As a unique psychology Zoetics emphasises the following:

1)  Self in Relation – the Concept of ‘Relational Integrity’ is Paramount: All human beings exist within a network of relationships. The quality of those relationships in the past and present determines to a large extent our sense of well being. Life enhancing relationships are marked by high levels of ‘relational integrity’. Life negating relationships are marked by degrees of ‘oppression’ and ‘trauma’ (subtle or explicit and acknowledged).

2) The Relational Environment is also Informational: all relationships, whether with others, with social institutions or with aspects of the biosphere, are in part ‘communications’ based. Communications or information exchange processes are constant and take place at many levels from the biochemical exchanges we are mostly unaware of, through the emotional exchanges between people and organisms, on to the sensation-based exchanges related to touch, sight, smell, sound and taste. Cultural Information exchange processes build on these biosemiotic foundations on the way to the more complex information exchanges we encounter in the visual, audio, narrative/language and movement oriented communications we define as ‘art’, ‘literature’, ‘popular culture’, ‘philosophy’, ‘music’, ‘dance’, etc.

3) How and Why we Become Ill: When a person is experiencing (or has experienced in the past) ‘lack of fit’ between his/her deepest self-manifestation drives (attached to desired relational ideals) and the ‘relational environment’ we eventually see the development of symptoms indicating suffering. Put differently: if ‘relational integrity’ is undermined in significant ways (and without healing taking place) via real world interactions with significant others we can become ill.

4) ‘The Future is a Bleak Self’ Aspect to ‘Lack of Fit’: Lack of fit (leading eventually to various psychological and psycho-physical symptoms) also implies the inability of a person to manifest wished for selves and relationships in wished for futures. Oppression and trauma are literally ‘future destroying’ for many people.

5) Disruptions to Relational Networks Occur at Various Levels: The suffering associated with ‘lack of fit’ is seen as: i) a relational problem; ii) an information exchange problem (with environments or eco-systems); and iii) an existential problem i.e. people may sense themselves to be inauthentic versions of themselves trapped in inauthentic or unfulfilling relationships/lives. Any effective psychology must address disruptions to ‘relational integrity’ at all of these levels – and across past and present developmental stages – to be effective. 

6) Humans Seek Life-Enhancing Relational Networks: We believe that all humans are aware, to some extent, of both their lack of fit and their desirable or wished for but currently unattainable potential/ideal selves and lives. These ‘non manifest’ selves however also imply the existence of non-manifest (but potential/wished for) relational networks that are mutually life-enhancing. Pondering and engaging with these ‘possible lives/selves’ and ‘possible futures’ (or alternative selves/lives in the present) can, we believe, be highly therapeutic.

7) Quantum Archetypes – Scanning the Relational Environment: The fact of our ability to discern between negative selves in negative relational networks and positive selves in more positive networks (realities/worlds) implies, in our opinion, a pool of archetypal projections emanating constantly from every human being (and perhaps also from other life forms) that continually SCAN THE RELATIONAL ENVIRONMENT for opportunities to fulfill various primary ‘being needs’ to mutual benefit. We name these projections the ‘Quantum Archetypes’ and see them as inter-relational and future seeking in essence. Every QA, however, is a best possible self interacting and unfolding dynamically with the best possible versions of the many ‘others’ that it is hardwired to relate to in order to have being needs fulfilled (see Note 2).

8) Zoetic Therapies: Zoetics as a therapeutic system addresses the blockages in our current interactions with the ‘relational environment’ that occur when we are forced to repress parts of ourselves (literally repress desired selves in desired futures/worlds/realities) at critical stages of development. Blockages begin, most often with, subtle traumas that undermine the fulfillment of needs. Although, like the psychodynamic approaches of the 20th century, we emphasise dealing with past wounds, we also advocate the use of creative techniques that imagine/re-vision etc. the kinds of selves and relationships people wish to bring into their lives. ‘Fundamental creativity’ is activated as a life-enhancing and healing force via creative pursuits, affirmative destructuring, re-storying (from narrative therapies), the use of ‘disruptive wonder’ (coined by Kelli Anderson) and various quantum psychology techniques proposing creative communications between ‘sub (or parallel) selves’ (Pessoa: ‘heteronyms‘). Various traditional healing techniques that align with the Zoetics approach are also available for use.

9) Grieving the Relationships we Needed but Didn’t Experience: The physical, emotional, cognitive and social/relational aspects to our mismatch (or ‘shutting down’) experiences are addressed by the Zoetics approach to well-being. In essence, the goal is to heal wounds caused by negative relational interactions from the past that still exert an influence on the present. Another goal is to assist desired versions of ourselves to manifest within new or re-imagined life-enhancing relational networks – both in the present and in the future.

10) Removing ‘Needs Field’ Bioenergy Blocks: Many blocks occur due to unfulfilling primary relationships experienced in the past – often in childhood, adolescence or young adulthood – that still haunt us into the present. These negative relationship traces need to be challenged/addressed re-energised, healed before we can free up  age specific energy/needs exchange processes consistent with our current developmental age and current relational environment.

11) A New Science Dimension to Wellbeing: ‘Fundamental creativity’ activates creative energies in the personal sphere (psyche) that can assist people wishing to free themselves from negative habits of thinking, acting and being in the world. In this sense creativity – as a primordial principle – may well parallel laws theorized by physicists to be fundamental to matter and life in the multiverse – i.e. quantum level indeterminacy, entanglement, non-locality, the observer effect in relation to wave-particle duality, superpositional states, etc. The creative arts, from this perspective, become the means by which individuals and societies (and perhaps even entire species) adapt to changing circumstances in their environment. Creativity promotes evolutionary flexibility in species under pressure from the relational environment.

12) The ‘Flaw in the Fabric of the Cosmos’ – and it’s Consequences: We suspect that a portion of consciousness in every human being (a part attached to the ‘Quantum Archetypes’ that organise our ‘needs fields’) rebels at the laws of the cosmos that rule our lives. In particular, it rebels against the implicit suffering built into the cosmos – a suffering that is applied to various levels of intensity and frequency to all organic life forms (we call this: ‘the flaw in the fabric of the cosmos’ though traditional theologies and philosophies perhaps labelled it ‘the problem of evil‘). We take a New Science and transcultural position on the re-emerging idea that we each either: a) originate in other areas of the multiverse with less or no ‘suffering’ before being born into this cosmos, or b) are still partially resident in other areas of the multiverse as we live out our lives in our current ‘flawed’ cosmos. We do not, however, conclude from recent research concerning the incredibly ‘fine-tuned’ Universal Constants that apparently structure our experience of the cosmos (‘constants’ set in place before the Big Bang), that traditional notions of a monotheistic God or of polytheistic or animistic supra-human entities ordinarily resident in other dimensions of the multiverse should be assumed to account for the ‘Universal Constants’. In traditional cultures such thinking led to notions of ‘supernatural other worlds’. In the New Sciences such thinking has reemerged in multiverse and omniverse theories (coming out of Everett’s Many Words interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, predictions arising out of String Theory and M Theory, and most importantly the emerging ‘programmed universe‘ and ‘simulated universe‘ concepts). We accept that many of the explanations offered by older spiritual and philosophical systems, as well as newer explanations on offer from the New Sciences, could account for the apparent ‘quantum programming’ of the cosmos that physicists are struggling to account for. However, at present we believe there is no definitive evidence favouring one explanation over another. This openness of Zoetics to a range of explanations, combined with our emphasis on ‘relational integrity’ constitutes the first transpersonal dimension to Zoetics psychology.

Note 1: List of influences: Relational Cultural psychology, Transpersonal and Neo-Jungianapproaches, Community Psychology psychology, Cross-cultural Psychology and Narrative Therapy. We are also interested in insights emerging from New Science psychologies linked to Quantum Mechanics and Biosemiotics.

Note 2: We see the ‘quantum archetypes’ as being slightly different to Jung’s – and to a certain extent Hillman’s – ‘archetypes’. To summarise the difference: we see QAs primarily as biosemiotic needs projections designed to scan the ‘relational environment’ for life-enhancing relational interactions throughout the life span. What is ‘projected’ has been laid down by evolutionary survival processes across many generations. In this sense, the Quantum Archetypes exist in ‘Needs Fields’ emanating, we might say, as circles or orbits of relational expectations projected into the environment. They are thus dynamically embedded in both our biological makeup, whilst, at the same time, acting as a kind of navigation principle for our psychic life. Unlike Jung, we see real world past and present inputs constantly interacting with the Quantum Archetypes – meaning both are present in every real world interaction with an environment. We see them as Quantum archetypes because we also see them interacting subliminally with the notoriously ‘indeterminate’ quantum fields that physicists talk about. This insight is the key source of the second ‘transpersonal’ dimension to Zoetics. We believe that there are psycho-biological mechanisms within every human being (and perhaps within other life forms) capable of AMPLIFYING quantum level phenomena to macro levels. Such amplifications often occur due to organismic emergencies or other states of extreme arousal.