Time to benefit from the unconscious
Are you using the results of psychological tests for your work? And are they mostly explicit tests? Maybe it is time to try something new.
The dictate of a framework of thought
It happens mostly unconsciously: The way in which we perceive the world and act in it is dictated by a framework of thought. A framework that focuses on the snippet of reality that is important to us, that includes things and marginalises others. To physicist that is often about marginalised areas oriented and mechanistic conception of the world still dominates this framework. According to him, things get recognised that can be reproduced, that are unambiguous, quantifiable, without contradictions and causally justifiable. The consequence of accepting the ideals of unambiguity, consistency, and causal justification on today’s way of working with people: A blind spot in psychology, a subject that is often about marginalised areas. There are aspects for which throwing out old thinking frameworks are worth the while.
Time for a new framework
In science and for consulting services, the unconscious grows increasingly important in people’s experiences and behaviours. Individuality and uniqueness are becoming the norm. Even the ICD, probably the world’s most important classification handbook for psychology, considers this aspect in its eleventh edition. Imposed unambiguousness give way to plurality and a simultaneity of the seemingly contradictory. The old framework of thought does not help us deal with this development.
The limits of old thinking frameworks
The implicit visual questionnaire, the Visual Implicit Profiler (VIP)®, also measures the unconscious elements of a personality. But how can to visualise what is, by nature, invisible? The VIP is a dynamic typologies-type method and thus offers a description of types, including analysis, quantification, and results – all along the lines of old thinking framework procedure. As a result, particularly people who are not unambiguous (to put it simply), but rather multifaceted, tend to find it difficult to recognise themselves in their test results.
A playful approach to our selves
Children often cope with whatever they are dealing with by means of playing, by creating small scenes, for instance. It is their way of processing, of understanding, what they experience. Grown-ups, to a certain extent at least, remain playful beings. What we are is not just the sum of their explicit knowledge, we are also how we relate to others in games, in small scenes, in their social surroundings. Parts of the unconscious do not lie in the depth of a person’s soul, in this understanding, but on the outside. The unconscious is the part of the behaviour we cannot comprehend.
Synthesis rather than analysis
Part of the VIP evaluation is therefore provided in the form of professional roles that are drawn from the test result. Roles, such as “acting as mediator” or “challenging things” can serve as focal points for conversations with a consultant or coach, as a test person can “try on” such rules. In doing this, he or she can recognise and understand unconscious resources by linking scenes of such roles to their own story, relationship experiences, social conventions, preferences and imagination and experience as self-compatible. All this happens in a consistently positive framework of thought that people will perceive as constructive and motivating. They can benefit from the unconscious without dispensing with established aspects.