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The question and answer format used on this page has been shown to be the most easily accessible way to convey information without including a huge body of text. The questions that you see listed below are specific queries that people have asked on previous occasions and answers to these questions, some very detailed, are provided further down the page. 

Affectology is supported by enough scientific and technical data to fill several large books (and, in time, will), and we're sure you understand that not all can be included here. But we are attempting to include here many of the main ideas and underlying concepts that support the therapy. 

To that end, we hope you can just click on the subject that you're interested in and get straight to the relevant information. You may notice that some information is repeated under some topics. This layering exists so that if someone links to just one topic, their question is adequately covered.

This page is intended to be somewhat of a participation project. If you are interested in some aspect of the technical data that doesn't seem to be dealt with here, please help us by contacting any one of the participating practitioners and they will be able to help you with your query. If your question is judged to be useful to other site visitors, it will be added (along with your name, if you wish) to the page.

Your Questions:

"What is Affectology and why use this term?"

"Why is the term 'af-x' registered?"

"How do we learn our emotions and feelings?"

"Why do you say that a child learns 'affect reactions' differently to adults?"

"How does this 'Emotional Matrix' have anything to do with my depression?" 

"What findings support the idea of an 'Emotional Matrix'?"

"Why does an af-x practitioner INSIST on 'no talk' from the client?" 

"Why is 'Mind Over Chatter' the catch phrase of the therapy and the practitioner training?" 

"Why is conscious memory unreliable?"

"What are the parts of the brain that 'store' emotional material and memory?"

"How can you say that we form our Emotional Matrix in early childhood, yet don't focus on childhood problems in the therapy?" 

"How does every feeling affect every part of the body?"

"What is the basic ideology behind the 'emotional health reform' aspect of the therapy?"

Questions From Clinical Professionals:

"You've told us a lot about the theory of affectology but what do you actually DO with your clients?"

"HOW do you actually help with that re-education?"

"What is Affectology and why use this term?" – Q from John, Brisbane

Affectology is the field of study that investigates how we learn and develop affect (feeling and emotional) patterns very early in life, that form an underlying emotional matrix or 'sense of self', and how that influences all our future emotional responses and reactions. 

Through specialising in this field and over his years of pioneering research and development into a totally unique approach to therapy, Ian White found it necessary to "coin" totally new terms such as affectology to be able to accurately describe the nature of his work. This makes a clear distinction from "psychology," a field that has concentrated on the "thinking processes," rather than the "feeling" self.

Affectology theory is the study of the scientific underpinnings of the formations of human emotion and does not necessarily include the study of clinical approaches.

Practical affectology is the study of and application of the precepts of affectology theory to a new worldview of clinical practice with an aim to helping improve the affect existence of a client. 

An af-x Practitioner is a professional clinician with PROVEN high levels of success in the practice of affectology.

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"Why is the term 'af-x' registered?" – Q from Kevin, Gosford 

Throughout much of the text on this site you will see the ® trademark registration tag attached to "af-x". In our culture, this has a commercial significance and denotes trade and commercial protection. Yet, this is decidedly NOT the case with af-x®. 

The principles and imperatives inherent in quality af-x work are stringently adhered to by conscientious practitioners. Some ex-students are less stringent. When a professional is entitled to be referred to as an af-x Practitioner, you know that that person has applied themselves to quality training and continual professional upgrading, and, through client feedback studies (ESRs), have been monitored in their efforts to provide only the best in affect-oriented therapy. 

The registration of af-x is also intended to protect the quality of training of future practitioners, ensuring that White's strict educational guidelines are adhered to in all programs displaying the af-x title.

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"How do we learn our emotions and feelings?" – Name withheld, Perth.

Just as we are not consciously aware of most of what goes on within our physical bodies, our minds are constantly processing thoughts, memories and feelings at subconscious levels. 

It is a scientifically proven fact that we feel emotions long before we are able to consciously think and we began to learn our initial feeling (or emotional) responses at this subconscious level. 

Our early feeling level reactions were formed without conscious thought, reason or logic because we had not yet developed the ability to consciously think about or analyse what we were responding to.

Research shows that we repetitively respond to things throughout our lives the way we first learned to respond in our childhood and even earlier, in our pre-verbal infanthood. 

We store our first ever feeling experiences (fear, love, discomfort pleasure, trauma, joy and all our range of emotions) and unconsciously learn, almost immediately, which feeling or emotional reactions get the best results, therefore 'rationalising' that we should develop and maintain these reactions as though time stood still. 

Significantly, we can't ever remember what our first feeling responses were, because we did not have the capacity to develop conscious memories of them at the time they were learned.

We build our "emotional matrix" or personal response patterns (emotional personality) based on early feeling learnings that are stored subconsciously, beneath our ability to recall and understand. We unconsciously "memory-trace" or "bridge" back to these primary encodings in order for them to be continuously repeated. 

As we mature, some of these automatic response patterns may be altered or adjusted to suit our development, while others are not. 

Well-learned and entrenched early feeling level reactions, that are no longer useful or protective, can form the basis for and influence the development of the uncomfortable feelings, physical symptoms or uncontrollable behaviours that we may experience in later life.

This is particularly relevant for people who have experienced traumatic events and seemingly developed problematic symptoms, conditions or behaviour as a result. 

It is never an event that is the real cause of problems, but rather our learned emotional response that we unconsciously apply to that event. This explains how two people can experience the same traumatic situation or similar sort of situation, and why one can develop significant long-term problems while the other may be relatively unaffected.

Nothing, including any amount of therapy, will ever change the fact that a person experienced a certain event. What can be changed, is the person's learned emotional response pattern that is doing the damage and maintaining the problematic symptoms, conditions or behaviour.

By their very nature, early feeling level learnings and reactions are not revealed to the conscious mind, they are automatic and reflexive. Because they are unconsciously learned and maintained they can not be affected by conscious efforts to identify, analyse, understand or change them. They can however be privately re-assessed and permanently resolved by the subconscious mind.

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"Why do you say that a child learns 'affect reactions' differently to adults?" – Q: from Eva, Stockholm.

By the time human beings have developed the ability to form cognitive constructs or the capacity for conscious level memory or speech the dynamics of their individual emotional matrix are already well learned and automatically functioning at an unconscious level. See detailed information on the emotional matrix. We can only experience things at the affect or feeling level at the stage of development when these early learnings occur. 

From that time on our emotional reactions to situations and experiences are pre-determined and we have little control over them at conscious level. They are driven by an unconscious process that was basically a protective mechanism at the time of learning but one that continues to influence how we "feel" about ourselves and how we "feel" and "react" to what is happening around us.

As we mature, some of these automatic response patterns may be naturally altered or adjusted to suit our development, while others may not be and remain firmly, but unknowingly, in place. Later as adults we mostly rely on cognitive "thinking" strategies to try and learn how to alter problematic feelings and uncomfortable reactions but most people find themselves slipping back into their "old feeling ways". 

The way our emotional matrix influences our feelings and reactions doesn't involve our conscious thought processes or cognitive abilities. We can't learn how to change our emotional matrix using the abilities we mainly rely on as adults because it was developed quite differently in the early stages of development at a purely affect or feeling level. 

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"How does this 'Emotional Matrix' have anything to do with my depression?" – Q: from Robert, Seattle. 

People with depression find it impossible to even describe why they are experiencing the feelings that they are or explain why they are responding to their life or circumstances in such a negative way. Depression sufferers can spend countless hours discussing and analysing the particular event or experience that is believed to have caused their depression but they too find that this never truly reveals the source of their automatic emotional responses to that event or experience. 

All our emotional responses and reactions are unconsciously influenced, to a greater or a lesser degree, by the emotional matrix we developed in the early stages of development. See detailed information on the emotional matrix. The way we learned to respond and react at emotional level at this pre-verbal and pre-conscious memory stage is usually the main contributing factor for the later development of emotionally based symptoms and conditions. 

Our emotional matrix underpins how we feel about ourselves and how we respond to things around us at the unconscious affect level. As a result it is the main underlying cause of depression and many other surface symptoms.

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"What findings support the idea of an 'Emotional Matrix'?" – Q: from Paul, Melbourne. 

Researchers Antonio Damasio ("Descartes' Error" and "The Feeling of What Happens"), Joseph LeDoux ("The Emotional Brain"), Susan Greenfield ("The Private Life of the Brain") and Daniel Goleman ("Emotional Intelligence"), to name just a few, have been instrumental in alerting the world to the irrefutable fact that our talking selves, our conscious perceptions and our reasoning minds play very little part in our actual ability to resolve our emotional problems.

These scientists have proved without doubt that there lies an undercurrent to the mind that is formed very early in life at a basic limbic brain level, involving the amygdala, hippocampus and other centres that are responsible for forming and "remembering" (albeit at unconscious level) our emotional personality. It's not enough to discount this as "something of interest" because it's our emotional substrate that influences, to lesser or greater degrees, everything in our lives; mental, emotional, attitudinal, behavioural and also physical (psychosomatic).

There exists within all of us, a feeling (affect) substrate that was learned at a very early time in our development. Science now points the way to the following facts about this substrate:

¨ We learn feeling reactions (affect responses) at a time earlier than cognitive constructs (if that's the case, how can we hope to remember them using cognitive memory?) [ref, LeDoux, Greenfield, Goleman]

¨ The majority of those learnings were based on misinterpretation of the actuality of experience at the time of the experience (if we could remember them, how do we know that our adult perception is remembering "truth"?) [ref; "R.I.G.s – Representations of Interactions that are Generalised" and "pre-emergent amodalism" of Daniel Stern's work in: - "The Interpersonal World of the Infant" ISBN 0-465-03403-9]

¨ It's impossible to have a consciously-recalled memory of those facts (memory is an in-the-present re-constructive process unconsciously bridging to vagaries of subconscious feeling memory) [ref, "Suggestions of Abuse" Michael Yapko, Ph.D]

¨ When they were learned they worked for us – they were productive and had positive intention (at time of learning, and the intention was more than likely that of getting attention) [ref, "The Dark Side of the Inner Child" Stephen Wolinsky]

¨ They were "taloned" or encoded at a neurological level as learned responses (the limbic brain memorises the response as "appropriate")

¨ Because they worked for us at time of taloning, and caused our "needs" to be met, we unconsciously bridge to them, using the same responses time and time again, so forming a habit of feeling. (the mechanism of all learning that evolves into habitual unconscious response)

¨ They still, in the majority of cases, exist today as a substrata of how we feel about ourselves or the world around us (mostly unchanged from the original learning because of our preference for awareness at intellectual and narrative levels of mind)

¨ Due to the manner of encoding they cannot be verbalised, that is, recalled or talked about (because they were learned at an "amodal" pure affect level without the involvement of word constructs)

¨ Early affect (feeling) learnings formed the basis upon which later learnings were constructed; or at least, they were influential in the manner in which we learned all subsequent learnings; mental, emotional, attitudinal. (human beings are empirically didactic beings – we are the product of all that we have learned, built onto over time)

In his early theoretical development work, Ian White called this substrate our EMOTIONAL MATRIX, or our IDEOGENETIC SENSE OF SELF and the existence of this "emotional matrix" now scientifically lies beyond question.

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"Why does an af-x practitioner INSIST on 'no talk' from the client?" – Q: from Anne, Sydney. 

The existence of our own individual "emotional matrix" now scientifically lies beyond question, yet the manner in which the vast majority of clinicians still operate ignores its existence entirely. See detailed information on the emotional matrix

It is simply not possible, if one is to accept the emotional matrix, to continue to believe that any reporting that a client may do is inarguably authentic regarding:

¨ What the true nature of the problem may be

¨ What the perceived cause (point of origin) of the problem may be

¨ How the cause grew to be the problem

Analysing what clients try to verbally describe about these things is in fact a vague and inauthentic pursuit, at best. The truth of any verbal reporting as conducted in the "talking therapies" is now seriously in doubt.

And if any doubt whatsoever exists, it's inconceivable that therapists of any moral integrity can trust the authenticity of any narrative, no matter how convinced the client may be of its truth.

This, then, is the dilemma. Has this new research and realisation about the existence of an ideogenetic – non-verbal – emotional substrate revealed to us that we're fooling ourselves if we think we tell ourselves the truth about emotional states? Yes.

Has it shown conclusively that a hundred years of professional commitment to the truth of the spoken word has been misplaced? Yes.

Has it proven that the emotional brain hijacks "feeling" experience, leaving the conscious reasoning brain floundering and gasping, trying to catch up with reality and put it into words – after the fact? Yes.

Does this mean that a huge gap exists between reality and the hundred-year myth that we need to be able to understand and talk about our mental and emotional problems? Yes, most certainly.

Renee Descartes proclaimed "I think, therefore I am". Antonio Damasio ("Descartes' Error") has shown conclusively that this has been the mantra for the construction of Western thought in psychology, medicine and all therapeutic forms that has guided us down a very rickety path.

New research into the human condition allows us to proclaim "I feel, therefore I am". A more contemporary (if heretical) and well-supported common-sense approach. This approach has contributed to the development of affectology and the resulting "non-narrative", "private" and highly effective nature of af-x Therapy. 

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"Why is 'Mind Over Chatter' the catch phrase of the therapy and the practitioner training?" – Q: from Colin, Canberra.

"Mind Over Chatter" quite clearly describes the private nature of the approach used in affectology and af-x Therapy and the emphasis placed on affect response re-learning at the subconscious level of mind, rather than engaging in conscious level discussion about presenting symptoms.

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"Why is it that affectologists and af-x practitioners don't place much value on conscious memory?" – Q: from Jean, Sydney.

What a person can consciously remember is of little use when it comes to effectively dealing with the underlying affect (feeling or emotional) cause of their problems or difficulties. We all unconsciously learn affect reactions and responses at a time well before our ability to form cognitive constructs. And if that's the case, and the early-learned affect reactions are the real cause of the problem, how can we hope to remember them using cognitive memory?

To take this even further, the majority of those learnings were based on misinterpretation of the actuality of experience at the time of the experience, so if we could remember them, how do we know that our adult perception is remembering "truth"?

Conscious memory is an in-the-present, fragile, re-constructive process unconsciously bridging to vagaries of subconscious feeling memory and open to much influence, so it is impossible to have truly accurate consciously recalled memories of very early affect learnings and infant experiences. 

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"What are the parts of the brain that 'store' emotional material and memory?" – Q: from Julia, Canberra.

Until relatively recently, little was known of the true function of those bodies in the brain known as AMYGDALAE. These are two rather dense neuro-structures lying at the anterior (frontal) portion of the set of brain components known as the limbic brain. Neuroscientists knew that the amygdalae had something to do with our immediate reactions to fear, and seemed important as primal components of our built-in survival mechanisms. 

So, it was known that when, for instance, we see a snake on the path before us, the amygdalae immediately register that visual information and send split-second instructions to all the other parts of the brain and nervous system in order for us to leap into action for the sake of protection and survival.

We do not process the visual information at neo-cortical level – the part of the brain that does our thinking, evaluating, reasoning and problem solving for us – the amygdalae bypass the "reasoning" activities, creating an immediate response; the thinking and evaluating part of the brain/mind being left behind in the rush.

The role of the amygdalae in our survival has been laid down in our development as humans (in fact, all animals) over millions of years. In the instance of the snake, and any number of other life-threatening perceptions, our amygdalae save our lives.

However the amygdalae serve us in more ways than just the processing of information about immediate danger. Words and language are processed in specific parts of the neo-cortical areas of the brain. The structures of the limbic brain (amygdala, hippocampus etc) are not concerned with the processing of language, reasoning or "thought". 

Nonetheless, information is stored at amygdaloid level. The amygdalae have a codifying memory, and although that memory is not word-oriented, the amygdala recognise sounds or any other information that they remember is associated with past pain, trauma or life-threat. And the amygdalae react as though it was the same as the visual information of the snake on the path.

Via the amygdaloid-hippocampal pathway, these two neural centres (that is, the amygdalae and the hippocampus) correspond, creating immediate primal response reactions to whatever the information is perceived to represent. Within neuroscience, we understand that both the amygdalae and the hippocampus are the regions where emotional reactive information and "memory" is stored. But it's the amygdalae that gets "fired up" first.

It would be too simplistic to say that the amygdalae are the sole repository of encoded emotional memories. This task of "housing" emotional memories is shared by other centres in the brain that correspond with each other in highly complex and subtle ways. As an example, the amygdalae cannot be activated by the hearing of a particularly emotionally charged word unless it either (a) has been conditioned to recognise the sound of that word rather than its meaning, or (b) an associative cognitive recognition of the meaning of the word (in memory) has taken place. In both cases, the "sound" has been unconsciously processed by other centres of the brain and in turn signalled "danger" (- or otherwise) to the amygdalae.

The affect reactions to our earliest experiences were "taloned" or encoded at a neurological level as learned responses (the limbic brain memorizes the response as "appropriate"). Because they worked for us at time of taloning, we unconsciously bridge or "memory-trace" to these early learned responses via the limbic brain system and use them time and time again in order to emotionally respond in the present. 

They exist today as a substratum of how we feel about ourselves or the world around us (mostly unchanged from the original learning because of our predilection for awareness at intellectual and narrative levels of mind).

So, in summary, it's primarily the amygdalae that immediately react whenever sensory information says "this is threatening" – whether that information is conveyed in the form of visual information, a word (or more specifically, the remembered association they have with the sound of the word), or within any of the other sensory modalities. 

For further reading, see "Emotional Intelligence" by Daniel Goleman in which he refers to this reactive process of the limbic brain system as 'emotional hijacking' and also see "The Emotional Brain" by Joseph LeDoux. 

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"How can you say that we form our Emotional Matrix in early childhood, yet don't focus on childhood problems in the therapy?" – Q: from Annette, Sydney.

All our automatic emotional responses and reactions have been, and continue to be, unconsciously influenced by the individual emotional matrix that we formed in the pre-verbal and pre-conscious memory stage of early development. 

From this time on our emotional matrix underpins how we feel about ourselves and how we respond to things around us at the unconscious affect level. It is the main underlying cause of the emotional problems, symptoms and conditions that we may develop in later childhood, as adolescents and as adults. 

Focusing on specific problems experienced during either childhood, adolescence or adulthood is only concentrating on the surface symptoms rather than addressing the underlying affect cause of these problems. 

Affectology and af-x Therapy focus on helping people to re-learn old outdated affect response patterns and in learning how they can respond to things differently at the emotional level. By dealing with and resolving the underlying cause of emotional discomfort at this level, it provides people with a new ability to unconsciously apply a new affect response learning to all their past problems and experiences, and to therefore positively change how they feel about them. 

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"How does every feeling affect every part of the body? Is this the basis of the psychosomatic dynamic?" – Q: from Greg, Brisbane.

Elements of the human brain constitute a sophisticated processing centre that is part of the limbic system surrounding the brain stem (amygdala, hippocampus and hypothalamus). These parts are superbly designed to interpret and transmit emotion and feeling to the various systems of the body with little or no involvement of the neo-cortical or "reasoning and thinking" parts of the brain.

This processing centre reacts to signals (by releasing neuro-chemicals) that are the result of immediate emotional stimulus or as a result of long conditioned 'sense of self' emotional patterns. Based on the emotional content of the signals they receive, these parts of the brain send instructions to the body's Autonomic Nervous System (ANS). 

The main function of the ANS is to maintain physical balance or 'homeostasis'; it is the central signal-transmitting facility that controls every organ and sub-system in the body (circulation, metabolism, respiration, immune system etc.) and it is this primary function that can have a dramatic effect on physical health.

The ANS receives 'instructions' from the 'emotional interpretation system' of the brain and sends chemical messages throughout the body. These messages cause our physical reactions to everything from temperature changes to emotions (ie from goosebumps on the skin to the rapid pulse and rush of adrenaline after a fright).

In a situation of perceived mental, emotional or physical stress the ANS immediately activates the stimulator phase that signals certain bodily systems to work more efficiently and others to work with less of a priority, in effect shutting them right down. This provides the physical ability to be able to respond to the increased stress or physical danger. If and when the situation is resolved, our ANS automatically re-tunes or re-balances the body during the relaxer phase; this includes increasing the effectiveness of the systems that were temporarily shut down.

When humans are not able to physically re-tune or re-balance, perhaps due to problematic feelings or early emotional learnings held unconsciously, then this can cause an imbalance in the ANS due to the constant inefficient functioning of important bodily systems. 

This sort of imbalance in the ANS can lead to a wide variety of symptoms and problems in virtually every part of the body and these in turn can lead to the physical signs of stress, depression, anxiety and the like. In addition, there are numerous purely physical symptoms or conditions that are often referred to as "psychosomatic" because an organic cause can not be found by modern medical science and therefore available treatments are based only on symptomatic relief. 

In many cases, the real cause of physical problems such as migraines, ulcers, skin conditions, chronic fatigue etc are underlying emotional patterns that are having a negative influence on the proper functioning of the ANS. Effectively dealing with these emotional patterns allows the ANS to begin functioning normally and can result in the improvement or resolution of the physical symptoms and conditions that may have developed from that emotional cause. 

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"What is the basic ideology behind the 'emotional health reform' aspect of the therapy?" – Q: from Fiona, Adelaide.

Many well credentialed authors, including those listed below, have bravely presented critiques of their own professions and a different view in an effort to deconstruct a social "worshipping" of cognitive psychology today.

Dr Peter Breggin - "The Antidepressant Fact Book"; 

Dr Tana Dineen - "Manufacturing Victims: - What the Psychology Industry is Doing to People";

Terence W. Campbell, Ph.D. - "Beware the Talking Cure: - Psychotherapy May be Hazardous to Your Mental Health"; and

Robyn Dawes - "House of Cards:- Psychology and Psychotherapy Built on Myth". 

If we are now discovering that narrative is, at best, open to benign corruption through influence, and at worst, blatantly inauthentic, where does that leave the future of therapy? 

All mainstream education in therapy has been based on a trust that people know what they're talking about when they're defining their own emotional condition. And here comes a new common-sense view of human awareness that renders this idea inoperable! What do mainstream and conventional therapists do?

One brings to mind the image of a group of people (our society) that has taken the wrong turn in the road a hundred years ago, looking over the shoulder longingly at the turn-off, wondering how the way will be found back onto the right trail. And that group knows in its heart of hearts that the hundred years of experience (along a wrong pathway) has resulted in a psychological and therapeutic approach that very dangerously trusts the "truth" of conscious memory and its accompanying words.

The predominant attitude of mainstream therapists and counsellors is to ignore the power of the emotional mind. What then, of the puzzlement experienced by those intelligent lay-people (you!) who read the ever-expanding amount of literature available about the emotional architecture of "us"? The ground-swell of awareness about emotional intelligence, the "emotional limbic brain structures" – amygdala, hippocampus, et al – seems to be creating a bubble of awareness experienced by a thinking public that is getting beyond the capabilities of mainstream therapists to address and speak intelligently to, much less meet on the new ground of our "emotional selves".

How can we say that the emotionally suffering public has been left lonely in their search for settlement and balance at pure emotional (or "affect") levels while an arrogant self-serving, self-important, righteous professional strata of clinicians grows further and further away from the truth of the issue? Well, new findings in emotional neuro-physiology (that is, new findings of old facts) allow us to say it.

Thankfully, there is an answer, and it's not to be found in the instructional texts of post-Freudian analytical counselling practices.

Over the many years of development of the af-x approach to emotional re-framing and restructuring, Ian White has heard scores of comments from clients who have been more in touch with the "something in the air" than any therapists from whom they may have previously sought help. Comments like:-

"I know that for forty years I have been lying to myself."

"The more I'm forced to talk about my past, the more I make up."

"I've talked and talked and talked it through, and it's just gotten worse."

"Getting it off my chest just left room for greater pain."

"I didn't think my problem was so bad, and then I was led to believe it was worse – so it became worse."

"I don't know how to put my feelings into words, so I don't want to be forced."

Comments such as these reinforce the findings of the new affectologists because they know that the process of verbalisation in therapy is, at best, open to doubt as to truth, and at worst, may be completely inauthentic.

It's because of this, that affectologists and af-x Practitioners seek to help bring about "emotional health reform' in our society by making available a therapeutic approach that appreciates and honours a person's "affect" state of being over their intellectual state of being. 

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"You've told us a lot about the theory of affectology, Ian, but what do you actually DO with your clients?" – Q: to Ian White from Larry, a member of the ICSPP, Washington USA.

As with ALL therapies and clinical approaches, the aim is to correct fundamental causative dysfunction. Current affect and emotional dis-integrity is the result of unconscious repetition of affect responses encoded at early-development times (we assert "pre-verbal").

The crucial "process" of af-x is the re-integration of temporal dissociative states. This is achieved by (1) deconstruction of socio-professional health neo-mythology, (2) education on affect matrix development, (3) education on inherent reframing resources, and (4) guidance in applying re-integrative resources.

Larry, I'm sure you would know other clinicians who would call this "growing up the inner child." We affectologists do not use that metaphor (and that's all it is), because it proposes a "blame" mode (even though it's one's OWN "inner child"). af-x is based on the imperative of ultimate self-responsibility. (The client learned it; the client is habituating it; only the client's unconscious knows what the cause was; only the client can reframe it.)

So, what we actually DO is what we need to do to bring about that goal of reframing and reintegrating at affective level. We believe without doubt that every person is perfect just as they are; they've simply learned some non-useful responses that they can just as easily "un-learn" and re-learn (reframe).

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"That's logical, but HOW do you actually help with that re-education?" – a further Q in response to the above answer, to Ian White from Larry, a member of the ICSPP, Washington USA.

Deconstruction of non-useful health myths and education relating to affect systems and matrix is a good part of the treatment. When people (all of us) are able to get a new view of an old problem, that very "new sight" goes a long way towards an automatic search for the re-integration of self. af-x Practitioners assist the client towards that final goal and outcome by utilising paralogical processing not unlike cued meditative re-rationalisation ("Reminding the mind" rather than external instructive injunctions).

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