Handbook of Solution-Focused Conflict Management

Quantum Mechanics and Neuroscience

Quantum mechanics is the study of the relationship between quanta and elementary particles. Its effects are typically not observable on a macroscopic scale, but become evident at atomic and subatomic levels. It introduced new physical principles and new dynamical laws.

One important finding of quantum mechanics is the so-called uncertainty principle, discovered by Nobel Prize winner Heisenberg. If we want to measure the position and momentum of a particular particle, we must see the particle and focus on it. This gives an uncertainty in the particle position. Quantum systems do seem to behave differently if we observe them. In other words, the subject who observes modifies the object that is observed. The human brain is also a quantum environment and is therefore subject to all the surprising laws of quantum mechanics. One of these laws is the quantum zeno effect (QZE). This effect is related to the observer effect of quantum physics. The behavior and position of any atom-sized entity, such as an atom, electron, or ion, appears to change when that entity is observed.

The QZE was linked with what happens when close attention is paid to a mental experience. Applied to neuroscience, the QZE states that the mental act of focusing attention stabilizes the associated brain circuits. So concentrating on any mental experience, whether a thought, a picture, or an emotion, maintains the brain state arising in association with that experience. Eventually this leads to physical changes in the brain’s structure. Attention continually reshapes the patterns of the brain and the brain changes as a function of where an individual puts his attention: The power is in the focus. New brain circuits can be stabilized and thus developed (the neuroscientist’s term for this is self-directed neuroplasticity). The neural net of the brain can activate a set of anatomically and chronologically associated firings in response to the environment. This profile is encoded, stored, and retrieved on the basis of a simple axiom defined by Hebb (1949): Neurons which fire together at one time will tend to fire together in the future. It is also possible for the brain to relocate brain activity associated with a certain function from one area to another, for instance, in a case of brain damage. And everyday thousands of new cells are created in the adult brain (neurogenesis), which was long thought to be impossible.

Seligman (2002), founder of the positive psychology movement (www.ted. com) found in a study with severely depressed individuals that positive behavior change is primarily a function of the ability to focus attention on specific – positive – ideas closely enough, often enough, and for a long enough time.

This is to say that it is wise to leave problem – or conflict – behaviors in the past and focus on identifying and creating new behaviors by first picturing these new behaviors in your mind and developing positive new mental maps that have the potential to become hardwired circuitry. This is best achieved through a solution-focused questioning approach that facilitates self-insight rather than through advice giving.

From the perspective of quantum mechanics, an objective world independent from personal perceptions is not real. Human conflicts are, per essence, subjective because they originate in the dynamics of personal thoughts, emotions, and beliefs of the people involved. The sources of personal conflicts are the result of the perceptions of persons. Einstein (1954) stated:
• Problems cannot be solved by the level of awareness that created them.
• We cannot solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used
• when we created them. Significant problems cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we • were at when we created them.
No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it.

He postulated that information and knowledge is not sufficient for conflict resolution. Imagination is more important than knowledge, for knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world – stimulating progress and giving birth to evolution. As this book will show, imagination is widely used in the solution-focused approach using the miracle question and other hypothetical questions described in Chapters 5 and 6. Recent insights in the field of neurobiology and knowledge about the functioning of both cerebral hemispheres (Siegel, 1999) show that the right hemisphere deals principally with processing nonverbal aspects of communication, such as seeing images and feeling primary emotions. The right hemisphere is involved in the understanding of metaphors, paradoxes, and humor. Reading fiction and poetry activates the right hemisphere, whereas the reading of scientific texts essentially activates the left hemisphere. There, the processes relating to the verbal meaning of words, also called “digital representations,” take place. The left hemisphere is occupied with logical analyses (cause-effect relations). Linear processes occurring are reading the words in a sentence, aspects of attention, and discovering order in the events of a story. The left hemisphere thus dominates our language-based communication. Some authors are of the opinion that the right hemisphere sees the world more as it is and has a better overview of the context, whereas the left hemisphere tends to departmentalize the information received. The left hemisphere sees the trees, the right hemisphere the forest. Try listening to a favorite piece of music through headphones, first with your left ear, then with your right; what differences do you experience? Several studies have shown that most (right-handed) people prefer to listen to music with their left ear (connected to the right hemisphere), rather than with their right ear (connected to the left hemisphere). If one listens to music with the left ear, this gives a more holistic sensation, “a floating with the flow of the music,” whereas the experience is different if one listens with the right ear. This tendency is reversed in professional musicians. An explanation for this is that they listen to music in a more analytical way than the casual listener. My supposition is that working in a solution-focused manner, thus with a high utilization of the imagination, such as “mental rehearsal” and hypothetical questions, particularly stimulates the nonverbal and holistic capacities of the right hemisphere. Not only the left hemisphere is engaged, as it is in (analytical) problem-focused working. The success of solution-focused conversations might be (partly) explained in the way it addresses both hemispheres of the brain.