Processwork skills can be learned cognitively and practiced by all. Besides, respecting previous skills learned in a particular application area from other schools and sciences, all basic process work skills are awareness skills. These basic skill include awareness of:

1. Audible and visible signals that can be picked up by a camera.
2. Dreamlike signals and feelings that make no sense at first,
3. Subtle, flickering evanescent “flirt”-like, and non-repeatable signals which require focus, amplification and imagination.

• In addition to these cognitively learned skills, there are *metaskills* or feeling skills, which means the way in which we use the skills. See below.

The primary or first processwork goal is to follow the Tao in terms of visible and subtle signals coming from people and events. This means respecting individuals, groups, and the environment, exploring reality and also the dream and essence levels of events, which often bring surprising solutions and resolutions to even apparently intractable situations.

Amy created and defined Metaskills in her 1995 New Falcon Press book,

“METASKILLS, THE SPIRITUAL ART OF THERAPY“.

She says there on page 15,   “Deep spiritual attitudes and beliefs manifest in therapy and in every daily life…. Through their feelings and attitudes, therapists express their fundamental beliefs about life. These attitudes permeate and shape all of the therapists apparent techniques. Conceptually, I raise these essential underlying feelings of the therapist to “skills ” that must and can be studied and cultivated. I call these feeling attitudes “metaskills”.”

Thus, Metaskills are the feeling qualities, or attitudes that bring learned skills to life and make them useful. For example, an important “metaskill” in all deeper, ongoing work is “following” events. The Taoists would have said, following the sense of the Tao, that is events which are generally observable and/or sometimes intuited.

The mystical side of process work follows events (such as the Tao) that cannot be quite said, while the concrete and (consensually) realistic part of process work deals with observable signals, unfolding these signals until they explain themselves.

Metaskill Discussion and Theory in the Japanese Journal of Clinical Psychology by Kiyoshi Hamano, translated by Kazuko Sato.

The following article was printed in the “Japanese Journal of Clinical Psychology,” Vol. 4, No.1 January, 2004, pp.145-148, published by Kongo Shuppan in Tokyo. The article appeared for the first time in that Journal series. It was originally written in Japanese and is translated below into English thanks to Ms Kazuko Sato.

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by Amy Mindell
November 2005

All of us are, or will one day be, in the position of giving feedback to others whether we are teachers, bosses, parents, or simply friends giving advice to one another. Over the years I have developed into a teacher and supervisor of other therapists and therapists-in-training and have found that, for me, the task of giving feedback carries as much excitement and learning as it is daunting and challenging. There is always more to learn about how to teach and give feedback in useful ways.

Supervision can be a wonderful learning process for everyone involved. At the same time, I am acutely aware that no matter how good hearted the supervisor might be, or how open and capable the supervisee may be, the atmosphere around a feedback situation is most often filled with various background spirits, some stemming from past wonderful or difficult educational experiences, earlier parental situations, abuse issues, etc. At the same time, the nature of the particular student or supervisee and the particular supervisor or teacher, the momentary mood, the “performance” that is being looked at, the moment in time, and the feelings of all involved play significant roles in what occurs. The person in the position of getting feedback may feel relaxed and excited about feedback or possibly uptight about what might be said. At the same time, the supervisor might feel fully engaged and interested or alternately, nervous about what to say, how to say it, or how to be conscious of the rank differences between her or himself and the supervisee.

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We suspect that the Bart Simpson must have taken a process work course somewhere because of his advanced knowledge of double signals! See the picture of his teacher (Know your Enemy!). His or her primary process is being a good teacher, but the secondary process has a lot of other information, most of which he or she does not identify with. Good luck Bart. (see The Bart Book, Harper Collins, New York, 2004, ca. page 14.)