Essentially this invoves allowing people to talk while they have one
eye patched

I have been trying this out with a few people with myopia and
astigmatism.

It sounds weird but produces interesting results.

Perhaps you need to preselect people who are prepared to be open about
what is happening in their inner world or what we could say is their
inner vision?

Similarly perhaps you yourself have to be free of judgment that this
is a stupid and pointless exercise or at least suspend your disbelief
and enter into the spirit of the exercise:-)

The procedure

In a relatively relaxed environment (it does not seem so critical) get
a subject to patch one eye.   Then in a gentle manner which is none
judgemental, friendly and encouraging ask them questions such as the
following.

Can you tell me about your father?

Can you tell me about your mother?

Can you tell me about your work?

Can you tell me about your experiences with men?

Can you tell me about your experiences with women?

You only need 3 or 4 of these questions to get going.  

Allow time for answers.  If any answers come.  Encourage the person to
be  spontaneous but dont keep labouring that point once you begin to
ask the questions.  Dont pressurise them.  Just be relaxed and open to
what does come.  Dont compare answers between eyes at theis stage

Then get them to swop over the patch (the patch can be any old item of
clothing or whatever) remember we are talking about a relaxed friendly
environment with no pressure and no performance anxieties and so on.
If you cant achieve that then I would wonder if it will work.

Ask the same questions in the same manner for the other eye.  Dont
compare answers between eyes at this stage

The results can be very surprising.   Sometimes people get tearful.  
In my experience there has always been very different left and right
eye differences in answer and what is interesting is that these
differences are consistant.   The same eye gives similar responses.

People seem very surprised at what they are saying as they begin to
get into the exercise.

Fred Schiffer described this kind of therapeutic dialogue around 1998.

Of Two minds - The revolutionary science of dual brain Psychology -
Fred Schiffer
Our left and right hemispheres function like separate minds.
http://hallpsychology.com/psychology_counseling/1045.shtml

But i know people who have known about this techinques since the
1980's

It appears that the way the retinas are wired to the brain encourages
one brain to be stimulated more than the other.  This makes sense
because the right eyes retinal surface area going to the the left
brain is much larger  than what goes to the right brain so that might
account for what happens, but the why is not so interesting as the
what.

The final and most entertaining and useful exercise is to get each
'eye' to talk to its coinhabiting brain as if that other brain were a
best friend with whom they share a life together (which of course is
precisely what is happening anyway:-) )

This does all sound weird but once the different view points are
expressed it becomes surprisingly easy for people to start integrating
their different viewpoints.

Roberto Kaplan OD goes a stage further in this and i have found what
he says to be almost universally applicable to people with
astigmatism.

He says that 'Astigmatic perceptual distortions often beginning in
childhood create a warping of our consciousness'  so that we hold
views of the same subject or person which are conflicting.

He has produced a table with the 4 main orientations of astigmatism ,
180 90 134 and 45 in his book 'conscious seeing' where each of these
angles is related to a specific form of conflicting way of thinking.

For example the most common form of astigmatism of 180 is related to
'Stubbornness inflexibility and impatience'

I have extensively therapeutically interviewed myopes with high 180
asigmatism and found that each hemisphere holds very different
viewpoints and each hemisphere is holding onto that view point with
stubbornness and impatience.

However once the differences become openly expressed without judgement
it seems a more balanced view point can get arrived at with relative
ease.

Once the different views are visible and the eye dialogue commences
there are visible personality changes in a relatively short period of
time....the personality becomes quieter softer less aggressive and
more 'real'.

So far i have not got improvements in eyeball vision, but for sure it
is very very interesting to observe these patterns in people and
correlate them to their astigmatism as tabulated by Kaplan.

Kaplan has told me that the eyeball changes come later.  

Andrew