Almost all psychiatric textbooks speak of mental diseases in terms of ‘disintegration of the personality’ and ‘unbalanced and chaotic states.’ Such descriptions are based upon the unexpressed assumption that the ideal person is able to correspond to the statistical average, and this average is taken as a measure of order, balance, harmony and health. Thus, it seems as if individuals going through psychotic states appear as the chaos and disorder for a culture with aparticular idea of order and sanity. This black/white, polar classification of the human being lies at the root of DSM III, which only weakly tolerates the concept of a wellness-notwellness continuum of inner experiences. Change and differentiation are needed (cf. Boyle and Morriss; Engel, Greist et al., 1982).Process concepts understand ‘mental illness’ as an extreme state which everyone goes through. As we shall see in the following chapters, process science perceives psychotic states not as chaotic, but as highly, even mathematically, ordered structures; they are not disintegrations, but highly patterned evolutions.The concept of chaos and unpredictability is related to the therapist’s or observer’s awareness and experience. Predictability is a concept relative to a given observer and is not an absolute characteristic of a patient. As far as the therapist is<r-concerned, what he sees in a client is a total surprise to him when information appears which he, the therapist, has never (Consciously) been aware of before.One of the tenets of process oriented psychology is that if you are surprised by someone, you have not consciously perceived signals forewarning you of a coming event. In other words, the ‘chaos’ or unpredictability of a client is a function of the therapist’s inability to process information in front of him, not of the client’s inherent ‘disorder.’ Suicide, insanity, unfaithfulness in relationships, criminal behavior, etc. are all apparent in the signal system of our clients and friends.It is important for the therapist to constantly extend and improve his ability to pick up signals from his clients. We tend to focus only upon the content of what people say and do not pay conscious attention to their other signals, such as their tone of voice, their sitting position, the movement of their legs, etc.*10\227\8*
