Semantic AdjustmentTM
Semantic Adjustment is a personal counseling method for clarifying a person's thinking that is based on General Semantics. General Semantics is a subject dealing with how our use (and abuse) of language causes most of our difficulties in dealing with life and others. Its premise is that a person goes through life defining everything based on observation, the assertions of others, and his or her own conclusions. However, each of those input avenues is prone to error, and the mental map that results is always at least a bit off from actual reality. In most cases, it is significantly off. Wherever the map is not the territory it represents, one gets into trouble following the map instead of dealing directly with reality.
The theory is well-described by the "Father" of General Semantics, Alfred Korzybski, in his seminal book, Science and Sanity. The subject has been developed by several subsequent General Semanticists, notably Wendell Johnson, who in People in Quandaries likened the way we intelectually harm ourselves to wrapping ourselves within verbal cocoons, "out from which," Johnson wrote, "we tend not to hatch."
Every activity is a reflection of the thinking of the people who create it, from a simple schoolyard game to an entire national economy. People proceed from their existing takes on the world, life and everything else, and factor all of that directly into how they respond to events, accommodate unexpected developments, and plan for the future.
Semantic Adjustment is an intensive non-evaluative guided introspection procedure which works the client through his or her mental maps and discovers and corrects the habitual fatal errors in the client's thinking so that future calculations will be more accurate. Semantic Adjustment is a Q&A process that does not involve the practitioner in telling the client anything. Rather it draws all relevant information and solutions out from the client's own thinking and understanding, in the highest Socratic tradition.
Semantic Adjustment is non-psychological in nature, but does as a matter of course include a confessional aspect that invites three restrictions regarding its delivery.
- The privacy and personal considerations that arise with respect to Semantic Adjustment prohibit it from being a required service in any way. While we do make each mentoring client aware of this service, that is only an offering: if they don't actually request it, we do not proceed into it.
- In furtherance of the privacy considerations regarding Semantic Adjustment, under no circumstances will we or our practitioners identify any client as partaking of the service, or confirm or deny its application to any client, or testify as to any possible or suspected content arising within any Semantic Adjustment consultation which may or may not have occurred.
- The confessional aspect of Semantic Adjustment demands that any such work be entirely private and totally confidential. We guarantee that confidentiality by restricting the delivery of this service to one-on-one sessions facilitated by qualified undenominated religious practitioners certified to hear, and guaranteed to respect the sanctity of, confession.
Now is the time to get the rest of the way on track. Contact us and we'll get you moving.
