For parents, understanding The Sense Connection enhances the skills needed to raise happy, well-adjusted children who will become successful, emotionally-balanced adults. For spouses or lovers, gaining insight into the ways in which primary sense channels compliment and conflict with each other can shift the balance from discord to harmony. And for friends and co-workers, a firmer grasp of how we as individuals view the world could mean more fulfilling and productive relationships and careers. Can understanding others be as simple as identifying their primary sense channels and adjusting accordingly? Naturally, the sense mode does not define the entire personality. But it can offer you some useful short-cuts to understanding. Consider the many ways we put ourselves and others into neat, tidy, limiting pigeonholes. We've heard so many of these expressions: "What do you do?," "Where are you from?," "What's your sign?" These categorizations are merely stereotypes, whether professional, regional, ethnic, astrological, or even the result of The Myers-Briggs examination. Worse than that, they're dead ends. "He's an only child." "She's a Pisces." These stereotypes do not allow room for adaptation, for coming together and making a connection. By adding The Sense Connection to our lexicon, we can find a way to understand others quickly and accurately and then modify our interactive style to fit better with theirs, whatever their profession, cultural background, or birth sign.


Psychotherapist Natalie Robinson Garfield is one of the originators of America’s parent education movement. She has served as a trainer and consultant for The Gesell Institute for Child Development, The Gestalt Learning Center, and numerous hospitals, schools, and child development centers. Garfield is frequently interviewed by the news media, among them New York Magazine, Self, Working Woman, and Parent’s Magazine. She lives and works in New York City.