An infant is born into a kaleidoscopic world where everything is new and incomprehensible.

Beyond certain evolutionarily in-born cognitive tendencies such as the ability to preferentially respond to the human face, and to reflexively grasp on a human finger, every connection between one object, and even parts of the same object must eventually be learned. A chair seen from the floor looking up and from mother's arms looking down, is the same chair...and further, that there is a such thing as "chairness" which connects big and little, soft and hard, red and yellow and even naturally formed stumps and rocks as "chairs" by their use and placement.

The ability to recognize objects seen from different perspectives and the understanding that objects and people continue to exist when they are out of sight develops slowly over the first year and a half of life and continues to be elaborated across the first few years of life.The ability to understand that another person will see a physical object from another point of view or that that the child's own experience is different from other peoples and that everyone does not know the same things about the world and the objects and people in it develops even later.

Even as adults we still often make the mistake of "presuming" that others feel, or should feel, the same way we do about situations!

The ability to see continuity and similarity between objects and situations is a hard won human ability and one of the greatest achievements of the human infant. As adults therefore, it is our habit, for the most part to search for the familiar within the unfamiliar and to guide our understanding and choices on the basis of the past and too often we approach the world with minds closed against new interpretations.

Ironically, this ability to see the new in the light of old experience is also one of the greatest limiting factors on our ability to apprehend the genuinely new.

Our psychological credo is often, "Better the Devil I know..." Established understanding is comforting in its familiarity and predictability even when it is painful and destructive.

"The good is the enemy of the better" (C.G. Jung)
When habitual attitudes are acceptable and relatively painless, familiar patterns become almost invisible. We swim like fish in the supportive seas of our expectations and actively resist anything which threatens to haul us out into the chaos of the unfamiliar... even if it is towards growth and development.

Life will not always accommodate our innocence.
When life experiences go beyond the limits of what can be ignored, looked away from or dealt with by the strategies of the past, people often collapse psychologically and turn to therapy in an attempt to return to "status quo". This is not always possible when there are real-world changes such as losses and illness or even births and other positive, but destabilizing, life events to contend with.

Sometimes an irresistible question of meaning and purpose pulls on an individual positively to question their life and assumptions.

When something new is needed the habit of seeking the familiar becomes counter-productive. What we need then is curiosity. Curiosity is not a "solution focused" spotlight trained on experience searching for answers.

Expectation will only point us again to the familiar since that is exactly what expectation consists of!!

Curiosity is the antidote to "sameness." It is the key that unlocks closed down parts of life.

Curiosity is not only a "solution focused" spotlight trained on experience searching for answers. In addition to being an active search for answers it is also the quality of simply being open to the new. It means not treating new experience and surprise as dangerous and threatening. Openness is what personality researchers call an "individual difference variable"; this means that it appears more or less strongly in different people. But openness is also a quality that can be permitted, fostered and developed at any time of life.

If we wish to experience something genuinely new we usually do not have to look farther than the things we habitually refuse. The things we refuse are as defining of the shape of our character as the things we endorse. Shame, guilt, fear and refusal close off areas of self and experience, locking them down and out of sight.

Some people close us down....
Not everyone has been fortunate enough to grow up or live in an environment where openness to experience is permitted and encouraged. Limiting, over-protective, neglectful, critical or abusive environments teach individuals that new experience and alternative viewpoints are inappropriate, unwelcome or downright bad and punishable. Individuals try to blend in and be acceptable and this may mean hiding or neglecting their own personal preferences, needs and desires.

.... Other people open us up!
For many people the therapeutic experience is a "first"; it may be the first time that they can express their thoughts and feelings in an uncritical and accepting environment where they can speak speculatively and emotionally freely. It may be the first time that openness, imagination and partial ideas slowly coalescing towards the (as yet) unknown, are not only permitted but encouraged and protected while they are developing.

When understanding becomes the prize then shame and guilt are neutralized.

Together the therapist and the client "court surprise" and genuinely new positions become possible in life. Therapy then, is not just about "problem solving," but also about becoming a creative and curious participant in the world.