Who and what is ICI for?

The Insight Collaboration Institute furthers training, research, and collaborative partnerships that advance the development and application of insight method in fostering creativity and healing in situations of social strife and institutional breakdown. 

Through our growing community of insight practitioners we envision a world where insight method is widely recognized and practiced as an effective approach to fostering pro social change. 

What is insight method?

As Bernard Lonergan explains, the fundamental purpose of a method is discovery: the discovery of what is not yet known and what is often enough not expected. In the case of insight method, the aim of the user is to discover the conscious factors operative in a particular social system or circumstance, and thereby to gain an explanatory perspective on present and future possibilities for prosocial change.

The practices and procedures of insight method are derived from the insight model of consciousness and prosocial change.

The main appeal of insight modelling is that it enables the practitioner to think through the personal, practical, institutional, and structural dimensions of a problem, and to devise targeted, self-correcting ways of making things better. As such, an insight model should not be thought of as some sort of “lens,” because it is not a way of looking at a problem; it is a way of thinking it through. Nor should an insight model be thought of as a “framework,” because it is not simply a way of framing or contextualizing a problem; it is a model: a linked set of key factors and critical questions that taken together make it possible for an insight practitioner to discover the gaps in the sensory, conscious, and spiritual components of a particular problem and to devise and test ways to improve it.

Insight models are empirical. They are empirical in the general sense that any claim of fact or probability made by an insight practitioner – any hypotheses proposed – is subject to confirmation in the relevant empirical data. As such, insight models are functionally similar to the mathematical models that natural scientists use to guide and direct their experiments and investigations. What distinguishes an insight model from a model used by a natural scientist is the range and type of empirical data an insight practitioner is likely to consider. 

Natural scientists use empirical, mathematical models to think through the problems of physical, chemical, and biological reality that puzzle and concern them. These models lead them to focus their attention on the data of physical reality: the data we experience through our senses.  In contrast, Insight practitioners use insight models to think through problems of social, political, and cultural reality – realities that cannot be adequately understood or addressed solely in terms of their physical/sensory components. In addition, social, political, and cultural realities have conscious and spiritual components too, which must also be accounted for empirically by the insight practitioner. This is precisely what insight models enable insight practitioners to do. In addition to the relevant data of sense, the insight practitioner focuses their attention on the relevant data of conscious and spiritual experiencing. 

There is nothing easy about mastering the terms and relations of an insight model. But if you have a personal, practical, institutional, or structural problem you want to tackle and solve, it is worth the effort to try.