The 7 LevelModel

A brief introduction …

Mark Stancombe, Psychotherapist & Counsellormstancombe@move-forward.org

• Like a map that can assist a therapist when a complex territory is being travelled with the client, involving the experiences that each bring into the room

• A guide only

• Not directive. Not defining the route therapy should take

• Not intended to dictate direction

• Aims to provide a holistic view of a person

• It is an integrative concept of the whole person

• Can assist with guiding a therapist in ordering, prioritizing and/or including a wide range of interventions that can complement or extend their usual range

• NOT Hierarchical. No level is higher or more important

• A healthy human-being will be functioning well on all 7 levels [biological at least as important as any other level*]

* Both Maslow and Rogers started from the medical position around the fundamental needs of an organism [water, food, warmth, etc.]

Note: not hierarchical

• The person as a body with biological, physical, visceral and sensational experience, temperament, body type & predispositions

• Concerns body processes, sleep, food, physical symptoms of disease, physical manifestation of anxiety, sensory awareness

• Integrative Approaches: -

Working with the body, conditioning, desensitisation, breathing, relaxation

Gestalt techniques for enhancing sensory awareness

• The person as a mammal

• Essentially pre-verbal experience & activity

• Focus on bonding, attachment, nursing, deprivation

• Experiencing and expressing

• Integrative Approaches: -

Working with the fear, anger, sadness, joy, rage, despair

Working towards a Cathartic release of emotion

Repressed emotion from childhood?

• The person as a Primate. The awareness & labelling of experiences and the validation of experience through naming

• Integrative Approaches: -

Reframing

Making overt the covert

Top Dog / Underdog [Gestalt]*

Archetypes [Jung]*

Sub-Personalities [Assagioli]*Parent Adult Child [Transactional Analysis]*

* All provide ‘labels’ that can help the client’s understanding

• The person as a social animal

• Refers to norms, values, collective belief systems, societal expectations

• How we assess some of our ‘oughts’

• How we do things, what things mean in our culture

• Integrative Approaches: -

Looking at the appropriateness, usefulness and application of these norms for the client in specific circumstances*

* The stiff-upper lip norm of the White British male* Apartheid norm of white South Africa

Child development work & normal developmental needs

• The person as a thinker

• Making sense of things

• Examining cause & effect, frames of reference, facts

• Integrative Approaches: -

Those focusing on ‘Insight’..

Addressing Contaminations [Decontaminating in TA] such as Parent prejudices & beliefs or child magical thinking…Cognitive re-framing [CBT]

• The person as a Storyteller

• Making sense of experience through symbolism, story and metaphor

• The theories/stories a client has created to explain why things are as they are

• Integrative Approaches: -

Parental messages given or reinforced at a pre-verbal stage [TA]

Development of self – denied, repressed, disowned, split-off, [Jung]

• The person as a Spiritual Being

• Beyond the rational, beyond facts

• Dreams, the mystical, religion, the spiritual

• Experience that is surreal, transcendent

• Integrative Approaches: -

Dreams, symbols, archetypes [Jung]

Transpersonal Psychotherapy

Gestalt