Novel Sunday II

[Barrett Dorko]

Let’s read a book together. I found this one soon after arriving at the Cuyahoga Falls public library and now it is my newest favorite book of all time. I want to post about it each Sunday for a while.

The title is New – Understanding our need for novelty and change by Winifred Gallagher.

I’ve found that I like reading about how we came to be the way we are by evoking its evolutionary advantage. This explains that which is often inexplicable otherwise and often highlights the unconscious motivation that is the remnant of our kluge of a brain. After all, most of us have one.

Just as the positive neophilic knowledge emotions urge you to explore, learn, and create rewarding new things, the negative neophobic feelings of anxiety and fear warn you to steer clear of those that seem risky.

I approach my two grandsons in a manner meant to elicit surprise, curiosity and interest. I imagine many here do the same with children. This draws them toward you and a common fascination with an object previously thought to be inanimate. To me, this is what magic and juggling do to a large extent. It is playful, engaging and, most of all, novel.

Do you approach patients in a manner similarly, or does this devolve into "finding something "fun to do"? Perhaps that should be left for activity directors.

Deciding what to pay attention to is a peculiarly human predicament…We must resist the temptation to drift along, reacting to whatever happens to us next.

From Rapt; another book by Gallagher

We have in each patient a capacity and an instinct to attend to the novel. Making the novel safe, non-threatening, inviting and concurrent with their innate desire to learn and grow is what therapy should be about.

It should elicit the neophilic and not the neophobic.