Learning from Experience

10 Patterns

IN THIS PROCESS OF trying to become more fully myself as a clinician and as a person, there have been certain things that have intrigued me that have become the grist for my writings. My theory tends to be drawn out of the difficulties I experience in the work. It represents the current status of my attempts to work my way through these enigmas.

My ideas about patterns, for example, grew out of an emerging sense that there were meanings being communicated back and forth in ways that went beyond the verbal interchange (Charles, 2002a). The ability to access and communicate these nonverbal meanings seems to be important not only to our work but also to creative activity more generally. Theorists have linked the capacity for creative ...