The 7 Level Model provides a holistic framework for understanding people from 7 different perspectives: 1) biological, 2) emotional, 3) cognitive, 4) social, 5) thinking, 6) storytelling, and 7) spiritual. It is intended as a guide for therapists to consider a wide range of interventions that complement their usual approach. The levels are not hierarchical - a healthy person will function well across all levels. Each level represents a different way of understanding a client's experiences.

1. The 7 Level
Model
A brief introduction …
Mark Stancombe, Psychotherapist & Counsellor
mstancombe@move-forward.org

2. • Like a map that can assist a therapist when a complex
territory is being travelled with the client, involving the
experiences that each bring into the room
• A guide only
• Not directive. Not defining the route therapy should take
• Not intended to dictate direction
• Aims to provide a holistic view of a person
• It is an integrative concept of the whole person
• Can assist with guiding a therapist in ordering, prioritizing
and/or including a wide range of interventions that can
complement or extend their usual range

3. • NOT Hierarchical. No level is higher or more important
• A healthy human-being will be functioning well on all 7
levels [biological at least as important as any other level*]
* Both Maslow and Rogers started from the medical position around
the fundamental needs of an organism [water, food, warmth, etc.]

4. Note: not hierarchical

5. • The person as a body with biological, physical, visceral
and sensational experience, temperament, body type &
predispositions
• Concerns body processes, sleep, food, physical symptoms
of disease, physical manifestation of anxiety, sensory
awareness
• Integrative Approaches: -
Working with the body, conditioning, desensitisation,
breathing, relaxation
Gestalt techniques for enhancing sensory awareness

6. • The person as a mammal
• Essentially pre-verbal experience & activity
• Focus on bonding, attachment, nursing, deprivation
• Experiencing and expressing
• Integrative Approaches: -
Working with the fear, anger, sadness, joy, rage, despair
Working towards a Cathartic release of emotion
Repressed emotion from childhood?

7. • The person as a Primate. The awareness & labelling of
experiences and the validation of experience through naming
• Integrative Approaches: -
Reframing
Making overt the covert
Top Dog / Underdog [Gestalt]*
Archetypes [Jung]*
Sub-Personalities [Assagioli]*
Parent Adult Child [Transactional Analysis]*
* All provide ‘labels’ that can help the client’s understanding

8. • The person as a social animal
• Refers to norms, values, collective belief systems, societal
expectations
• How we assess some of our ‘oughts’
• How we do things, what things mean in our culture
• Integrative Approaches: -
Looking at the appropriateness, usefulness and application of these
norms for the client in specific circumstances*
* The stiff-upper lip norm of the White British male
* Apartheid norm of white South Africa
Child development work & normal developmental needs

9. • The person as a thinker
• Making sense of things
• Examining cause & effect, frames of reference, facts
• Integrative Approaches: -
Those focusing on ‘Insight’..
Addressing Contaminations [Decontaminating in TA] such as
Parent prejudices & beliefs or child magical thinking…
Cognitive re-framing [CBT]

10. • The person as a Storyteller
• Making sense of experience through symbolism, story and
metaphor
• The theories/stories a client has created to explain why
things are as they are
• Integrative Approaches: -
Parental messages given or reinforced at a pre-verbal stage
[TA]
Development of self – denied, repressed, disowned, split-off,
[Jung]

11. • The person as a Spiritual Being
• Beyond the rational, beyond facts
• Dreams, the mystical, religion, the spiritual
• Experience that is surreal, transcendent
• Integrative Approaches: -
Dreams, symbols, archetypes [Jung]
Transpersonal Psychotherapy
Gestalt