- date: 2026-04-28
- tags: tools
- identifier: 20260428T081041
when do we feel one with the car, the bike, the sword, the scientific theory? when it assists us to exercise our agency without thought to its separate-ness from us.
so, too, with mental techniques. in internal family systems therapy, it is not important whether some neurological or spiritual structure corresponds to the parts identified. what matters is the effects wrought by considering such parts and their interrelationships.
from so many movies: "the sword must be part of your arm".
my generation may have been the first to understand the immersion attainable by a video game: "press A to move left" gives way to the raw impulse to move left.
an expert machinist surely doesn't think of "using the lathe, then the mill to shape the piece in such a way"; they must surely think simply of shaping the piece in such a way.
psychomotor therapy uses people or inanimate objects as stand-ins for important people to the "protagonist" in physical space. these arranged structures are powerful. in van der Kolk's "the body keeps the score", it is clear how the protagonist is unbothered by the falseness of such stand-ins. the effect is real.
we could call this more generally the "integration of technologies". the smartphone is commonly evoked by "technology". note how no one says, "just a second. i'm going to look that up using my smartphone." in the years when that was a reasonable thing to say, no one was yet quite good at using smartphones at all.