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What is Femtopsychology?
An alternative approach to therapy
Ahmed Zewail, the first Arab recipient of a Nobel Prize in science, is known as the father of femtochemistry: the study of chemical changes that happen on the smallest of time-scales, approximating 0.000000000000001 seconds.
Adopting this prefix, we could also suppose that in addition to psychology — which deals with ‘macro-level’ phenomena like symptoms, personality traits, or behaviors — there is also a femto-psychology: an in-depth exploration of mental events that happen almost instantaneously.
The ‘method’ of femtopsychology involves slowing things down and directing the client’s attention as strictly as possible to the uninterrupted, serial succession of mental events that are happening in their immediate experience. This method uncovers the split-second, automatic, and largely unconscious dynamics that, despite their fleeting durations, can often have major effects on our lives.
Anxiety: An example
A client reports to their therapist that they became anxious during a conversation with a coworker. They may already suspect what caused this anxiety: a concern about appearing stupid, for example, or about unintentionally bothering the other person.
