Using the term “under/standings” might seem pretentious so I’d like to explain why it was chosen.  In either function, as a counsellor or as a writer, the subject at hand is how and why something is understood.  In counselling, the goal is to have someone who’s trying to change her life understand that life differently i.e., to come to a new understanding of where she is, how she got there, and the assumptions that keep her there.  In writing, even, or maybe especially the fiction, I try to come to terms with incidents in my own past or incidents that have provoked strong reactions within me, by re-understanding them i.e., dramatizing them to see them through the eyes of another protagonist in another context.  I get under or into them through an alternate under/standing.

In non-fiction, new understandings are sought through analysis, that is, the systematic dissection of arguments, premises, assumptions into more explicit statements so each of those statements (propositions) can be understood afresh.  No pretense—just curiosity.