KNOWLEDGE, EXPERIENCE AND EXPERIENCE

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

One of the main tasks in psychotherapy is the transition from the search for new knowledge to the experience of experience. This is an intermediate task leading to the ultimate goal - changes in a person's life, but without it, this goal is unattainable. And then an often encountered contradiction may arise: a person came to a psychologist for knowledge, and he tries to unfold it to experiences

What is the difference between knowledge, experience and experience?

Knowledge (in a broad sense) is the possession of information. Knowledge is realized, classified, generalized in terms and concepts (for better packaging). Hence follows another definition of knowledge: it is a subjective image of reality in the form of concepts and representations. "I know something" = "I have information that gives me a sense of understanding and control." Knowledge can be true and false, the test of knowledge in relation to reality (through practice, experiment or observation) is the criterion of truth or falsity.

Often people come to a psychologist precisely for knowledge: about why this happens to me, and what to do to prevent this from happening, but it would be different. Such a request for knowledge can be explicit, but sometimes it is unconscious: one way or another, no matter what the psychologist does, the client will strive to turn everything into concrete knowledge, hang a tag and be satisfied with a beautiful and informative interpretation that gives the feeling that “now I know that happens to me. " Everything is marked out, except for pieces of information. “Why should I feel all this? Millet tell me … ". Reliance on knowledge is accompanied by the idea that some specific manipulations can be made, and then the desired changes will occur. By the way, this sometimes happens - in the case of rather superficial distortions in the reflection of reality. “Explain what is wrong with me … What should I do? Give me recommendations, I will follow them”- these are some familiar questions focused on the search for knowledge. Relying only on "know" leads to the idea that somewhere there is perfectly accurate and true knowledge that opens all closed doors. And this knowledge is possessed by a specific person, whatever you call him - a psychologist, guru, teacher, mentor … In this situation, the recognition is that you do not yet know what can be done in this situation, that a joint search is important, and not a conversation in style “Question-answer” leads to disappointment and the search for a new “knower”.

A psychologist can also maintain reliance on knowledge, uttering truths and loading the client with more and more new knowledge, which, however, does not affect his condition in any way. As a rule, this comes from the psychologist's fear of disappointing the client who longs for the truth …

It's a different matter - experience.

Experience - direct, conscious and meaningful sensory-emotional process of contact with something. For example, the experience of grief: this is contact with the awareness of the eternal loss of someone very significant, the emotions accompanying this contact and the understanding of grief as a necessary part of saying goodbye to a person. Grief itself may not be experienced, it may remain just an emotional reaction, if it is perceived as a hindrance on the path of an early "return to normalcy." The experience of love: contact with the awareness of the value of the other in its entirety, accompanying this contact of emotions and states (joy, excitement, happiness) and understanding of love as an important fulfillment of one's own life. And so on: the experience of loneliness, fear, powerlessness, guilt … As well as community, intimacy, safety in contact with another person, and much more related to the positive pole.

Experience as a phenomenon is not limited to simple emotions. Emotional people are not necessarily anxious. Emotions - especially in people prone to hysterical reactions - can take over the whole being, making it impossible to comprehend and realize - important components of the experience. These hysterical emotions are the same, they are repeated from the situation and the situation, and therefore do not lead to change. Any new experience has a transformative effect on the personality. People come to a sincere faith in God not because there are convincing arguments ("knowledge") in favor of his existence, but because there is an experience of the presence of God in a person's life. And conscious atheism is a consequence of the experience, but if it is limited to knowledge, it has no roots and support (like faith). This applies to any other changes.

By combining knowledge and experience, we get experience. It is experienced knowledge or knowledge generated by experience. For example, a child knows (from his parents) that fire is painful, but he has no such experience. Touched the flame of a candle - it hurts! Knowledge received a direct experience, which consists of both physical sensations and emotions. Will knowledge now become experience? Yes, but on one condition - the child will no longer touch the candle flame. If he continues, then he has not received experience, because experience is not what happens to us, but what changes us.

Therefore, a person who says he has ten years of work experience does not necessarily have really ten years of experience. He may have one year's experience repeated nine times. Like a teacher or a teacher who, having spent time developing a lesson / lesson, then from year to year reproduces it without any changes or with cosmetic "amendments". In a certain sense, new experience is always destructive - if it is really new, because it contradicts what is already there.

Often lengthy conversations with a psychologist - this is a gradual, step by step, path to a new experience, which, however, is possible only if you allow yourself those experiences that were previously inaccessible. It's complicated. It is hard to experience powerlessness and despair, recognizing the impossibility of something. It is hard to grieve, accepting the fact that a loved one will never be again … For someone an unbearable experience will be the fear of rejection by another person, and this makes it impossible to intimacy. And for someone, the closeness itself scares the fact that in it you are vulnerable, but there is no experience of vulnerability, or it is negative.

In general, new knowledge can become a personality-changing experience only through direct experience. No amount of books, articles, advice or exercises - even the best ones - will help you get rid of, for example, codependency or alcoholism. This requires the experience of despair and powerlessness - conscious and complete. And what "normal person" wants to get such an experience ?!