Progoff’s Intensive Journal
Based on the philosophy and psychology of Carl Gustav Jung, a student of his, Irra Progov (1921-1998), developed the ‘Intensive Journal Method’. Essentially this process involves writing a journal, but in contrast to some the popular, more ‘arty-ness’ focused journaling processes like ‘The Artist’s Way’, the intensive journal process organizes the journal text into 5 different ‘streams’. These ‘streams’ cover the spectrum of self narration from purely factual logging of events, to the narration of dreams as well as analysis of all of these. In essence, potentially at least, this can facilitate a personal, and in accordance with the trans-personal psychology school of thought, a ‘post-personal’ or transcendent, development of awareness. The various perspectives afforded by this process seem to be an unusually lucid methodology for developing individuals, and potentially a group’s capacity for meta-cognition, particularly since, again in contrast to ‘the Artists’ Way’, the journal-keeper is encouraged to freely review and cross-reference in the text. (Enter trans-personal hyper-text)
‘Sticky-ness’
I’m not sure how ‘sticky’ the process is. Having experimented with presenting the ‘intensive’ journal to first and second year students of ‘Media Design and Technologies’ at Damelin, I was disappointed to find that without constant facilitation, effort with the journal seemed to dry up very quickly once I reduced my acilitation input. This creates a bit of a quandary, as on the one hand there is a lot to be said for facilitation, but on the other, how honest and direct, in other words how valid, can the process be if the journal-keeper’s input is influenced by their relationship with the facilitator? Particularly if the facilitator has access to the text. Without access to the journal content, just how psychic does the facilitator need to be to make a meaningful contribution?
Public and Private Classifications, etc.
Of course it is possible, especially with the addition of a pinch of technology to the mix, for the journal author to classify sections of the text as either public or private. This kind of classification of ‘objects’, is of course one of the corner-stones of object orientated computation. There is nor reason in my mind, why appropriating some contemporary information technology should detract from the quality, intensity, authenticity and intimacy of the trans-personal process space, on the contrary…
This could be further expanded with a qualitative rating system, (which can facilitate the management of auto-spam :- ) ), and user-friendly content representation and processing reducing the experiential prominence of the process, technology and methodology, and in essence creating something similar to the ‘clean-space’ of Grovian inspired Symbolic Moddeling. Reducing the ‘footprint’ of, not only facilitator but also methodology and technology, in the semiotic topography and ecology.
Sense of Coherence
If meta-cognition, especially as understood in the context ‘self-directed learning’ as found in Adult-learning (Andragogy) and the more integral perspective of Partagogy, can be developed and or augmented, by some kind of organized self-organising journaling process, then perhaps the premise of Antonofsky’s Salutogenesis deserves careful consideration.
Well-being is a product of the degree of mutual and harmonic satisfaction
of the parameters of :
Experiential Coherence
(I may look at Kolb’s theory of learning from this point).
In my experience, one of the most pertinent difficulties in the human experience has to do with sub-personal psycho-dynamics and experiential timeframes. In different English, the ‘me’ who did this then is different from the ‘me’ that is now considering what I did then, and thinks it was a really stupid move. I know you know what I mean. I am theorizing, that if a journal process could efficiently not only ‘carry’ but process its content and deliver useful, succinct, timeous feedback and stimulation to its ‘author’, essentially becoming a kind of intra-personal dialogue, this may just make a valuable contribution to the degree of clarity in the mind and person of the author, and even nurture all-round sanity (which often seems in dire straits theses days).
Practically
Of course this could all be achieved by developing a simple plug-in that transforms an ordinary blog into a tool of self-actualisation and conscious transcendence.
To be continued… please leave a comment indicating what, if anything, in the above post you would like to see expanded upon or explored in more depth. ASC.
‘Intra-active Journal’ (working title, Je’anne sugested Interactive Journal in passing, had to kick myself for not ‘getting’ that!)
I’d like to do the progoffs but I’ve been really caught up with enchanted-nightshade. I think though that a progoff plug in would be great, it would allow for the all the different folders and the colours they use in the system, and also have a switch to keep it private or not.
C.
thanks for dropping into my blog.
Using progoffs tools i have found journalling to be even more powerful – many shifts have come out of this type of journal. And Andre, Brett has set up a site for me to blog the journal I’ve done on word … however having never ventured that far into virtual reality, have been teetering at the top of the cliff … might be time to freefall. will get some lessons so I can actually upload to my site…… C