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Questions We are Often Asked

During the development phase of TO ARTEMIS, many of the participants asked similar questions trying to better understand TO ARTEMIS and how it “worked.” We thought it might be beneficial to list some of these questions and present answers addressing the issues. We hope that this will answer some of the questions which TO ARTEMIS may raise for you.

How can I tell if I need to use TO ARTEMIS?

If you want to understand yourself more fully and grow, if you want to understand why you experience difficulties that either hinder, block, or turn you away from achieving your practical and personally meaningful goals, then TO ARTEMIS has the potential of helping you achieve this. In following the practices outlined in TO ARTEMIS you will be introduced into exploring ideas in a new way, and it is this new way of approaching human problems that will bring you to a profound way of understanding. In grasping this way of understanding, you will see how you can apply it in many new and exciting ways.

How do the questions work?

These questions are designed to probe various levels of reflection and can be answered either briefly or in some depth. It will be helpful if you consider these questions to be from someone who is solely interested in helping you reach an understanding of yourself. Consider then that you can answer each of them as freely as you would if they were asked by someone you trust.

Will I find something fearful in my past?

Probably not. Instead, you will discover that what is responsible for your problem are not monstrous things from your past, but simple ideas that were inferred from simple scenes. You may wonder: “If I just answer questions, how can I learn anything about myself that I don’t already know?” You already know, but you keep forgetting. The dialogue helps to bring to the surface your answers; and then by reflecting again and again on what you have said, you begin to make connections. This clarifies the themes that have caused you trouble in your life. This process helps you to remember and understand.

But why do you have to challenge beliefs?

Suppose, for the moment, that you discover yourself running into the same kind of problems again and again—whether in your studies, your work, or your relations with others. When you strive to achieve those things which are most important to you, suppose that you experience these problems even more intensely.

Again, suppose you discover that behind those obstacles and difficulties there is nothing more than beliefs you hold about yourself, your self image. Would you be curious about those beliefs and want to know about them and how you came to learn them? And also, why it is that they seem to gain intensity whenever you pursue your most significant goals? TO ARTEMIS guides you through reflections and recollections to discover the answers to these very questions. As these things become clear to you, you will grasp the concept that as long as these beliefs are not challenged and not exposed they will continue to block you from attaining you noblest goals.

So TO ARTEMIS brings about insights into how you understand yourself, right?

Yes, and as you become familiar with the process you will discover that it provides you with a new model of understanding as well as a way of understanding yourself and others.

Are we saying that TO ARTEMIS is the only way to understand yourself?

Of course not. There are many ways people seek to know themselves and certainly not all use the same approach. But when you use TO ARTEMIS to understand yourself, you will be gaining insights into the process that generates beliefs, and you will learn about the kind of problems that are generated from beliefs.

Since TO ARTEMIS is not interactive, how can it possibly “know” about my problems?

We have designed the questions to proceed the way a dialogue should proceed—step by step to a natural conclusion. This is made possible by following the very way in which problems come into existence. It is by charting out the forces that maintain them that their right to exist can be challenged. TO ARTEMIS surfaces the false ideas which play a role in our lives that we have never examined or put into words. Then, once we recognize the role these false ideas play, their ruinous power is dissipated.

It sounds as if TO ARTEMIS will take quite a lot of serious reflection, and yet there is even more to come?

Yes. Completing TO ARTEMIS will test your courage, perseverance, and desire to truly understand yourself. Indeed, you will have good reason to congratulate yourself each time you finish an exploration using it. The next application on DREAM ANALYSIS will take this methodology to the next step.

How long does it usually take to complete an exploration of a problem?

While it may be possible for some people to go through TO ARTEMIS in an evening or two, most people take longer, allowing plenty of time for reflecting and going over their answers. Thus, some people require only a few days, while some require several months. This also depends on individual ways of working, time available, the amount of tension created and tolerated.

However, there is a difference between going through TO ARTEMIS and resolving a problem you are exploring. There are many aspects to a problem, it needs to be seen from many perspectives, and you will discover the importance of examining your problem again, after facing it in your everyday experience. Thus, while some problems can be resolved easily, others are more difficult and require more time; but in either case, it is not possible to go through the program without learning many important things about yourself.

What do you imagine will be the end of all this questioning, answering and reflecting?

We need to study the blocks that keep man from being rational, to learn how to bring ourselves and our fellow humans to a more profound understanding of ourselves, to discover those beliefs and opinions that are the obstacles in our path to Enlightenment, and to achieve that goal, we need to continually work on ourselves. In order to reach that goal we will need to develop and perfect our understanding of ourselves.

But is it not possible that by such reflections we may reach wrong conclusions and misjudge others as well as ourselves?

Yes, that is true; however, what you are purifying is the understanding. Consider: whatever understanding you have reached will, of course, be tested or tempered in the fire of your own experience, because it is by entering again and again into problem scenes and puzzling over their implications that one gains in clarity of understanding. The power and intensity of a problem diminishes in this process, and as you will doubtless find, it is never without its most interesting surprises.

There is, of course, much more to this methodology than what we have outlined here; there is charting out the network of problems, dream analysis, the philosophical midwifery of understanding, the dialectic, and especially learning how this method is an expression of Platonic philosophy.

Should you desire to learn more about this process, please consider contacting the author and checking the Suggested Reading section.

Is this a Psychotherapy?

Again, TO ARTEMIS is not a psychology because it explores the nature of false beliefs and inquires into why these false beliefs were believable. Thus, we discover that we are not driven by some instinct, some unconscious desire, or some biological or emotional force, but instead that those false beliefs were believed and have been maintained because there appeared to be good reason to conclude the way we did. When these false beliefs are exposed as false and their implications seen, they will be rejected—as are all false beliefs. It is by appealing to our understanding that philosophical midwifery brings us to a deeper level of understanding ourselves, and it achieves this without recourse to any psychological principles. Whatever similarities there may be between philosophical midwifery and certain kinds of psychotherapy can be found in philosophy—and most especially in Platonic philosophy. Therefore, philosophical midwifery is a philosophical exploration, not a psychological one, because the root causes of our problems are found in the acceptance of certain beliefs about the Self and the nature of our reality—rather than in some complex of emotional causes. Philosophical midwifery is a method for surfacing those beliefs, for understanding how they are maintained, and for challenging them until they are finally resolved.

It can be said that TO ARTEMIS is psychotherapeutic. Psychotherapy is, of course, a cure for the soul or mind. So any practice that offers a cure for the soul or mind, is psychotherapy; at least, that is how the term itself can be understood. But the term psychotherapy has changed to mean a talking cure that occurs as the result of talks between a therapist and a patient—for which the patient pays. However, the soul or mind, can recover from an illness without applying that specific kind of treatment which we call psychotherapy. Consider: Might it not be psychotherapeutic to take a cruise on the Mediterranean, to climb Mount Everest, or to make love—but that doesn’t mean that they are psychotherapy, does it?

There is no reason why a psychotherapy couldn’t be developed from philosophical midwifery. In fact, a school of philosophy called existentialism brought about an existentialist psychotherapy, and the school of phenomenology brought a phenomenological psychotherapy; and, in the same way, philosophical midwifery could bring about its counterpart—a philosophical midwifery adapted for psychotherapy.

A philosophical midwife can also help others through their problems either through the philosophical midwifery workbook or by applying the principles independent of TO ARTEMIS.

Further studies on philosophical midwifery If you are curious about a more in-depth discussion of philosophical midwifery, the author has written two dialogues that present philosophical midwifery within the idea of dialectic as a mode of psychotherapy. The first was “Alcibiades: A Dialogue as a Mode of Psychotherapy for Alcoholism” published in Yale University’s Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol, (Volume 22, Number 2, pp. 279 -297. June 1961). The second was: “Vinodorus: A Dialogue Exploring a Frame of Reference for Dialectic as a Mode of Psychotherapy in the Treatment of Alcoholism” published in Rutgers Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol, (Volume 27, Number 4, pp. 693 - 716. Dec. 1966).

This philosophical approach to psychotherapy as a rational inquiry was validated in the study "A Validation of the Grimes’ Dialectic as a Mode of Psychotherapy" which was presented to the 94th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, in Washington, DC, August 1986 by Dr. Regina Uliana and Dr. Pierre Grimes. He has also written a book, "Philosophical Midwifery: A New Paradigm for Understanding Human Problems", in which these ideas are explored in depth.

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