Previous chapter: 3. What effect do words have?
4. Can fatal words be avoided or neutralised?
At this point, we intend to reflect systematically on approaches to solve this problem.
What would be the ideal goal? The answer is simple: the patient should be enabled to live permanently in complete harmony with himself and the world around him.
What approaches could lead towards this goal? The patient and his social environment are usually too inexperienced and also too strongly subjectively predisposed to be successful if left on their own. The relevant complex of problems must initially be analysed very carefully and isolated, so that specific solutions can be developed and their chance of success can be estimated realistically. Only an experienced therapist could be effective in elucidating, offering help and preparing or demonstrating ways of adapting external and internal factors to achieve greater harmony and contentedness for the patient.
Anyway, in every real situation, internal and external factors interact with each other. For the sake of clarity, the two fundamental approaches are discussed which result from the aim of bringing the patient and his social environment into mutual harmony:
- adaptation by his social environment to the needs (desires, longings, characteristics and conceptions) of the patient
- adaptation by the patient to unchangeable conditions around him
Next chapter: 4.1 Adaptation by the social environment