LEAP: The LifeCourse
Effective Action Program
Robert
W. Herrmann-Keeling, Ph.D., Director, LifeCourse Institute
This
article summarizes a program I created some 20 years ago. The “LifeCourse Effective
Action Program” was inspired by Don Dinkmeyer and Gary McKay and their
“Systematic Training for Effective Parenting.” I used STEP a lot with parent
groups in several churches when I was a pastor, and was the first in the US to use it with
“Parents Anonymous,” the highly-successful child abuse prevention program.
LEAP
was my attempt to provide for adults what STEP provided for parents of children and teens.
In it, I summarized most of Adler’s major ideas into ten “LifeCourse
Patterns.” The patterns are those we create as children to manage the events of
childhood, and then continue to use throughout our lives. This, of course, limits our
adulthood to the views, decisions, and experiences of a child!
Background
As a
pastor in Connecticut churches (United Church of Christ) I found myself doing more
pastoral counseling than I ever thought I would. Andover-Newton Theological School had
given me a little preparation with the “client centered” approach of Carl
Rogers, and a few classes in Jung, but my limits were being tested by real-life problems
of real-life individuals, couples, and families.
So I
realized I needed more counseling skills, and decided to take my sabbatical at the
University of Connecticut for another master’s degree, this time in marriage and
family therapy. That one-year sabbatical turned into five years at UConn, in a masters
then a doctoral program.
In my second year a young man fresh out of Florida State
University joined the faculty. Since at the time I was pre-enrolled in the doctoral
program there, I took this young man’s course to see what the school did with him.
And since he’d had courses in Adler, it seemed (to him) logical that the first
university course he taught should be about Adler. (The influence of Freud being what it
was there, most of the students grumbled about having to take a class about a man and
psychology most had never even heard of!)
But I applauded; as a pastoral counselor, I had been
seeking exactly such an approach to fit what I wanted. It had to be positive, practical,
relationship-oriented…in fact, everything that Adlerian psychology turned out to be!
It didn’t hurt that I was already familiar with Adlerian ideas from STEP.
So then, Adler’s approach was what I had been looking
for. I read everything I could find by and about him. I read Dreikurs. I read Adler
sections in books on psychological systems. I read what few NASAP journals the UConn
library had, and decided I’d better subscribe.
And I began to use those Adlerian ideas in my own
counseling with those who came to me for counseling. I found myself explaining the Adler
things I did, and many clients wanted to learn more. So it was just a few short steps to
hand-outs of Adlerian concepts…then a booklet of the handouts…and then a book, Changing Course, which I wrote in 1988.
A few years later I organized some fifty Adlerian concepts
into ten “patterns” and used them (and the resulting book: Life Course Effective Action Program) in a series
of classes, workshops, and clergy-training sessions. This was in addition to using LEAP in
pre-marital counseling, and as a way to prepare individuals for counseling by learning
about their Patterns in just ten one-hour weekly sessions.
LEAP was well-received from the start. When I introduced it
to one couple, the husband came back the next week with 16 single-spaced typewritten pages
on the first (“Background”) Pattern! Most people are more realistic (and less
OCD?), since we have only an hour to discuss each Pattern.
The LEAP NoteBook
LEAP is
contained in a 3-ring binder of some 300 pages. It provides spaces for the client to make
notes in response to the specific suggestions that are given to help the person to explore
and understand each Pattern. I recently re-wrote the text portion of the LEAP NoteBook and published it separately as YOU: New and Improved. Although there is no space in it to make notes, I do include with is a CD
that has, among other things, a complete 120-page “logbook” the reader can print
and use to make notes. This book is aimed more at as “self-help” market, rather
than for use with a counselor, and contains extensive revisions.
I have also written a Leader’s
Manual for individual professionals or agencies
that want to conduct LEAP themselves. This has been done several places in the US and
Canada, with inquiries also from Wales, England, Germany, and Honduras.
The Ten LifeCourse Patterns
u Background Patterns
— These are formed from influences present at birth: heredity, family setting, family
background and traditions, family attitudes about religion, politics, work, education,
family atmosphere, and other such influences.
u Beginning Patterns
— Result from observing one’s parents acting in certain major roles: As parents
(mother/father), partners (husband/wife), as male/female, as Providers (nurture and
sustenance), as Adults, etc.
u Basic Patterns
— Result from position among and relationships with siblings. Numerical position includes being born first,
second, middle, last, or only. Psycho-social position
includes other factors such as sex, comparisons, special talents or interests, handicaps
or illnesses, and much more.
u Boyhood/Girlhood
Patterns —
These are the many learnings from childhood experiences: play; playmates; favorite toys,
games, and stories; an imaginary friend; pets; family events; endings and losses, grade
school; adolescence and high school; dreams and nightmares; and of course the six specific
events Adlerians call “early recollections” (ERs).
u Belonging
Patterns — Created
from our childhood attempts to feel worthwhile, special, or significant to others by
seeking Affection, Attention, Approval, Control, Fairness, and Help. Depending on our
level of success (self-perceived) at Belonging in our early family, we feel encouraged and
have hope for similar success in the future. With less success, or complete (self-perceived) failure, we feel
discouraged and doubt that the future will be any better for us.
 u Behaving
Patterns — This pattern involves the basic (perhaps “hard-wired”)
human ways of perceiving and interpreting events in one’s environment. The
“Event-Belief-Response” cycle is explored as the basis for thoughts, feelings,
planning, and action, and is used as a way to understand each of the ten LifeCourse
Patterns.
u Believing
Patterns —
These involve the Core Beliefs the client has about Self, Love, Others/community, Work,
the World, and Mystery/Limits. LEAP follows Adler in seeing them as foundational to
one’s life-long personality. The Pattern includes Adler’s concept of Life Tasks.
u Bewildering
Patterns —
Here we look at three ways we go astray on life’s journey: By self-defeating actions,
the use of Private Logic to excuse our self-oriented behavior, and the “Mistaken
Mission” which is based on some problem we had as a child (which Adler spoke of as
the “Fictional Final Goal” or “Fictional finalism.”)
u Being
Patterns —
These include self-definitions (self-image, self-worth, self-confidence, etc.) and
important mental ideals images of self, partner, children, job/work, etc., from childhood
and transferred to adulthood. We compare these ideal images to reality as a way to test
progress on life’s way.
u Becoming
Patterns —
This involves how we manage our lives today by solving problems, setting goals, making
decisions, resolving conflicts, and managing a crisis, based on how we managed those same
issues as children. We look at limits we put on ourselves as adults when we use the same
methods in the same ways as we did when we were kids.
u Master
Action Pattern (MAP). All
the Patterns taken together form a “mental atlas” of maps created in childhood
to guide life’s journey. These “maps” are the memories of childhood which
have become LifeCourse Patterns.) LEAP is
primarily educational, as the individual explore each pattern, sees how it was applied in
childhood and is applied in much the same way as an adult, and considers ways to revise
the pattern to be more in keeping with adult goals.
About
one-fourth of each hour-long session is spent looking at a specific issue in the
person's life to see how LEAP learnings apply to real-life issues. We call this the . . . u Practice
Task — In
addition to seeing how each Pattern applies generally, and exploring how it was created to
manage childhood events, the client personalizes LEAP learnings by applying them to a
Practice Task. This is a specific, practical issue the person is facing at the present
time: a problem to be solved, a decision to be made (in a relationship, or at work, or
personally). We spend 12-15 minutes each session to apply what has been learned. By the
end of the ten sessions the problem has been
solved, the decision has been made, etc.
LEAP requires that the client do detailed preparation
before each session. taking one to two hours. (Preparation for the first session includes
not only the first Patutern (Background) but also preparing for the entire LEAP
process and selecting the Practice Task
described above. Likewise the last session notonly explores the Becoming
Patterns, but also completing t he Practicew Task and looking at the "Master Action
Pattern" or Lifeourse MAP.
Couples
LEAP is an effective approach when used with couples in marital therapy, marital
preparation, and marital enrichment. Each partner completes the at-home preparation before
each session, and the first half hour or so of each session focuses on the results of each
partner’s personal exploration of the Pattern. The rest of the session is given to
seeing how each partner’s Pattern affects the relationship.
In each session we begin by exploring how each individual
partners understands his or her original patterns and applies them in life today, much as
in an individual sessions. But because we are dealing with two people in a one-hour
session, time to discuss each individual’s pattern is shortened.
Because we are focusing on the relationship, we then look
at how each person’s Patterns apply to the partnership, both the positive and
negative implications from cooperation to conflict.
An example that comes up in pre-marital counseling is that each
partner comes from a family with its own ideas and expectations regarding holiday
observances, such as Thanksgiving. Other individual issues that affect the partnership are
How are finances handled (based on parental examples), Who leads or makes decisions (based
on both parental and sibling-position examples), How are individual life-goals meshed with
the goals of each partner for the marriage…and so on.
The limitation of the couple approach is that there is only
so much time in an hour, and each partner often wants to spend the entire hour talking
about himself or herself. It’s not unusual that a couple in pre-marital counseling,
for example, would spend two hours instead of one, discussing how their individual
Patterns might affect their future marital relationship…and what they could do about
it!
Much the same was true of couples in marriage counseling,
who came into counseling for some specific complaint (usually disappointment expectations
of some kind) and set all that aside as they learned about each other’s Patterns.
Indeed, it always amazed me that a couple could spent so
much time dating, etc., before marriage, or spend so many years together as a married
couple…and still be so unknowing of each other’s basic patterns and that pattern
conflicts were often at the bottom of their relationship problems.
But the main difficulty is one of time, and of being honest
with the clock. That requires greater concentration or focus of the two partners on each
Pattern, and the willingness to “buckle down” in each session and look at
essential (rather than, say, extraneous) topics within the relationship.
LEAP
is contained in a 300-page 3-ring binder. (Two appendices include a biography of Adler,
and definitions of over 50 Adlerian concepts.) LEAP is conducted in ten one-hour weekly
sessions. The fee is $350 for individuals, $400 for couples (for a second LEAP NoteBook).
Additional materials are available to guide couples, pre-marital counselors, and clergy in
their various uses of LEAP. |
