Negative processing, such as incident clearing, unburdening subjects, etc., does not ensure that the person is there. As a matter of fact, they might contribute to making the client not be there. We take some loaded area that is currently activated and we eradicate it. In other words we take a way that the person was being here now, and we get rid of it. OK, it was maybe an aberrated, out-of-context way of being here, but it was still a way. So we better make sure that she finds another way of being here.
The best processing techniques are balanced in themselves, in that whenever we take something away, we ensure that something better is there instead. The positive balances out with the negative. Or, better yet, we simply transform what is not wanted to what IS wanted. Polarity integration tends to do that. Incident clearing in itself is likely to take things away, so it should include steps to bring something back, as in our full Re-experiencing procedure.
It is the person herself that we would like to be there. We would like her to be more attentive, to interact with the world, to live, to feel and breathe, to express herself, to have fun, and do exciting things.
You might run into people who have done a lot of clearing, who don't seem to have any problems in life, but who aren't really there. They feel fine all by themselves, but they are hardly in contact with the world. They stay within their comfortable limits of what they are used to. They don't try doing new things, they don't get themselves into trouble, they always respond to life by being calm and unaffected.
It is nice that processing can make people calm and unaffected when they need to be. However that is not an end goal in itself. Psychiatry is maybe about making calm, normal people who don't make any trouble -- Transformational Processing is certainly NOT. TPS is about freeing people up so they can LIVE more, and get into MORE things. It is about going beyond one's limits, not about hiding behind them.
We need to have a client there. Both before, during, and after session.
At the beginning of session we need to have somebody there who realizes that there is something she would like to change or make better. A person who sits down and pretends that her life is perfect is not much help. She needs to confront her life enough to realize that there is something to do about it. She needs to have a need for change. She doesn't have to open the flood gates to everything at once, one thing at a time is perfectly fine. But she does need to be willing to deal with something that we can then work on. In the beginning of the session it is the facilitator's job to put the client's nose into something, if it isn't there already. Don't just believe a namby-pamby attitude of not dealing with anything. Use whatever means necessary to get the person to look and feel and deal with her life.
The client needs to be present with the processes that are taking place. Just because words are being exchanged doesn't mean that the person is really there. She needs to really feel what is going on, be interested in it, deal with it, talk about it. In part that is what we mean by session involvement, but it is also more than that. There are degrees of being there, even when the person is interested in her situation and willing to talk to the facilitator. We don't just want her to discuss the subject mentally and analytically. We want her to really get into it, be honest about it, perceive it, feel it.
When a process is done we would expect to have more of the person there. If the process itself didn't accomplish that, we would add an extra step to do that. That might be simply a grounding process of looking at the room, it might be talking about what she is now going to do with her life, or any other technique that gets her in contact with the world. The end result of a session should always be that the person is more willing to deal with things, not less. More understanding, more ability, more communication, more good feelings. It would not be a valid result that she decides "Aha, I will just ignore it, then it probably won't bother me", or "I'll just move to another town to get away", or "He is just an asshole, that is the explanation". Those represent running away from things. The best situation to end at, is where she is enthusiastic about all the things she is going to go out and do differently now. Don't end with a person with a blank mind, end with a person who is overflowing with creative ideas.
Having the client be there is not something you can accomplish intellectually. We can make rules about it, and techniques for accomplishing it. However, really it is that you notice that there is a person there; there is an energy that you sense. You address the person that is there, and you work on getting more of that person manifested in the world. You have to consistently sense how well you are doing, and you would use any chance you get of inviting the being to be there more.