Do You See What I See?
I think most people have had an experience at one point or another where their voice was recorded for some reason, and were horrified at hearing what they sounded like upon playback. The actual sound and tone of our voice is definitely different from what we hear from the vantage point inside our own skulls, and how the sound is actually heard by others. Seeing ourselves objectively for a moment like this can be a shock, especially if we haven’t developed the capacity for objective self-observation to any degree.
This same process of feedback (without the tape recorder) can also be used during the Heilkunst treatment session, where the practitioner feeds back an objective observation to the patient, to attempt to raise the patient’s own self-perception and objectivity (and therefore their relative level of health). Another variation on this would be to ask the patient to describe you (the practitioner), as a measure of how objective they are, versus what kind of filters they are looking at the world around them through. The practitioner, of course, needs to have a fairly good objective view of themselves for this exercise to be of any value.
The nature of our perceptual capacity is at the root of health, and any distortion in our ability to see reality clearly, whether through beliefs, illusions, or delusions, represents a diminishment of our potential. The way that a patient describes their life and the things that are going on around them gives the practitioner a clear image of how their perceptual function is working, and what may be interfering with it.
The way a patient uses language to describe their life fleshes out the picture of their perceptual function. Seeing this function in the patient is also a part of discerning what their character structure is, as well as their general state of mind (particularly if it is infused by a diseased state). Raising the patient’s own self-awareness of this is part of the therapeutic process, and helping to move the patient towards a greater state of health.