The windows four panes represent four aspects of your
total self. As the diagram indicates, only the top two panes are visible to myself. The
third and fourth windows are hidden from my view.
This
is descriptive of the self delusion that keeps me from seeing what I am really like and
allows my slow disintegration to continue with only a slight, if any recognition on my
part of how bad things have become. A more accurate picture of myself is essential to my
recovery.
Window # 1 is open:
This is visible
to SELF and OTHERS and contains material I am willing to share with you; my interests,
vocation, and virtues, to name a few. This is open information about myself.
Window #2 is secret:
I know things
about me that I don't want you to know, I fear the loss of esteem if you see me as having
such feelings as hostility, suspicion, inferiority, resentment, or self pity.
Revealing these feelings is called leveling. I level with you when you
take the risk of letting me know you by spontaneously reporting my feelings. Leveling is
one of the two most important techniques in self discovery.
We are blind to Window #3:
This
window is seen by others. The tone of our voice, the tilt of our head, tell others things
about us that we don't see. Many times a perfect stranger can see more in us in
half-an-hour than we discovered in years of self-examination.
When someone tells us how we appear to them, they are confronting us.
Confrontation is the second vital technique in breaking through self-delusion to
self-discovery.
The existence of the large blind area illustrated by Window #3 means
that we are dependant on others taking the risk of confronting us with this material, if
we are ever to come to know it. "It takes at least 2 to know 1."
Window #4 is subconscious and not visible:
While leveling and confronting often result in a glimpse into the unconscious, this is a
bonus and not a goal of group therapy. |
