The Three Stages of Interaction

Abstract

In his personal development as well as in his marital and family relationships, the individual goes through three stages: connectedness, differentiation (discrimination) and detachment.

A man lay bedridden with a serious illness, and it appeared that his death was near. In her fear, his wife summoned a hakim, the town doctor. The hakim tapped around on the patient and listened for more than a half-hour, checked his pluse, put his head on the man’s chest, turned him onto his stomach and then his side and back, raised the man’s legs and torso, opened his eyes, looked in his mouth, and then said with a great deal of conviction, “My dear woman, unfortunately I must give you the sad news that your husband has been dead for two days.” At this very moment, the ailing man raised his head in shock and whimpered anxiously, “No, my dearest, I’m still alive.” The wife gave her husband a hefty slap on the head with her fist and replied angrily, “Be quiet! The hakim, a doctor, is an expert. He ought to know”

—Persian story