General Patterns in the Power Threat Meaning Framework - Principles and Practice

The Provisional General Patterns are at the heart of the Power Threat Meaning Framework's ambitious attempt to outline a conceptual alternative to the diagnostic model of distress and troubled or troubling behavior. The article outlines the ways in which these proposed regularities differ from patterns of bodily dysfunction, all of which follow from the core principle of being organized by meaning not by biology. This conceptual shift allows for validating and centering the attempts of agentic human beings to make meaning of their distress at individual, family, community and cultural levels. Examples of how the implications of the General Patterns might be drawn out in practice are given with reference to one of them, "Surviving social exclusion, shame and coercive power".