IJSP Number 6, 2024

25 embedded like the microcosms of all other living beings and with which it is closely interrelated. Part of this autoregulative and steering processes take place without our consciousness and without our deliberate actions, while another part is linked to our conscious actions in our world. Autoregulation and self-steering of life processes requires a broad variety of ways for the fine-tuning. The general basis for this is the development of the perceptual world as a "central steering organ" [ 3 ] . The internal events within this phenomenal world are organized in the form of field events, while its "external relations" via the organism are predominantly characterized by processes of the cybernetic feedback type. 2 More complex orientation and coordination processes in the existential core area of a person's psychosocial life take on different forms of communication and active interaction with other people. These are usually - whether noticed or unnoticed - in close interplay with corresponding processes in the person's "inner self". They can phenomenally take the form of an "inner" conversation, among other possibilities, and they actually do this again and again in everyday life. In this way, "inner speech" belongs to the ways of fine-tuning in the phenomenal realm. Just as looking and feeling serve to ascertain where you are in which environment and what possibilities you have, "inner speech" serves to clarify the situation and your own position and everything that is connected to it and arises from it. Like every process of examination and clarification, this is also associated with a process of change - "inner speech" not only provides orientation, but it also changes - it may lead to a decision, solve a problem, reduce a tension, or create a new tension, and so on. 1.2. “INNER SPEECH” AND PSYCHOTHERAPY/SUPERVISION This general function of "inner speech" also provides answers to the previously asked questions for the psychotherapeutic – and in a broader sense also for the supervisory – context: Can helpful clues about the nature of people’s difficulties in their everyday and professional life and possible solutions be gained from paying attention to the way people "speak internally"? Can these "inner dialogs" themselves perhaps also be a practical starting point for constructive change? If this "inner speech" serves the purpose of fine-tuning, clarification, and orientation, then it is obvious to conclude that the way in which people conduct their "inner dialogues" and what is the subject of these dialogues can provide 2 Wolfgang Metzger analyzes what this fine-tuning looks like in simple cases of motor actions in his essays "Über die Notwendigkeit kybernetischer Vorstellungen in der Theorie des Verhaltens" (1965) and "Die Wahrnehmungswelt als zentrales Steuerungsorgan" (1969). The latter has been published also in English: The Phenomenal-Perceptual Field as a Central Steering Mechanism: https://www.gestalttheory.net/uploads/pdf/archive/1961_1990/Phenomenal_Perceptual_field_Metzger.pdf