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Keith E Rice's Integrated SocioPsychology Blog & Pages

Aligning, integrating and applying the behavioural sciences

Robert Dilts’

MeshWORKS

Updated: 21 September 2016 A MeshWORK can be described as a structured approach to addressing all needs in all appropriate ways at all levels for the overall good. While many models can illustrate fragments of a situation in greater depth and many different applications, techniques, therapies and other interventions will be pertinent in varying contexts, the core of a MeshWORK needs to be built on the Gravesian approach or a similar model (such as, perhaps, Jane Loevinger’s (1976)) for mapping the ever-emerging diversity of thinking in human nature. The MeshWORK concept originated from Spiral Dynamics co-developer Don Beck’s work in South Africa, helping design the early-mid-1990s South African transition from Apartheid to multi-cultural democracy. For approximately 17 years off-and-on (1981-98) Beck – in consultation with Clare W Graves until his death in 1986 – worked behind the scenes in South Africa. He used Graves’ model to facilitate the leaders of the main factions in moving beyond race and politics, to map out what Nelson Mandela later called ‘the Rainbow Nation’. By getting the leaders of the retrospective parties to think about people in terms of their thinking, rather than the colour of their skin, Beck enabled them to move on from the unhealthy and divisive memes… Read More

North Lincolnshire CIT

Investing in the Team…to invest in the Community! written with Jenny Gavin-Allen Updated: 1 October 2004 In early 2002 David Burnby was doing some extended work as a freelance facilitator and consultant with North Lincolnshire Council’s Community Investment Team. In conversation with Team Manager Jenny Gavin-Allen, he talked several times about a Psychology course he had undertaken training in the previous Summer, An Introduction to Spiral Dynamics & Related Models of Neuro-Linguistic Programming. For David, in part at least, the course was something of a life-changing experience. Both challenged by the models presented in the workshop programme and emboldened by the understanding they gave him, he subsequently quit his lucrative position as Director of Common Purpose in Hull to fulfil his frustrated ambition of working as an independent operator. Listening to him so talk enthusiastically about the models and their applicability to community regeneration issues, Jenny was intrigued. David then let on that his enthusiasm for the course was so great he had decided to promote and stage the next programme – the third to be delivered in Hull – under his own name – thus allowing me, as course facilitator, to concentrate purely on delivery. Naturally David invited Jenny to… Read More

Neurological Levels

Updated: 28 May 2016 The Neurological Levels concept was developed by Robert Dilts (1990) taking much of his inspiration from the work of Gregory Bateson (leading anthropologist, philosopher and seminal figure in the early development of NLP – particularly his Logical Levels of Learning construct (1972). For this model of abstracted levels of what we learn and how it affects us, Bateson himself drew on the Logical Typing of mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell (1910). Taking his cue from Bateson, Dilts conceived a hierarchy of levels the mind uses to order its relationship with the world. Dilts linked these ‘Logical Levels’ to neurological functions and structure of the brain. Thus, Neurological Levels! While the supposed ‘logicality’ of the model has been attacked and the way Dilts’ has used neurology is sometimes open to question – see Peter McNab’s Article, Aligning Neurological Levels -a Reassessment (1999) – almost everyone who has worked with the model testifies to its power to describe what we might call Nominal Level Adaptation. (See: Integrated SocioPsychology.) In other words, the match of Identity – and the Values & Beliefs which flow from Identity – to the Environment in which we find ourselves. The key to a healthy psyche (selfplex),… Read More

Integrated SocioPsychology

Updated: 20 December 1920 ‘Integrated SocioPsychology’ is the term I have coined for developing a highly-practical and integrated approach to the behavioural sciences… Integrated – the aim is to learn how all the elements of the behavioural sciences and the complementary ‘hard’ sciences’ of Biology and Neuroscience fit together to explain… Psychology – how and why people think and behave as they do in different contexts in different times… Socio – taking into account group dynamics and the influence of culture and the society people live in as those cultures and societies morph and change This page provides a basic overview of the Integrated approach and how the key models link together. More specific detail on the individual models is available on their linked pages. Psychology, Sociology and Anthropology are fractured fields of study, with several different (and often competing!) schools of thought and even areas of exploration. The history of the behavioural sciences is littered with disputes both between those competing schools (which are accepted academically) and also between academia and ‘fringe’ or ‘alternative’ approaches such as Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). The structure of an Integrated approach Integration is made possible by building the structure of SocioPsychology around the frame of… Read More

Theory

‘Integrated SocioPsychology’ is the name I have coined for the meta-approach I am developing – along with several other key thinkers – to integrate and align the many theories and schools/disciplines in the behavioural sciences. The overarching framework of this construct is 4Q/8L and the vMEMES of the Gravesian approach. Together they form undoubtedly the most advanced mapping of the ebb and flow of human motivational systems, both at an individual and a collective/cultural level. How vMEMES influence the identities and values & beliefs we hold in our selfplex and how they play out in our interaction with the external environment can be monitored via Robert Dilts’ Neurological Levels model. With the aid of Reciprocal Determinism we can see how memes – external ideas – are internalised into our own internal schemas via the meta-stating process, each stage of which involves one and often more elements of the Cognitive Triad and the attribution process. Temperament – as best defined via Hans J Eysenck’s Dimensions – frequently influences an individual’s behaviour and the interrelationship between temperament and motivation is a key area for exploration in my thoughts on Integrated SocioPsychology. Certainly it would seem some meta-programmes will fluctuate more as motivational patterns… Read More

David Cameron’s right about Multiculturalism BUT…

This past weekend David Cameron pushed forward considerably ideas his predecessors Tony Blair and Gordon Brown had been moving progressively towards …. In essence, this is to say pretty explicitly that, if you want to be British, you need to buy into the British identity and British values. (Ironically, freed from the collective responsibility of Cabinet, Blair on these issues is almost certainly well to the right of Cameron these days – see: ‘Radical Islam’ and the Return of Tony Blair). Cameron criticised ‘state multiculturalism’ and argued the UK needs a stronger national identity to stop people turning to extremism. With MI6 warning last week that Britain faces an “‘unstoppable wave of home-grown suicide bombers”, Cameron could hardly have ignored the threat from radicalised young Muslims; and it seems logical to ascribe their lack of identification with ‘British values’ as one cause of their radicalisation. In his speech on Saturday (5 February) Cameron accused multiculturalism of leading to a Britain of ‘divided tribes’. The prime minister posited that the multiculturalist dogma, which increasingly dominated political and social thinking from the early 1970s on, had meant the majority had to accord each minority ethnic group respect and the freedom to pursue its… Read More

Should the BNP appear on the Beeb?

There are few things guaranteed to get the knickers of the British ‘chattering classes’ in a twist more than the British National Party (BNP). It’s bad enough that they exist at all – that they are gaining significantly in electoral support in 21st Century Britain is simply unbelievable! And now the BBC are considering having them on ‘Question Time’…how utterly disgraceful!! People who vote BNP are clearly small-minded, uneducated, unthinking and immoral racists. It’s a harmonic of the BLUE and GREEN vMEMES which condemns the BNP and which condemns those who vote for them. It’s a variant harmonic of these vMEMES which has led the Equality & Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to take the BNP to court on the charge that the latter’s constitution is discriminatory as it does not allow membership to those of a non-white ethnicity. And it’s another variant harmonic of these vMEMES which has drawn up the forthcoming Equality Bill (2009). The problem with these approaches is that, rather than understand what it is about the BNP that gains support from substantial numbers of people, they attempt to suppress the BNP. However, Nick Griffin and the top echelon of the BNP are smart characters. They have got… Read More

NEETs – are the Tories on the Right Path?

What a pleasure when, from a sociopsychological point of view, some of the politicians appear to be getting it right for once. Or at least partly right! Taking some tentative steps on the right path, maybe…. David Cameron and David Willets have declared they want to solve the ‘NEET problem’ as part of the Conservatives’ plans to sort out ‘Broken Britain’. In case you’re not familiar with ‘NEET’, it’s the acronym for ‘Not in Education, Employment or Training’ – and the London School of Economics says that 18% of 16-17-year-olds are NEETs. (Department of Children, Familes & Schools (DCFS) data about a year ago had the figure at around 11%. (Although we didn’t call them NEETs back then, the focus of the HemsMESH project 1999-2001 was how to make unemployed teenagers more employable. The national average then was said to be 14%.) According to research by think tank Reform, NEETs are more likely than their peers to use drugs, be involved in crime, have poor health and have children young – nearly two-thirds of NEET females were mothers by the age of 21, 6 times the rate in the rest of the population. Willets, Shadow Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities & Skills, has… Read More

Formation more than Education

I find that one of the more interesting aspects of my part-time return to secondary school teaching is that of being a form tutor. The role has a pastoral element built into it not obviously present in classroom teaching or general school management. For someone interested in the development of children and young people and how their psychology affects their performance at school (and beyond), the role of form tutor offers possibilities of making the kind of difference that most other roles in school life don’t. What’s more, a good form tutor can create a climate of trust that enables members of his or her tutor group to open up and confide some of the turbulence going on inside their teenage heads. Recent examples I’ve had to deal with include a 14-year old girl distraught because her mother had started calling her “fat” and “ugly” over the past few months – having previously tended to tell her daughter how beautiful she was. Investigation revealed that the catalyst for the change in Mum’s behaviour was the arrival on the scene of a new serious boyfriend. It looked pretty much to me like Mum was belittling her daughter because the daughter (who was… Read More