This research has introduced and specified Neville’s
Cultural Keyline as a potent new model and concept for the social and
behavioural sciences. Neville derived Cultural Keyline from over 40
years of action-researched praxis. Cultural Keyline is potent, dense and multifacited; it is concurrently a model for sustaining
wellbeing based inter-relating and interacting, a concept for the psychosocial
sciences, a folk concept for enriching everyday life interaction, a worldview,
a mode of being, a mode of sensing, and a mode of values based personal and
social interacting. In this research I have specified Cultural Keyline firstly
from my use of it in action research, and secondly, as an aid to understanding
and synthesis of Neville diverse actions, and as an aspect of everyday life
relating.
Cultural Keyline
nestles with and co-enriches other models and concepts discussed in this
research – NLP, connexity, connoisseurship,
cultural
locality, dichter und denken,
emergence, free energy, Inma, kennen, Keyline, self
organizing systems, social topography, sociomedicine, and stimmung. These have
also been woven into the process of understanding and synthesis of Neville’s
diverse actions and in my action research.
Neville
adapted his father’s Keyline agricultural practices in evolving Cultural
Keyline. Neville used Cultural Keyline in evolving a micro-model of epochal
transition and in all of his life work – in Fraser House, Fraser House
Outreach, and the Laceweb.
Self-organising
grassroots networking action continues to be spreading in the Region. Epoch
transitional action linked to Neville’s action research, on all accounts, seems
to be alive and thriving. We
are, at time of writing, fifty-five years into Neville’s 250 to 500 year
timeframe. It seems we are ‘on schedule’. The
outreach from Neville’s action research is evolving a transitional paradigm of
human future.
I now give more specific conclusions.
Neville was evolving his transitional epochal processes
grounded in humane values. These values framed connexity-based embodied
knowingness, and also framed interpersonal interaction and inter-relating in
the unfolding life-world. Values were not explicated and laid down in law –
values were lived in connexity relating as part of their communally evolving
lore. Neville’s way of moving onto the socio-topographical higher ground at the
Keypoints with dysfunctional people (where their disparate informs merge as
energy) is to be experienced - and when experienced, explanatory and
descriptive words are unnecessary and superfluous.
When Neville and
his father began taking nature and the unfolding context as a guide for action,
they were exploring things beyond their competence. Neville evolved Cultural
Keyline and associated ways of evolving exquisite relevant competences by
competently acting in contexts that went beyond his competence. When in
overwhelming contexts Neville would be very ‘open’ - in Wolf’s terms (1976); he would also have his actions
framed by humane caring respecting values. Neville would be open in the sense
of surrendering his senses to the context, and then catching the collective
richness and wisdom of the living system context he was embedded in. Neville
would catch the system telling him what to do. He received subtle cues - though
sometimes obvious if you have eyes to see – as well as fully formed valued
insights out of inner silence about what to do next.
I sense that Neville’s peak performing became activated – he become more fully
alive – when his was ecologically in a zone beyond competence while
caringly using his exquisite competences. This is where and how his new competences
emerged. Neville engaged in entering into this liminal (threshold) zone for a
lifetime and was evolving new exquisite competences daily.
Neville began constantly placing himself, staff, and patients
where they were all acting ‘beyond competence’ and acquiring competences to do
this functionally, valuably, and ethically. He passed on his ways to people so that they
also gained new competences and could be effective when confronting
overwhelming contexts. Neville was modelling how people together can be
functional, valuable and effective when they were out of their depth. Big Group
was structured overwhelm. The mood was:
We don’t know
how we do this; we’re the best in the world, so lets get started again (Dec
1993, July 1998).
The mood when
entering this zone was articulated by Neville:
Of course it was miraculous. We were the best
in the planet, and we all believed this, so we would acknowledge our failings,
as we were streets ahead of everyone else (Dec 1993, July 1998).
It was also
articulated by patients (Yeomans, N. 1965a, Vol. 4, p. 51):
When both the
staff and patients are working well together in the Unit, a peak of enthusiasm
is reached at times when everyone sees almost any move at all as being gainful.
New enterprises are embarked upon with an eagerness that is almost inspired and
success is a certainty.
Before Neville,
the wider system’s response to the dysfunctional troublemakers was confining
them in asylum back wards and prisons. People who withdraw when they sense they
are out of their depth have their current competence as a limit to action.
Ethical codes state that one must withdraw from helping in contexts where one
reaches the limits of competence. Neville complied with this protocol in
drafting a code of ethics for people not competent in his way (Yeomans 1998). If Neville had used a model
that relied on being competent then he too would have collapsed into
incompetence, defence, withdrawal and resignation in overwhelming contexts. He
would have been modelling patients back to themselves - all incompetent in
overwhelm. Fraser House patients would have left the Unit incompetent in
overwhelming contexts and nothing would have changed.
Having experienced
and embodied Fraser House way, people leaving Fraser House would often be faced
with overwhelming situations. After experiencing Neville’s way they had evolved
processes for moving through these functionally - with the supplemental support
of their local networks. Neville evolved Cultural Keyline in part as a way to
go beyond competence ethically and ecologically.
As I introduced in my
methods section, none of the people I interviewed who were connected to Fraser
House - the staff, Alf Clark the researcher, the outpatient and the patient,
and none of the other people who knew Neville well from outside of Fraser House
- could articulate Neville’s way. None of the youth who I have interviewed at
Geoff and Norma’s farm could articulate Geoff and Norma’s way. Neville never
articulated his way.
Ross in his 1992 ‘Dancing with a Ghost’ article quoted by Tim Rogers (2000) refers to what I am calling ‘non-expressible
knowingness’ as a ‘different form of reasoning’. Ross was writing of his
experience of becoming able to know where the fish were feeding in an
Neville and the people who
worked with him know enough to use this knowingness in exquisite action. They
cannot put it into words. They are like me with ‘Cultural Keyline in Dec 1992.
It is like people who have experienced the way have a metaphoric ‘fingerprint’
that others can sense in their actions, and one in the way, can readily sense
when some one does not have the way; that these people have special knowing,
understanding and way are evidenced by their outcomes in context.
Neville left me quite a
challenge in suggesting I do this PhD. I have tracked down the majority of the
things he evolved and what he did. I have documented his effectiveness. I have
detailed much of his processes and the processes for using his processes
(metaprocesses). In this thesis I have engaged in
documenting, detailing, analysing and explaining. This thesis adds in most of
what Neville left out of his engaging with people, and leaves out what is most
vital and important – that is firstly, the experience of being immersed in
Neville’s Cultural Keyline way over time in the types of contexts Neville
constituted, and secondly, the embodiment that may flow from this. All
of my explicating of Cultural Keyline is far removed from the experience of
experiencing being immersed in the action research outlined in this thesis -
and the embodied understandings that may flow from this. Neville took care not
to attempt to explicate what he did. He rarely articulated his way. Attempts to
articulate it miss the lived-life essence. Having a little of the way expressed
in words outside of lived context typically has people drawing incorrect
conclusions. The hallmark of Neville’s way is to experience and embody the
experience. This thesis may provide a way to enter the way. I sense that here
it is salient to again let Ward 10B in Townsville Queensland stand as a warning
to anyone who may want to implement ideas culled from this thesis without
allowing for the interwoven richness of Neville’s way and value underpinnings (Queensland Commission of Inquiry 1991).
I have presented
evidence that Neville evolved many innovations that have been adopted and
adapted in Australian society. Neville evolved a viable, effective and low cost
complementary biopsychosocial model and complementary alternative (1993a; 1993b) to the current
expert delivery of psychiatric and somatoform drug centred treatments.
Neville’s alternative is supporting the dysfunctional fringe rich in potential,
and enabling them to help themselves in a very particular form of total
dispersed therapeutic community.
Psychological defence strategies work towards
having people staying the same and hopefully not getting worse. Defence, control,
and stasis tend to accompany each other. Rather than defence and stasis, every
aspect of Neville’s work was evolving contexts for growth towards wellbeing in
all its aspects; everything was geared towards growth and holding a space for
growth. There is potential for growth in far from equilibrium states. Growth is
typically entangled with increases in adaptation, emergence, integration,
inter-relationship and complexity. Neville
worked with this connexity.
This research has established that Neville
created normative model contexts where enabled communities of dysfunctional mad
and bad people under extreme stress, without expert ‘we do it for you’
intervention, generated their own growth towards wellbeing within and between
themselves. This thesis has detailed a working model of how to generate humane
growth in people systems under extreme stress.
History
is full of world powers that have collapsed. Today we have a complex global
politico-economic system integrated like never before with the consequent threat
of a collapse having global implications. As a stark reminder of how close to
the edge we can be, in September 2005
In
a world of rampant cross-cultural conflict, Neville evolved processes for
intercultural peacehealing as well as processes for exploring transitions to
new forms of cultures and intercultural syntheses that respect diversity – an
epochal local-lateral folk-based transition process. Neville’s way may be
effective for addressing many of the major issues facing life on Earth. This thesis may provide fertile
ground for further research (refer Appendix 40).
Neville posed
the question, ‘Whither Goeth the Law – Humanity or Barbarity (Carlson and Yeomans 1975). Today we face these alternative
futures - Humanity or
Barbarity. Neville has created a new model of human future - a way where the
common-folk, as in ‘folk in common on the global commons’ on the margins are
quietly playing a vital part together in whither goeth the World of human futures.