You may have heard the joke that there are two kinds of people.
There are those that think there are two kinds of people, and there are
those who do not. This joke is very serious. The human
heart and the human world are divided exactly along those fault
lines. Those who think that there are two kinds of people believe
that there are likely two kinds of everything. They divide the
world into good versus evil, soul versus body, and us versus
them. The other kind sees the world as a continuum, such that the
laws of mathematics apply everywhere, and such that the final answer to
any properly posed question is a number.
The people who believe in ‘two’ versus those who believe in ‘one’ are
at war. They are at war to see which group may destroy the world
first. The first group tends to be ideological, or
religious. They categorically distinguish believers from
non-believers. The most extreme of them believe that destroying
the earth perhaps by nuclear warfare will purify it of disbelief, and
hasten divine intervention. The other group tends to be
quantitative. Profit is the quantity with the greatest social
power. In their pursuit of profits, business corporations may be
heating up the planet irreversibly toward the destruction of
civilization, as we know it.
That is just the big picture. My colleagues and I operate
everyday in the small picture world of business consultation and
psychotherapy. We have identified the same split as causing havoc
in psychological and social lives. Actually, our understanding
began in our decades of work with individuals, families, and
businesses, and extended quite readily to the world scene. We use
the terms, Roles and Rules™ to diagnose the division as it festers in
everyday life.
Many philosophers have believed that creativity is conceived of holding
two opposite ideas at the same time. As I shall explain, roles
and rules represent the most ‘opposite’ ideas possible. Our
method of every-day consultation aims at the most radical outcome
possible: the reconciliation of opposites in wholesome understanding.
Members of our group offer legal and psychological consultation to
businesses, and psychotherapy to individuals and families.
Attention to roles and to rules as distinct elements provides our
intellectual and spiritual foundation, and a kind of compass that
orients us in our work.
An unfamiliar word, ‘maieutic’, may best describe how we work.
The word is from the Greek for obstetrics or midwifery. It was
Socrates’ term for his philosophical method of eliciting the ideas of
others; he delivered their conceptions as if he were a midwife.
Socrates’ mother was a midwife who claimed that midwives were the best
marital matchmakers. When we speak of bringing roles and rules
together as opposites, we mean no more than happens quite naturally in
biological conceptions, but perhaps less naturally in mental
conceptions.
I invite you to read and to reflect, and to express your point of view
to us at any time.
Richard Goldwater, MD
rpg@rolesandrules.com
Sample chapters and other downloads
Below are several articles that explain or represent the Roles and Rules(tm) way of looking at the world.
The Time Management of Compassion was written for a magazine for physicians.
Marriage Is for Men and Divorce Is for Women offers the first three chapters of a book looking to be published. It represents the experience of practicing psychotherapy with individuals and families for three decades.