'therapy' itself. Which is not surprising, in a culture with a fundamental story that 'therapy' is only for 'messed-up' people. Merely to contemplate, more so participate in, 'therapy', may be traumatic itself in our social context.

In contrast, imagine a society where what we separate out as 'therapy' - or functionally equivalent structures, processes, and practices - is baked into ordinary, everyday behavior. Nothing we have to think about - we just do life that way. Of course we get different results as well. And, those results would seem just as "normal" - and to some, "inevitable" - as those we get from what we do now.

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John Schinnerer
John Schinnerer

Written by John Schinnerer

A generalist in a hyper-specialized society. "How we do what we do is who we are becoming." - Humberto Maturana

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