I’m Ian White.
I am the person responsible for the development of Clinical Affectology and Af-x over the last 25 to 30 years. Like so many similar things, you're never quite sure when the productive thinking processes began, but this has been a labor of love, intense interest, scientific research with a final establishment of an approach to emotional well-being that is satisfying in the extreme. That satisfaction, in my world, can only come about from the stories of success and healing from the thousands of clients that I and my trained practitioners have seen over that time. And those stories have been gleaned from very organized and strictly controlled and independent ESR results. My own story started within the Bukkyo Zen tradition, some 50 years ago, when it became clear to me that there was immense value in silence – unfortunately unacknowledged in our modern culture – a sort-of ‘space in time’ where the human subconscious was given the opportunity to sort itself out, unburdened by crappy clutter and fearful self-questioning. My questions to myself were always, “what happens in the mind when you just simply shut up?” and “does the everyday babble of modern life lead us away from inner scrutiny?” … “Where do we rediscover the wisdom and the potential that we were all born with?” Early studies in Morita Therapy married with approaches in psychotherapy that tended to honor much more the ‘whole self’, eventually led to distinct realizations that there is healing value in mindfulness self-attention and the practice of (what many therapeutic approaches call) reframing of predetermined patterning in our lives. In the 80s, a focused examination of the findings of affective neuroscience led me to understand that every person learns emotional (or ‘affect’) reactions at times in development that we describe as being preverbal, and as such, are beyond cognitive analysis. In our society, this is a “biggie” because we are conditioned to believe that we must be able to analyze, define and speak about anything in our lives that we think may be a ‘cause’ of any discomfort, disease or attitude. Our egos then go on to confirm this for us ... wrongly. Yet, the ‘commonsense’ of affective neuroscience tells us that we continue to repeat those preverbal learnings into adult life, and they are ‘state-dependent’ – that is, they exist in the same state as when they were initiated – without words. But 'repeat themselves', they do! And they remain in an "affect-only" state. I'm a 'patternist'. I know that the only true way to perceive human behavior is to define the patterns that remain in the affect (emotional) unconscious, continuing to influence our present daily lives, even though they may have been learned and hard-coded (neuro-acquired) preverbally. And it's the PATTERNS that are the interest of Af-x, not the vague and inauthentic 'content memories' of any life events perhaps misinterpreted. So started a quest to meld neuroscience developmental fact with mindfulness process, and arrive at the therapeutic and self-help approach that I named Af-x. 
Because of this “non-verbal” aspect of the human subconscious that is the target of our work, some people have in the past felt like a blind man approaching unfamiliar machinery, but we can assure you that there is validity behind the notion that “there’s something that drives you at subconscious level that you could never analyze, define or explain; even to yourself.”
And maybe we can’t analyze it, define it and talk about it in clear terms, but Af-x has shaped a way that it can be changed, to our present benefit. As for me personally, well, I’m an old bloke. I have kids and grand-kids everywhere! (not really, but some). I RAGE at 'age', believing that the mind can be sharper and stronger with every proceeding moment. My home and clinical practice is in the outer Sydney area, where I live with my wife, Annette, a more solid supporter of Af-x you could never find, and without her, there'd be no Af-x. And you can talk to me anytime … Email: afxwhite@bigpond.net.au Phone: +61 400 854 021 |
