LEAP to
explore your life-long patterns!
LEAP stands for the LifeCourse Effective Action Program,
a complete way for adults (individuals or couples) to explore and revise the patterns of
their lifecourse. LEAP (with Adler and Adlerians) assumes that much of who we are as
adults is the result of decisions we made when we were children. Those decisions (and
their attendant actions, including feelings and thoughts) became patterns to manage major
parts of our lives which continue into our adult lives mostly unchanged. ("Life-
Course" is used instead of the Adlerian term "life style" because of
changes in the term to mean something else (and something far more superficial!).
The program is contained in a 300-page 3-ring binder as the LEAP Notebook, and is
available from the LifeCourse Institute for $40, postage paid.
The program begins with an introduction to the "Patterns" approach, including
the establilshment of a "Practice Task" to use in applying what is learned about
each of the ten Life- Course Patterns. The Patterns are as follow:
Background Patterns are those from family history, genetics, traditions, etc.,
that shape personality at birth: stories, values, childhood family atmosphere, even one's
family's motto.
Beginning Patterns result from major roles our parents played in our childhood,
giving us ideas about what we'd be like as adults playing those same roles: mother/father,
male/female, husband/wife, provider, grown-up, person/human being, etc.
Basic Patterns are those we follow today based on our position among siblings as
children: numerical (first, second/middle, last, only) and psycho-social (sex,
comparisons, much more).
Boy/Girl-hood Patterns result from all the other experiences of childhood, from
favorite books, stories, movies to play and playmates, dreams, specificl events, and more.
Belonging Patterns are how we seek to feel significant with others based on what
we did to get the same thing as children by seeking affection, attention, approval, and
more.
Behaving Patterns are how we deal with everything that happens to us by (1) event
perception, (2) what we believe (or tell ourselves is "true") about events, and
(3) what we do about our beliefs (not about events!) by our thoughts, feelings,
and actions. Included is how to control thoughts and feelings.
Belief Patterns are our most central, core ideas about self, love,
others/community, work, the world, and mystery/limits. They are based on specific
childhood events (LEAP's way of introducing Adler's idea of Early Recollections).
Bewildering Patterns involve three ways we "go astray" or "get
lost" on the journey of life, by (1) self-defeeating ways, (2) Private Logic, and (3)
the Mistaken Mission in life (what Adler called the "fictional final goal" of
individual life).
Being Patterns are our mental images of ourselves and others in their ideal or
"perfect" manifestations. Throughout life from childhood on, we compare reality
with idealized images.
Becoming Patterns involve ways we learn early in life to manage things that
happens to us: decisions, goals, problems, crisis, etc.
Finally, all the patterns are taken together (much like a set of maps in a single atlas)
in a deep look at one's "Master Action Pattern" or Life MAP. |
Institute
Has New Web Site!
The LifeCourse Institute has uploaded its new web site as of
February, 2007. It replaces the old one that served its purpose for a while, then abruptly
went out of business when its host service went down a few years ago.
As of this time, the web site has eight sections (we tend to think of them as
"chapters," as in a book) including the home page. The sections are:
Home page: What you see when you open the site, an intro to the entire site with
brief descriptions and clickable links to the sections.
LEAP: A pattern-by-pattern description of the LifeCourse Effective Action
Program (LEAP), a complete way for adults to explore and revise life-long patterns
created in childhood and used to manage the rest of adult life.
Alfred Adler: A detailed biography of the founder of Individual Psychology.
Major Concepts: The dozen or so main concepts of Adlerian Individual Psychology
are defined and illustrated.
Other Concepts: About forty additional concepts of Adlerian psychology are
defined.
Resources: An extensive bibliography of books by and about Adler. Pages
describing printed materials available from the LifeCourse Institute, including the LEAP
(LifeCourse Effective Action Program) Notebook, Seeking Significance, Adlerian
Psychology for Clergy, and others.
Newsletter: The newest addition to our site is the LifeCourse Institute Newsletter.
This one you are reading is a sample to see what it looks like. Visitors to this web site
are invivted to request that we send it (free) by email each month.
Links: ...to related web sites, including that of the North American Society of
Adlerian Psychology (NASAP) and Dr. Stein's extensive site dedicated to classical Adlerian
psychology. Also, this section includes links to barbershop singing for men and women (my
hobby)!
Feedback: This provides several ways to our visitors to comment on this site (to
help make it better), on Adlerian psychology, its concepts and therapy, on articles
appearing in the society's journal or newsletter, and a section to disucss ways to extend
Adlerian ideas for the 21st century.
We encourage you to let others know about our site so they can visit and learn about
Adlerian psychology.
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The LifeCourse Newsletter is edited and publised by
Robert Herrmann-Keeling, and is emailed free each month to those who wish to receive it. |
