Synnoema

A framework for mapping lived experience

Synnoema is a framework for representing experiences and examining how they may connect over time.

It didn't begin with a formal theory about how lived experience should be represented. The project developed much more experimentally. I was interested in keeping track of meaningful experiences that seemed connected, even when I wasn't entirely sure what the connection was. A memory might relate to a dream. An emotional reaction might resemble something that had happened months earlier. Certain images, situations, relationships, or questions might keep showing up.

I wanted a way to keep track of those experiences without losing the individual moments, while also being able to look across them over time.

The early versions of the project were mostly attempts to figure out how to do that. Individual experiences could be recorded and connected with other experiences, with the possibility that larger patterns might eventually become apparent. The system went through several versions, including an earlier project called HelixDB, before eventually becoming Synnoema.

As I worked on it, though, I became increasingly concerned about how easy it was to make connections. Two experiences could seem related for all kinds of reasons, and once I had connected them, it was easy for that relationship to begin looking more established than it really was.

That led to a different set of questions. If two experiences seemed related, what was the basis for connecting them? Was the similarity actually present in the experiences, or was I adding it through interpretation? If a pattern became meaningful in retrospect, how much of that pattern had actually been apparent while it was developing? What should happen when later information doesn't fit an earlier understanding?

A lot of the current version of Synnoema developed out of trying to answer those kinds of questions. The project gradually became less focused on finding meaningful connections and more careful about determining when a connection is justified in the first place.

That wasn't really where the project started. The emphasis on uncertainty, careful representation, and separating experience from interpretation developed over time as I encountered problems with earlier versions of the system.

Starting with experience

Suppose someone describes freezing during an argument. They wanted to respond but couldn't find the words. Later, they describe their mind going completely blank while receiving criticism at work. At another point, they remember becoming unusually quiet during a stressful conversation.

Those experiences might represent the same recurring pattern. They might also be different experiences that happen to look similar from a distance.

Synnoema tries not to settle that question too early. Instead, I want to know what the person actually experienced, what seems similar across the experiences, what differs, and how much confidence we should have in whatever connection we are considering.

This creates some separation between noticing that something might be a pattern and deciding that it actually is one.

Mapping without immediately explaining

I often think of Synnoema as a kind of map of lived experience.

Individual experiences can be represented, relationships between them can be examined, and patterns may become clearer over time. But those things aren't treated as interchangeable.

There is a difference between saying this happened, something like this has happened repeatedly, and this is why it happens.

That seems obvious when written out, but it becomes much harder to maintain when dealing with complicated experiences over long periods of time. Part of the purpose of Synnoema is simply to keep those different kinds of claims visible.

How the framework develops a map

Synnoema represents information differently depending on how well established it is.

Something may initially be worth recording without being clear enough to treat as a distinct recurring experience. As more information becomes available, it may become possible to represent an experience more clearly and eventually examine whether it relates to other experiences or participates in a longer-running pattern.

Synnoema uses terms such as Ephemera, Nodes, Threads, and Life-Lines for some of these distinctions. I'll explain those in more detail elsewhere on the site.

For now, the important idea is that larger patterns have to be supported by the experiences underneath them. Several experiences looking similar isn't necessarily enough to decide that they are examples of the same thing.

Figuring out exactly where those thresholds should be is one of the things I'm currently testing.

What happens to uncertainty?

One thing I've become increasingly interested in is what happens to uncertainty as information gets organized.

If two experiences might be related but there isn't enough information to decide, Synnoema can leave that question open. It doesn't have to resolve every possible connection.

This matters because organizing information can make it look more certain. Something that begins as a tentative observation can feel increasingly established after it has been categorized, summarized, connected to other information, and eventually incorporated into an explanation.

I want Synnoema to preserve the uncertainty that was present in the original information rather than accidentally removing it as the map becomes more developed.

What Synnoema is not

Synnoema isn't a diagnostic system, and it isn't intended to replace psychotherapy or psychological assessment. It also isn't intended to automatically uncover the hidden meaning of someone's experiences.

It is better understood as a way of organizing experiences so that possible relationships between them can be examined more carefully.

Interpretation still has a place. In many situations, interpretation is probably where some of the most useful work happens. I just want it to remain possible to tell the difference between the experiences themselves, the patterns we have reasonable evidence for, and what we think those patterns might mean.

Different people may reasonably interpret the same pattern differently.

Why continue developing it?

What started as an attempt to keep track of meaningful experiences and their connections has gradually turned into a larger question about how we represent meaning without getting too far ahead of the information we have.

People already do versions of this all the time. We construct narratives about ourselves. Therapists develop formulations. Researchers identify themes. Families develop stories about their histories. Experiences that didn't seem particularly important at the time can look quite different years later.

I'm interested in whether some of that process can be made easier to examine. Can we preserve individual experiences while also seeing what develops across them? Can we revise an earlier understanding when new information appears? Can we distinguish a pattern that is well supported from one that is merely plausible? And can "there isn't enough information yet" sometimes be a useful result?

Those questions have become increasingly central to Synnoema.

Where Synnoema is now

Synnoema is still under development, although the basic framework is considerably more stable than it was earlier in the project. Because of that, I've been spending less time adding new parts and more time testing what is already there.

Right now, I'm working through cases that put pressure on some fairly basic decisions: when an experience is distinct enough to represent, when apparently similar experiences should be treated as recurring, and how much evidence should be required before moving from individual experiences toward larger patterns.

At this point, I'm less interested in making Synnoema bigger than I am in finding out whether the method I've developed actually works.