Not sure if I am a dialectical thinker,more a cross between muddled and concrete,but a thinker,I try to be.
Here's how it sometimes work for me: I started training as a Psychiatric Nurse,after 12 years as a Laboratory Technician,in Metallurgical and rubber Labs. This was after drinking my way out of a Diploma of Applied Chemistry.
I had little or no medical,psychiatric,or psychological knowledge.
Psych Nurse training was on the job following an initial block of Preliminary Training School (Larundel Psychiatric Hospital). This is the thinking bit:
The training was basically from a Freudian Model,at least historically. Even then,in the mid seventies there were plenty of alternative theories and models,but I decided to go with the Freudian model and use it as a framework of understanding to see how, or if other ideas fitted, for instance Thomas Szaz's Anti Psychiatry,Primal Therapy, and Transpersonal Psychology, among lots of others.
The model gave me a chance to compare and relate to some sort of framework I did not have to buy the whole package, only what I felt was useful. These days, I am not a passionate advocate for any particular model,but I have enough knowledge to understand where others may be coming from and therefore may enlighten me. I try to keep an open mind, but I still have my own blind spots and prejudices. I have difficulties with abstract concepts, and have found that what helps my own thinking is sometimes a concrete framework. The use of metaphors has been helpful also.
