| Titel: | Back to One |
|---|---|
| Autor: | odsky, Stanley L. |
| Mediengruppe: | chapter |
| Herausgeber: | --- |
| Zeitschrift: | --- |
| Jahr: | 1999 |
| Band: | --- |
| Heft: | --- |
| Seiten: | 10-13 |
| Sprache: | English |
| Abstract: | (from the chapter) Discusses the moments during testimony when a witness is able to shed the sense of public self-consciousness from being on the stand and, instead, to be personally visible as well as professionally present. This process has been labelled by Sheldon Kopp (1977) as being Back to One. The phrase back to one comes from meditation instruction in which the meditator is told to count from 1 up to 10 successively with each breath. Whenever a stray thought appears or a self-evaluation of how one is doing, it is necessary to go back to one. It is profoundly frustrating at first to find that you have always to go back to one. The solution, in part, is changing your frame of reference. After periods of meditation practice, a notable event occurs; evaluative and intrusive thoughts no longer appear, and the practitioners relax into the experience. The parallel for court testimony is that witnesses are at their best when they do not try to "win." Trying to win the battles and trying to triumph do not come first. Instead, good testimony is being one's authentic professional self, and the converse, one's authentic professional self is testimony without defensiveness and phony posturing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved) (chapter) |