Steve Andreas > Books Authored > Six Blind Elephants > Chapter 7

Summary

We can change scope by making it larger, smaller, overlapping, or different, and we can do this in time, space, or both. Changing scope usually changes both the amount and kind of information that is attended to. This in turn will often elicit different criteria, and change the way someone categorizes and responds to an experience.

Changing scope is a pure process intervention that can be used with any content. It fully respects your experience, values, criteria, etc., completely free of any imposition of someone else�s values or experience, because any change in categorization arises entirely out of who you are.

Often it will be useful to make a scope larger to include more information, and this can be done in different ways. Expanding the scope of time to include prior causes and later consequences are widely useful to extend the scope of time, and often space as well. Changing the structure of someone�s timeline is another way to accomplish this.

Extending present misery into the distant future is an unwarranted prediction, a misuse of a larger scope. Doing the same with present happiness may feel better, but it can be a invitation to future disappointment.

At other times it will be more useful to reduce scope in order to concentrate attention and exclude distractions that would interfere with a task.

Shifting attention to an overlapping scope is a greater change. Attending to behaviors, thoughts, or feelings that have been ignored is a common example. Taking different perceptual positions��observer� and �other,� as well as �self��is another useful way to go to an overlapping scope. Each position offers a different viewpoint on a problem situation that is often useful in understanding it and resolving it.

A scope that is totally, or almost totally, different is an even greater change in someone�s experience, abandoning all of the previous scope and replacing it with a new one. Metaphor, or Narrative Therapy�s �externalization� are additional ways of taking an observer position in order to gather information and solve problems from this different perspective.

When self/other comparisons cause trouble, they can be replaced by other/other or self/self comparisons, and ultimately dropped altogether.

Experimenting with changing the scope of the mind and body is one way to heal the �mind/body split� and taste the experience of mystics.

Next we�ll explore how category influences scope, which is somewhat less obvious than the impact of scope on category.

�Old age isn�t so bad when you consider the alternative.�

�Maurice Chevalier