The Johari Window

During this session we continue to explore who we are and bring that information to the conscious mind. Another great tool for helping in that exploration is the Johari Window.

“I know you know”
This public window is known to self and also known to others. It is the field of open communication. This is where trust may flourish.

“I don’t know you know”
This window represents your blind spots. It is the field where you might feel vulnerable. This is where self-discovery is a possibility for growth.

“I know you don’t know”
This private window is your mask. It is the hidden field. This is where you keep your secrets.

"I don’t know and you don’t know”
This window represents the black box. It is the unknown field. This is where there is room for potential.


The Johari Window is a graphic demonstration of what we know about ourselves versus what others know about us. Analyzing this window helps you to expand the first window particularly in relationships where you wish to have a more intimate relationship. Open communication is vital to promote trust in a relationship. Even though you may feel you are open and honest in a relationship, if the other person in that relationship doesn’t feel that you are, they will have a difficult time trusting you.
It’s also important to your journey to bring material from all sources possible including your friends and your own unconscious to enable you to examine what is beyond your knowing about yourself. In some cases you may be able to ask people in your outer world. Although some things that are known about you will not be revealed to you by your friends because they don’t want to hurt your feelings. This is one of the main areas where your dream-maker is most helpful. Your dream-maker will always be honest with you. However since dreams usually speak in the language of symbols you may have difficulty understanding the message. We will discuss dreamwork in coming sessions. Our next session will deal with the Call to Adventure/Evolution. Asking you to begin paying attention to and interact with your dreams is indeed a call to adventure and evolution.


You may also want to explore what people in your life know about you that you do not know. The following link to an interactive Johari Window test may help. After choosing words you think describe yourself, you are asked to send the test to your friends so that you can compare what they endorse about you with what you yourself endorsed.
http://kevan.org/johari



Assignment:
Journal about your secrets. Journal about what you think others might say about you. Remember this is your private journal. If you can’t be open and honest with yourself for fear of your journal being found, consider keeping your journal online where it can be kept private. Then even if you die, no one will be able to access your private journal. There are several services available for keeping a private journal. I recommend. DreamJournal.net or LiveJournal.com. Both have an option for making your journal open, so make sure you have your settings right.

Jungian Typoloogy

We are taking personality tests in the first part of this journey so that you will know yourself better and many attitudes you may have not been aware of previously will now be conscious.
It's important to understand that a person's psychological make-up is always working on two levels: the conscious and the unconscious. According to Jung, a person's 'psyche' (a person's 'whole being') is represented by their conscious and unconscious parts. A person's conscious and unconscious states are in a way 'self-balancing', that is to say if a person's conscious side (or 'attitude') becomes dominant or extreme, then the unconscious will surface or manifest in some way to correct the balance. This might be in dreams or internal images, or via more physical externally visible illness or emotional disturbance.
We each have a primary way of relating to the world, but if we get too out of balance our unconscious processes will take over and “act out” or manifest in some way, the opposite. People will say, “That was not like her at all.” But it was very much like your secondary functions.
Jung’s complex theory has it, that all of us are made up of different individuals (complexes), that we all have multiply complexes that function like personalities. The only thing that keeps us from being diagnosed as having multiple personality disorder is a greater ability to keep the parts of our personality together.
Jung said that we need a function to tell us what is, and that is sensation. We need a function to give it a name, and that’s thinking. We need a function to tell us what it is worth, and that’s feeling, and we need a function to tell us what its possibilities are, where it is headed, and that’s intuition.
Most Jungian type tests place you on a sliding scale based on how you prefer to use those functions. These are determined by where you land on a scale with two different ways of using a function – one at each end of the scale as shown below. Depending on which side of the center mark you fall your primary type will be determined.

Extravert ___________________|__________________________ Introvert
Feeling _____________________|___________________________ Thinking
Intuition ____________________|__________________________ Sensation

If you are introverted you will tend to withdraw when trying to figure things out, while if you are extroverted you tend to like to “talk things out” with someone you trust. When making value judgments you will either make that judgment based on what is logical (thinking type) or on what “feels right.” (feeling type.) The final scale measures how we gather and organize information. The sensing type will gather information using his or her senses and will use some known structure to organize it, while an intuitive type seems to gather information from out of the air and immediately organizes it holistically by its potential. Your secondary type or “inferior function” will be of the opposite type. We’ll talk more about that in a later section.
Assignment:
Take one of the Jungian type tests available on the internet. Links below:
http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes1.htm
http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/jungiantypestest.html
http://www.mypersonality.info/personality-types/

After you have determined your type, journal about how you relate to that information and how you have seen it manifest in your life.
Don’t forget we have discussion session on Wednesday afternoon at 2pm MT at Wiziq.com/Julia-Widdop. If you have not received an invitation to the next class, please call me at 970-462-7132.