I am not a psychologist.  I am a sociologist.  I study how people interact in conversation and how they use language skills for effective outcomes.  Sociologists study human culture and symbols, rules and norms looking for patterns and perhaps causal relationships which may or may not be generalizable.  The purpose is to understand and promote social evolution and reform, which for me is “World Peace one conversation at a time.”

Sociologists can be involved in macro or micro sociology.  Macro refers to evolution of society while micro refers to the everyday human interaction that has caught my attention over the course of my adult life.  I like to understand social interactions and their consequences.

As I write this new book on 40 Degrees in Conversation which is based on the Enneagram, I realize that I am indeed writing an ethnography of each of the regions on the circle that are inhabited by the nine expressions or aspects.  I am writing about the culture of each position and taking the sociological perspective that the mind and the self emerge from the social process of communication.  George Herbert Mead described human perception as socially mediated and states that existence  in community comes before individual consciousness.  He talks about the “generalized other” which represents the expected behaviour of the group

Ethnography requires that I “live among” my subjects and become a “participant observer”.  Years of working in mediation as mediator/participant observer has given me field notes an documentation to support the stories, the narratives of the 9 PULSE BEACHs.  I have conducted informal interviews, direct observations, participated in the life of the group and collective discussions.  I have produced and analyzed personal documents and have generated what I consider a thick and rich description of each of the nine sets of Beliefs, Expectations, Assumptions, Concerns, and Hopes that represent the regions on the PULSE circle or the BEACHs on PULSE Island, to stay with the metaphor.

This is a new approach.  It is not a 40 degree view of the human psyche as it travels from place to place.  It is instead a map and a demographic description of the territory on the ground. It is presented with objectivity and neutrality using cross cultural or cross region comparisons.   Ten years of gathering data has lead to some interesting findings that I am ready to share.

The observer effect in this ethnography is mitigated by the fact that I was acting as mediator or trainer providing service to participants that would actually shift their perspectives and move them to another location on the map.  The theory that emerged from the work was not about the individuals themselves or their psychic landscape.  Instead it gives a demographic understanding of the BEACHs they inhabit or visit on their journey elsewhere.

My intention is to give you a brief view of each of the BEACHs as they are represented in the book over the next few of weeks.  Feel free to contact me if I am not living up to that intention.  It might be the push and the accountability I need to move things forward.  Thanks.

Writing in DC is great today.  I have accomplished a fair amount and still managed email and kept one ear to the wall to listen as the course goes on next door.  Lynda is doing a great job.  It is weird, I have to say, to hear them talking about the author and know that they are talking about me.

Perspective…. distance makes a difference.  Looking at a situation or a tree from a different angle or perch really broadens perspective.  I like that about the world.  Physical distance can give you emotional and intellectual distance.  Everything is integrated.  I guess that’s why Gurdjeiff was referred to as a cosmologist rather than a physchologist or a mathematician. 

“Cosmologists” study the way the world works.  They see the interrelatedness the wholeness of the thing.  It seems to me that no matter where you begin to study how things work, you end up understanding the way things every where work – the cosmology of it.  Whether you start with a study of conversation or physics, biology or personality you end up at the power of three and the power of seven.  It is interesting – that is cosmology. Hmmmm

I am very aware of that from this distance.  Working in another city, away from home is liberating for me.  I must be a seven.  Any thoughts of true five-ness are fading as I watch myself gravitate toward the positive, the up lifting, the fun side of life.  “High Hopes” is still my theme song although I am very comfortable with the detachment BEACH, I still think “All by myself” is a sad song.  Extroverted Five or Pensive Seven?  They both sound like they describe me.  I must still be on the Ferry between the two.

I like the changing view and the way it changes my persception of things.  From here I look very much like a cosmologist myself!!!!

I was listening to tapes about the Enneagram yesterday getting ready to write the PULSE POINTS book or the PULSE BEACHs book, the one about the compulsions and perspectives from the nine beachs of PULSE island.  The BEACHs represent a set of beliefs, expectations, assumptions, concerns and hopes.  There are nine as represented on the Enneagram.  Each is a unique frame of reference for looking at the world and each provides 40 degrees of the truth, the whole truth.

Sooo for years I have understood that my home enneagram BEACH is the Excitement BEACH.  I seek joy and variety.  I avoid pain.  I have been relatively happy with the description of that perspective and found it a good fit … for the most part.  Something my mother said recently got me thinking.  She was telling someone else that she never know what I was thinking all the time that I was growing up.  I thought to myself “That ‘s not exactly an extrovert thing to do.”

On the Myers-Briggs I was always balanced Extroverted -Introverted, slightly E but not outrageously so.  I live in my head and like to synthesize ideas as you will know if you have been reading this blog.  As I listened to the description of the Five – what is called the Detachment BEACH in PULSE  – I began to realize that I was more at home here.  I had considered that I was moving to five because seven’s move to five when they are relaxed.  It is a facet of the seven character.  But more and move I see detachment, that observer status, knowledge and wisdom is what I have been seeking all along.  Fun and excitement are good but I am not here to enjoy myself.  I am here to learn.

Identity crisis averted.  It is comfortable and it shows me why people say that studying the personality types of the Enneagram is necessary for a complete understanding of it.  I have been “studying” it since 1988.  I was using it to understand others and their motivation.  My own motivation was right there in front of me and yet I had a distorted view of it.  Instead of being an evolved citizen of the Excitement BEACH I am an excited native of the Detachment BEACH.  I believe in thinking things through.  I expect to gather information. I assume that everyone knows what I know and I get frustrated when they can’t read my mind.  I am concerned about knowing more and sharing knowledge and I hope to know everything one day.  Five.

The BEACHs swirl into a 360 degree view of the world as we get older.  Our home BEACH doesn’t change.  I feel today as if I just found out that I was given up at birth and the parent that I thought were mine were not.  It is a little liberating because I am no longer confused about the thoughts that I had reconciled to be seven thoughts that I see now as clearly five.  Weird.  Things that make you go hmmm.

Anyway in PULSE it is not the BEACH you come from but the one you are on that counts and my five BEACH is very comfortable for me at the moment.  What BEACH are you on these days???

Canmore has come to mean so many things to me.  Most of all it is a place for me to be with my thoughts.  I love it here.  The mountains are majestic and there is a little bit of snow falling even in April. The highway noise seems incongruous with the quiet snow covered landscape.

I have been listening to enneagram tapes and thinking about how to describe how PULSE conversations and the enneagram coincide.  I believe that the nine aspects or dimensions of the enneagram represent the nine versions of any truth that are brought to the conversation.  Identifying where people are coming from is the first step.  The enneagram also provides a path that is predictable that people may follow during the conversation which is helpful for conversation leaders.

Each of the PULSE BEACHs is based on the enneagram descriptions of the nine points.  I am taking it, not from the perspective of a person’s style and how they integrate themselves through out their life time  but from how the conversation converges on an integration of the nine BEACHs as it progresses.  So I am writing about the BEACHs and how identifying the BEACH provides the freedom to move to the next one.  Once people have felt heard, understood and acknowledged they move and the conversation changes.  Do the people change?  I am not sure.  They move.  Whether they stay on the new BEACH or take the next ferry boat back is  another area of research to be undertaken.  Some times people are transported and enjoy the new perspective so much that they stay on the new BEACH and are transformed.

I am convinced too that each of the BEACHs is represented in a team by the members of a team and that the natural tendency is to complete the circle with all of the aspects or dimensions.  You may begin with a team of people who are all on the success BEACH, for example, but gradually the other BEACHs will emerge to round out the experience and create a balance of the nine perspectives.  It is as if a centrifgal  force pulls the team toward the centre where they can access all of the perspectives. 

Drawn to the centre … hmmmmmm