Whole-of-organism, process relational
By whole-of-organism we refer to the entire evolutionary being of you. We see you as complex, self-organising, self-making whole, not a bunch of parts that simply connect and execute sequences of operations. One way to think about this a bit more formally is through the lens of autopoiesis. Autopoiesis describes a system that ‘produces itself’. These types of systems are comprised of processes organised in ways that maintain their own existence as a coherent whole. This is very different to an allopoietic system. These are systems that produce something other than themselves. They function by taking an input and turning it into an output. This process is determined by an agent outside of the system. That is one of the very, very significant differences between you and a Large Language Model (so if anyone tries to tell you we’re just like AI, drop this little truth bomb!). An important note here is that the biomedical model—the underlying philosophy that gives rise to much of modern medical science—treats humans more like allopoietic systems than autopoietic systems at times. It is largely a reductive approach to understanding, meaning it attempts to break things down into smaller and smaller constituent parts in order to udnerstand causality. This has been really useful in various ways. And it’s certainly helpful in many important contexts (necessary surgery is a classic example but there are so so many others). But, as many scholars have called out, it may be inherently self-limiting in other ways or other contexts. We believe it is somewhat self-limiting in the context of really understanding the nature and function of organismic adaptation (which are really the processes that somatic therapy works most directly with). This is especially true when you consider that the biomedical model largely treats mind and body as seperate entities, even if it doesn’t explicitly support what is known as substance dualism. As a result, this position we take is also important in the context of mindbody relation. By taking this approach, we can understand mindbody as two seemingly different expressions of the same thing (hence why we write ‘mindbody’ and not mind body or mind-body). If this is true, then it may effectively dissolve the ‘hard problem of consciousness’.
Okay, onto process-relational.
Process-relational refers to process-relational ontology. What this attempts to express is a claim about the nature of the universe. Here’s how Prof. Ikahiv introduces it:“This is a theoretical paradigm and an ontology that takes the basic nature of the world to be that of relational process: that is, it understands the basic constituents of the world to be events of encounter, acts or moments of experience that are woven together to constitute the processes by which all things occur, unfold, and evolve. Understanding ourselves and our relations with the world around us in this way, it is argued, can help us unwind ourselves from out of a set of dualisms that have ensnared modern thought over the last few centuries. In contrast to materialist, idealist, dualist, and other perspectives that have dominated modern western philosophy, a process-relational perspective more explicitly recognises the dynamic, complex, systemic, and evolving nature of reality.”
In our studies over the years, this has become one of the most resonant philosophical frameworks. Not just because of our exploration of different theories relative to one another but because of our direct experience. It feels meaningful at ‘every level of organisation’, from subatomic phenomena through to the unnerving complexity of social organisms like us.
In some way, process-relational already speaks to whole-of-organism. But we add the clarification as a reminder, a way of keeping us grounded in the first-person experience so many of our (humanity’s) theories attempt to explain.
We will say plenty more about the philosophical underpinning of our work in the future.
P.S. We are not alone in bringing this process-relational framing to work like this. See Dr. Garcia’s paper here: “This chapter examines mental disorders from an enactive perspective. It explores two key ontological claims—the processual and relational nature of cognition—and their implications for our understanding of mental disorders. Rather than viewing them as isolated brain disorders, mental disorders are presented as developmental sensorimotor trajectories that are shaped by embodied interactions and social contexts. It highlights the dynamic interplay between an individual’s autonomy and their social environment in the emergence of mental disorders.”
With φιλία (philía),
Esther and Nate
