In many forms of psychological theory and practice the individual is searching for their identity. This is of course the eternal search for the meaning of their existence. This can be from the mundane to the esoteric.

So how does our present society assist in enabling our people to be successful in this quest?

By looking at the educational and social services we have in our society how do they provide opportunities for our young future talents to add the positive energies of society.

Basically our institutions have a pathological model on which they base their behaviour -people need help and we will give it to them. This seems to be opposed to the view that people have within them the possibility to find their positive qualities and to develop them- a potentiality model.

By exploring an example it is possible to see how the institutions can hinder rather than help people to find their true self.

It is not uncommon that a young person has had a loss of nurturing when they enter the education system. If this is the case the experts may be called to assess what is the problem after the teacher has decided that s/he has too many other needs to take care of this person's particular needs. The advice is usually these days based on the specialist findings by an individual who has the ability to only provide information around their area of expertise. They are only paid to provide their little box of information. Their training only enables them to understand that area of expertise, (but that is another whole article).

So the information that is reported back to the teacher is already what the teacher knows but in the language of the expert. The child may by now have a new label- dyslexic, severe learning disorders… .So the teacher is no wiser, in fact probably confused and the child has had an invasion and a new label. This process can be repeated each year in an escalating manner as the school, child, family and the professional specialists spend time arguing over the definitions of the labels around the child. Meanwhile the child is becoming frustrated, angry and behaving in a way that it only knows how to express it self-by acting out or acting inwards. Then of course we are in to the serious labelling of the psychiatric system at quite a young age nowadays. With the self, spirit or soul screaming for some connections it will behave in deeper ways to get attention, be noticed, or act just as a natural release mechanism.

This will be clearly noticed by the experts but will be labelled according to their area of expertise. In the child and adolescent health area these days the professionals are paid on the basis of fulfilling their quota of young people they see according to the USA psychiatric model of assessment in the DSM-IV. So even if you were brave enough to take a more general or holistic look at the child, family and school supports you would not be able to action them honestly within the institutional framework.

At this stage there any number of scenarios that are possible from substance abuse, violence, self abuse, criminal behaviour, sexual acting out, all with the usual further invasion by the instituional representations. Now all of these people are well meaning from their perspective, but what has to be kept in mind is that they are still operating in the maze and myriad of the pathological model.

The essence of this model is that people can be brought into line according to their rules and regulations of that model. If people recognised that people are emotional beings that essentially want to be loved and recognised first and foremost then it is possible that they can free up those pathological energies to develop their potentialities. Why is it that the pathologicaal models do not allow the experts to have a wider view of humanity?

I suspect that the model enables these experts and professionals to hide their complexes ( in the Jungian sense), in their work. So when one looks closely at the behaviour of the professionals it is possible to see that many of them are stuck in their complexes, or issues, and use the rationalisations and intellectualisations as ways to justify their behaviour. They are also very well paid to continue their game and hence even more insulated from their reality. Their languages also enables themselves to go to conferences, to talk to policy people and confuse the "lay" people that they must know what they are doing.

The result for the person trying to find their identity is that they are being told by these experts that they are on the wrong track and people learn not to trust their intuitive self. They become so de- powered and inadequate that they will begin to believe what ever they are told, or, act out their intuitive self in destructive ways. Either way they are still in the power of the institutions.

The only solution for these people is to be very selective in what they are able to hear and to make decisions for themselves. This is of course easier said than done. But if support were in place to help people to gain an understanding of their identity; an understanding of the emotional state they are in; an understanding of their potentiality; then there is a possibility that with ongoing love and acceptance of these peoples' state they could begin to realise their potentialites.

To support these young people the adults have to start behaving like emotionally mature human beings. They have to take an honest look at themselves and sort themselves out and stop acting out their issues on their clients, pupils, students, or patients . In this country they would need to sit and pass a test in emotional maturity (EQ test), and then do some deep work on themselves before they are allowed to practice at all. With further work on developing their potentialities they would be in a position of providing reasonable role models for the young.

What are the chances of this happening? Training is a word we hear a lot of these days. At our present stage of human development training really is no better than the indoctrination process to keep people on track in the institutional framework. This is so in the educational institutions from pre-school to all forms of tertiary institutions. It is not until people have outgrown these places of education is it possible to gain levels of learning that one would call as transforming possibilities.

Only those people with a strong sense of self, and the ability to manoevure through the systems relatively unscathed, are they able to look at transforming themselves. They may in their search find like minded people whom they realise are not crazy but are also looking for answers for their selves and their own identity.

It is possible to put any number of reasonably acceptable labels on to these searchings which will lead to the transformations that all peoples have always been searching. Whether we call it finding ourself, therapy, spiritual journey, religion, getting in touch, emotional maturity, change management practice, mid-life crisis… it is all about reaching in to our potentialities that we evolved human beings all have.

The challenge is to provide institutions that are to enable people to open themselves up and allow them to find what are their strengths. It is ironic that the most open institutions to these concepts are in the commercial world not the peoples' institutions in education, health and welfare. Nowadays each individual has to make their own journey and not rely on the institutions of the past, whether they are family, caste, class, secular or religious. Thankfully we have the technology to quickly encapsulate the best of the past institutions and to add that in to the individual's repetoire whether that is in the physical, emotional or spiritual realm.

What are possible ways that a model might look like?

One way of representing a potentiality model is a continuum from the extreme of the pathological on one end to the fullest potentiality at the other end. So the continuum is really the evolutionary continuum.

People will enter on this continuum at whatever level that they are given in a combination of intelligence, emotional maturity and spiritual connection when they are born. It is up to the environmental influences of the institutions of family, local community, and the educational and other institutions that will determine the movement along this continuum. We are living in an age that it requires individuals to develop themselves and to almost redefine groups or cultures in which they can feel safe in being themselves. It probably will be quite a while before the national institutions will let go their power to free up the possibilities for people to reach higher levels of potentialites. Each individual in the national institutions will probably fight very strongly to deny and defend their issues, and as they have the national resources of our taxes they are in quite a powerful position.

It really does require individuals to relearn about how to become emotionally mature. Thankfully in this day and age it is possible to learn about being emotionally mature. Depending on the entry level on the continuum it is possible for people to quite quickly come to realisations about where they are at and how to develop further along that continuum.

There is an increasing realisation in management and in the commercial world that providing opportunities for this growth, in work, and in balance with out of work activities, that people can develop high levels of emotional maturity and high levels of spiritual connection with themselves and others in their community.

A Potentiality Model in Process can be represented as three levels of interaction operating in the 4th dimension. The first level is called the Intuitive Process, the next level is the Creative Process, leading on to the spiritual process. A way of representing this interaction is to think of these three processes as being linked by the essential self, or soul, as the stem which links these processes.

These continuums are extremes that people may wish to practice. Generally people integrate these activities in to their self, as represented by the shaft up the median of the continuums. a. The intuitive process can be from reflecting in the shower to intensive and concentrated meditation. b. The creative process can be from talking to your neighbour to the highest level of artistic creativity. c. The spiritual process can be from enjoying the wind in the trees to a deep connection with your God, higher being, or god within.

The key factor is that at what ever level you are operating at it must all be integrated in a balanced way. In reality it could be argued that even the most spiritual beings can also be denying and subtly defending themselves. It seems important that the work involved in the Potentiality Model is done in the ordinary mainstream of life to enable people to remain grounded in everyday reality.

There are now a multitude of practices that are available in helping people to develop themselves which have sound theoretical and practical basis.