60. The creativity in resisting change – Bo Ahrenfelt

In this winding conversation with Bo Ahrenfelt, some truly interesting aspects of psychology come to the surface as we cover the nature of the mind, social interaction and the dynamic between the individual and the collective.

Bo Ahrenfelt is a psychiatrist, but he broadened his approach early on and has worked for decades as a consultant with collective and individual development in organizations and corporations.

Long before his professional career he had an inner knowing that consciousness is something outside of the brain, he says. He has been influenced by buddhism and other eastern psychology, but he embraces Western teachings as well (”I am an inclusive person”).

”How can we understand each other without talking? A group of hunters a few thousand years ago knew exactly what to do without talking to each other.”

When he was a teenager, Bo did a non-material experiment with some friends: they tried to make a man turn his head towards them just by staring at the back of his head. It took them a couple of minutes. What kind of energy was it that the man felt?

Bo Ahrenfelt is wary of wandering too far into what he considers to be religion, however. The term spirituality belongs there, he thinks – even though he is on the list of advisers to the Galileo Commission, whose goal is to overcome the divide between science and spirituality.

”Not knowing is a very creative state to be in. Like Jesus said: be like a child. Open your eyes if you want to see reality. Otherwise you only see yourself”, Bo says.

Having worked a lot with social interaction, he has come to see group dynamics a bit differently than the mainstream.

”Our society thinks there are ’stages’ and ’steps’ in the group process. That’s bull, because everything comes from within us. The group process is the relationships between individuals. There's no such thing as ’steps’. It's all a soup.”

In this soup of relationships there is one salient phenomenon: most of us don’t like change.

”The resistance to change is very obvious to anyone who has worked with personal, group, organizational or scientific development. And it is a good thing. There is great meaning in resistance, because without resistance there is no true change, there is just obedience.”

Those who want change are forced to think twice and listen to others. And compromise. One plus one can make three. ”Or a peach”.

On a universal level, change is the only constant. This is also, as it happens, almost exactly the title of Bo Ahrenfelts best-selling book ”Change as a state of Being”. How can we learn to embrace that nothing lasts forever?

”We can’t. If we accepted it we wouldn't survive as a species. Every change has a possibility of being a threat. And we have to handle that.”

At the same time, it is obvious that things don't look the same, things don't work the same and humans don't behave the same way they did decades or centuries ago. So, what is it, ultimately, that is pulling us forward?

”I think it's like sexuality, hunger and thirst: it’s a drive. I strongly believe what I learned from humanistic psychology, that wanting new knowledge is also a drive. It’s part of nature.”

Books by Bo Ahrenfelt: https://tinyurl.com/3zfx678s