As I sit and write this, the ink flowing out of my pen, the sun comes pouring through the window÷almost too hot, since I've grown accustomed to the recent cold spell. By the time you read this, it may be still the depths of winter, but here in coastal northern California, the miner's lettuce is already springing up everywhere and some wildflowers are showing their blooms.

Even with global warming, I still can't get used to the mildness of this climate. I was visiting my sister and her family over the Christmas holidays in England, and I awoke one morning to a white landscape. A very powdery snow of some four to five inches had fallen. I went for a long walk with my almost seven year old nephew, Zander (short for Alexander). He liked falling over and being pulled along, sliding. I appreciated that my feet seemed to stay warm. It was comical to see some of the rear wheel drive cars spinning their wheels as they attempted to mount a rather modest hill up through the center of the village. We attempted to make a snowman, but all we succeeded in creating was a small heap, the snow being not mushy enough.

The next few days there was a strong frost, freezing the trodden snow into slick ice and uneven lumps. One day we were invited next door to where my sister used to live, the manor farmhouse, "for drinks." We had homemade mince pies with about a pound of butter in the pastry, and apple juice for the tee-totallers (my nephew, partner, and myself), the rest having wine, I think. We retired to a "reception room" and settled into comfy chairs. I fell into a sort of trance, listening to the English cadence and rhythm. I looked across the room at my partner. We both smiled, listening to this flutter of words which seemed to float across the room. (I should explain that I haven't lived in England for twenty years, so, although English is my first language, my ears are far more accustomed to "American.")

If I were to characterize the first impression of such a sound on my senses, it would be "up there," "high." Sandra Seagal, originator of Human Dynamics describes her initiation into a new way of perceiving people in her book Human Dynamics: a New Framework for Understanding People and Realizing Potential in Our Organizations (co-authored with David Horne; 1997, Pegasus Communications, Inc., Cambridge MA). During an interview with a nine year old girl in 1979, Sandra noticed three different levels of sound in her client's voice. The experience was so deep and revelatory that she formed a group of investigators around her, who began to correlate basic human tendencies with the perception of voice. High sounds corresponded to mental functioning, middle to emotional, and lowest to physical. After lengthy studies and videotape observation, it became apparent that there were other observable cues, such as behavior, mannerisms and types of subject matter which people tended to engage in, which could distinguish which category they were predisposed to operate from. It turned out each person could readily be identified with one central dynamic, mental, emotional, or physical, and that they also tended to rely secondarily on one other of these three. The third lesser used characteristic would point to that area in a person's personality, which, if developed, would lead to greater balance and flexibility.

The mental principle emphasizes concepts and objectivity, and processes information sequentially, linearly. The emotional principle emphasizes relationships and communication, and processes information laterally. The physical principle emphasizes actions and practicality, and processes information in a systematic way. The researchers in Human Dynamics seem to have discovered something very similar to Carl Jung's distinctions between thinking and feeling, intuition and sensation. In contrast to Jung, they conducted extensive studies and observations throughout the world and have gone on to apply their work not just to individuals and groups but to organizations.

Their principle benefit has been to ensure respect for diversity among groups, to help people recognize the benefits of diversity at all levels of an organization. For example, a child who is first emotional, secondarily physical, or, as Seagal and Horne put it, emotional-subjective, will very easily pick up others' feelings. My nephew Zander seems to have these strengths; however, at school, he is being faulted for not focusing sufficiently on his school tasks (at six?!). He's a very physical child, as well as obviously picking up on the emotional climate around him. He loved to play "high jumpin' and rumpin,'" meaning I would pick him up by his hands as he jumped, boosting his lift dramatically, or rolling around on the floor in a sort of mad wrestling. So, although super- intelligent, he could be at risk for being labeled Attention Deficit Disordered (however, knowing his mother, she won't let any such thing happen).

Because this label is applied so readily in the US, and medication use for treatment is on the rise, I think I will end with a quote from Seagal and Horne in their chapter on the emotional-subjective dynamic, which they identify in 55% of the non-far Eastern world: "Rather than applying the label Attention Deficit Disordered, we could serve such children better by first regarding them as emotional-subjective children who need: (1) be afforded frequent opportunities to · engage in physical activity, (2) have frequent opportunities to talk with others, (3) engage in activities in which they can externalize feelings appropriately (e.g. through the arts), (4) acquire a precise language for their feelings, (5) have quiet periods with little or no stimuli, (6) practice focusing exercises, (7) receive frequent appropriate approval and feel that they are liked." They go on to say that this would be a "prescription for the well-being of any emotional-subjective person of any age."